With the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), graduation rate accountability has become the educational law of the land, a small part of it at least. Some uncertainty continues to persist around key issues like exactly how to calculate graduation rates and how much weight should be placed on graduation versus test scores when attaching stakes to performance. Evidence increasingly points to the existence of a broad-based high school completion crisis in the U.S. When nearly one-third of all public school students are failing to graduate with a diploma, it becomes difficult to argue that this is still someone else's problem or that it is isolated just in the very lowest-performing schools. Principals have an important role to play in leading local reform efforts and in turning around struggling schools. They are in a position to ensure that, at a minimum, the official statistics that drive educational accountability accurately reflect the reality of life in America's schools. In this article, the author attempts to provide some practical insight into the NCLB and its implications for graduation rates and to highlight some issues of particular relevance to school administrators. He hopes that this piece will point to areas where local school leaders may take increasing ownership of the search to find solutions for the high school completion crisis. (Contains 1 figure.)