Improving high school graduation rates has become the focus of virtually every high school, district and state nationwide, as dropout rates in many areas remain unacceptably high. As 80-90% of students voice the expectation that they will go to college (and federal labor projections support the need for a more educated workforce), greater numbers of states are making a "college/and career-ready" high school curriculum the default curriculum to earn a high school diploma. Many education stakeholders at the state and local level are wondering how it is possible to raise high school graduation rates while increasing the number and rigor of courses required for a high school diploma. Credit recovery and proficiency-based credit are being adopted by a growing number of states that are working to simultaneously increase graduation rates, create a default "college/career-ready" high school curriculum, and provide acceleration options for students. This issue of "The Progress of Education Reform" addresses the following questions: (1) What is credit recovery? What is proficiency-based credit?; (2) How is credit recovery different from traditional remediation?; (3) Why does providing for these options matter for high school completion?; (4) How widespread are these options across the states? What do state policies look like?; (5) What are the challenges in implementing credit recovery and proficiency-based credit programs?; (6) What does the research say on the effectiveness of credit recovery and proficiency-based credit?; and (7) What are the essential policy components? (Contains 11 endnotes.)