This report offers advice on the issues to be considered and the steps to be taken when implementing a high school graduation test. The research was conducted, specifically, to address problems with Mississippi's high school exit test. An external panel, developed by Southeastern Regional Vision for Education (SERVE), reviewed data obtained through a site visit, interviews, and document analysis. Chapter 1 presents introductory information, chapter 2 provides an overview of the Mississippi context, chapter 3 contains an executive summary, and the final chapter contains the full report. The following issues are addressed: curriculum/test specification issues; additional curriculum and instructional considerations; psychometric testing and scoring; education issues; legal issues; policy/administrative issues; and human and financial resource issues. Suggestions are also offered for the sequencing of tasks and using test scores for accreditation purposes. The report contains 65 recommendations, including these: (1) it is legally inappropriate to hold students accountable for passing an assessment that covers materials they have not been taught; (2) multiple-choice items can measure higher order thinking skills and procedures; (3) any "off-the-shelf" test would probably be an unacceptable high school exit test for Mississippi students; (4) requiring any national norm-referencing component of the exit exam poses problems for maintaining curricular validity; (5) the various assessment programs should be closely articulated; and (6) the use of various tests in a performance-based accreditation model requires careful consideration of how to set the performance level and what metric to use. Information for ordering SERVE products is included. (LMI)