RALEIGH, N.C. – A preliminary review of allegations a North Carolina House member embraced a page and drank alcohol before speeding to work has been completed.

House Speaker Joe Hackney’s office released the report Wednesday about Rep. Cary Allred of Alamance County.

The report makes no recommendations. The Legislative Ethics Committee will decide whether Allred receives more scrutiny.

The report includes statements from Allred’s fellow Republicans who called it inappropriate when he hugged and kissed a page on the House floor.

Allred said the teenager is a family friend and he kissed her on the cheek.

Allred said he had one drink before being stopped by a trooper en route to Raleigh. He was cited for speeding four days later.

North Carolina is among the top 10 states where high school graduation rates dramatically improved between 2002 and 2006, according to a report released Thursday.The report from researchers at Johns Hopkins University said North Carolina’s graduation rate improved from 68 percent in 2002 to 72 percent in 2006, ranking the state eighth among states that saw gains. The state had a net gain of 3,900 graduates during that time span.

But the report, from the university’s Everyone Graduates Center, warns that North Carolina still has an overall graduation rate below the national average of 75 percent. Yet it’s an improvement from 2002, when the state’s graduation rate ranked among the nation’s lowest.

“Being among the top 10 states to increase its high school graduation rate is a good start, but we still have more to do to keep kids in school and prepare them for the global market,” Gov. Beverly Perdue, a former teacher, said in a statement Thursday.

“Education is the key to strengthening North Carolina’s economy.”

She said she would remain committed to her promise to strengthen public education despite the state’s more than $3 billion budget shortfall entering this summer.

Tennessee and New York produced the greatest number of additional graduates, with roughly 8,000 more students in each earning high school diplomas in 2006, according to the center, which tries to develop strategies to help students graduate. North Carolina’s gains appear to be driven by an improvement in promoting power, or “the timely progress of students from 9th to 12th grades,” the report says.

But the state’s improvement appears to have been partially offset by declines in the percent of seniors receiving diplomas, which fell 1.9 percent.

State Board of Education Chairman Bill Harrison, appointed to the job last week, said the state has benefited from efforts to make high school more practical for students and linked to technology.

He cited the New Schools Project, started under then-Gov. Mike Easley to create small technology-themed high schools that were subsidized in part through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Easley also pushed the Learn and Earn program, comprised of about 60 schools where students can obtain both a high school diploma and college credit.

“We’ve been very proactive in the state to do everything we can possibly can to keep kids in schools,” said Harrison, who also is chief executive officer of the public school system, which includes about 1.5 million students.

“We just need to keep on working to gear our teaching to the way children learn.”

The national report came just days after President Barack Obama’s first major speech on education, in which he discussed reducing the high school dropout rate and pushing states to adopt more rigorous academic standards.

“One can look at the national data and get kind of depressed and think we’re not improving, but we need to look at the fact that there are 12 states that did make significant improvements,” said Robert Balfanz, co-director of the Everyone Graduates Center. “But we’re still clearly not putting enough resources and know-how behind this critical national problem.”

WASHINGTON – As President Barack Obama prepares to send troops to war for the first time as commander in chief, a new report says a “game-changing” strategy is urgently needed in Afghanistan to save the faltering international campaign.

“All is not lost in Afghanistan,” RAND Corp. experts said in a paper being released Tuesday by the congressionally funded United States Institute of Peace.

“But urgent measures – what might be called ‘game-changing steps’ – are now needed to stem an increasingly violent insurgency,” said authors Seth G. Jones and C. Christine Fair.

Obama has been reviewing several options for a troop build up that he and commanders want in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is to sign troop deployment orders after he gets a nod from Obama.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that Obama will make the decision shortly about how many additional troops to send to Afghanistan.

“Without getting into broad timelines, I don’t think this is anything that involves weeks,” the presidential spokesman said, underscoring that Obama’s move would come shortly.

The new think tank report adds to the growing consensus among officials and private analysts that sending more troops to the now 7-year-old war will mean little without a new strategy.

It faults international donors for not delivering all the aid promised. It says strategies are splintered and some efforts have been counter productive because nations working there don’t even agree on whether the biggest threat is al-Qaida, the skyrocketing drug trade, or other issues.

The report says efforts to build a police force have been disappointing, and that work to disarm former combatants and militias is “all but moribund.” It notes that U.S. intelligence indicates Afghan officials are involved in the drug trade; traffickers have bought off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and officials, and it suggests the immediate firing of corrupt officials.

“The United States and its international allies must re-examine their core objectives in Afghanistan,” it said, adding that the first priority must be stopping the use of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan as a base for terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Officials also must stop hoping they can build a central Afghan government strong enough to keep order across Afghanistan, the report said. It asserted that such a goal goes against the country’s history, and it recommended that tribes and local organizations must be fostered as well.

“It is unlikely the United States and NATO will defeat the Taliban and other insurgent groups in Afghanistan,” the report also said. So any additional troops sent should be used to mentor Afghan security forces on how to control the country themselves, it said.

Identifying and narrowing the goals in Afghanistan is part of a broad U.S. government reassessment of the war effort that is under way.

U.S. commanders have said they could send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan this year, nearly doubling the American contingent. Gates has said two brigades could be ready to go there by spring and a third by summer.

Obama is expected to initially approve only part of a military request and decide on more after that.