ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some evidence bearing on the vital question of whether current educational practices tend to reinforce existing social class divisions. It offers an alternative aimed at making the public schools more effective institutions for keeping open the opportunities for social mobility. Since the turn of the century, a number of trends have converged to increase enormously the pressure on American adolescents to graduate from high school: declining opportunity in jobs, the upgrading of educational requirements for job entry, and the diminishing need for teenagers to contribute to family income. While some school systems, especially in the large cities, have adapted to this vast increase in enrollment by creating separate high schools for students with different interests, abilities or occupational goals, most communities have developed comprehensive high schools serving all the youngsters within a neighborhood or community.
