ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents an investigation of who and what are involved in the eventual evaluation of a life as a success or failure in school terms. It explores the implication for research of looking at success and failure as two rooms within the same house that many people inhabit and are at work maintaining, reconstructing, and, it is hoped, remodeling. The book is about "the School America builds" with its many rooms, positions like success and failure, Learning Disability and talent, positions that eventually get filled generation after generation with the people who are at any time required to fill them. It shows how an innovative program in an alternative high school can appear to be both a success and a failure.
