ABSTRACT
This chapter describes specific reform practices schools are implementing to realize the vision for high schools in the United States set forth in Breaking ranks, a report published by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. The first section of this chapter reviews a general critique of public high schools articulated in the 1980s and describes the reform practices that have emerged over the past decade in response to this critique. The second section offers examples of schools that have pulled together a number of such reforms into a comprehensive school restructuring effort, focusing on one school in depth. The third section identifies challenges schools can expect to encounter when implementing the set of reforms. This section draws on the experiences of several schools the author and a research team at Johns Hopkins CRESPAR have worked with since 1994 as part of the Talent Development High Schools project.
