In life, each person is offered opportunities, one after the other, until life ceases. For the author, one of those opportunities was to attend the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center (KAMSC), an NCSSSMST school. While attending KAMSC as a member of its inaugural class required a bit of imagination regarding the opportunity at hand, and…

This paper criticizes the neoliberal shift in Korean education toward educational consumerism by analyzing the boom in Specialized High schools (SHs). For its theoretical background, this paper discusses the issues of freedom, equal opportunity, and choice in education, and investigates how neoliberal consumerism has been encouraging the boom in…

The author had been a high school English teacher for 15 years when her district transformed two traditional high schools into 10 small schools of choice. In this article, the author shares how the staff of one small school, with the help of professional development and a true sense of empowerment, created a small school culture and aligned the…

1980s reform strategies amounted to fine-tuning a model T. Inner-city high schoolers' reading and writing skills cannot be improved if each teacher is responsible for 175 students. The 800 schools participating in Coalition of Essential Schools projects share certain characteristics: small size; collegiality among educators, parents, and community…

Discusses whether schools become more responsive to parents and more equitable when "chosen" by the clients they serve. Reveals that even where schools are outwardly characterized by values cohesion, shared goals, and voluntary affiliation, interaction between a school and its environment is likely to be a process of ongoing negotiations…

A British headteacher ponders a tumultuous decade in school management. The national curriculum was one major problem. There have also been radical, deleterious changes in the ways schools are funded, governed, managed, planned, and inspected; how teachers are educated; and the terms and conditions of teacher employment. Competition for pupils has…

In 1997, the Danville City Public Schools opened four focus schools at the high school level, adding 2 more schools in the next 2 years. This booklet relates the efforts of this small urban school district to bring educational choice to its students, parents, and teachers, while having to grapple with issues of autonomy and governance, innovation…

Meaningful school reform requires a deeper understanding of how high schools evolved to their current condition. This book presents an objective history of American public secondary education in two ways--as a social history and as a synthesis of literature. Chapter 1 offers a brief history of American education, beginning with the debate over…

This essay, written from the point of view of a social researcher with a direct personal involvement in the cases studied, discusses how public schools, as universally accessible moral communities, engage in patterns of systematic exclusion. Through three case studies of public secondary schools in which groups of students have been situated…

A case study explores the attitudes, opinions, and concerns of the parents of a cerebral palsied adolescent (as well as the views of the affected public and private school administrators) concerning the decision to allow their son to move from a private to a public high school environment. (JW)

Reviews the implications of James Coleman's report, "Public and Private High Schools" for education reform and Catholic schools, focusing on issues related to free choice between public and private schools, school organization, parent involvement, and values. (DMM)

Argues for the importance of high school principals taking charge of their schools. Examines the following obstacles to effective leadership: historical developments in education in the last decades, union influence, legal problems, paperwork burdens, and lack of community and parent support. Also discusses the symbolic role of principals. (JB)