This case study describes how Porterville Unified School District (PUSD), a rural school district in California's Central Valley, began to fulfill its vision to transform high school and career education through the implementation of Linked Learning. Linked Learning is a state-wide initiative for redesigning large comprehensive high schools into…

Furman Brown has spent over a decade figuring out how to design a better school. As a first-year teacher in South Central Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he got a taste of what was wrong with the traditional public school model: It was not designed to serve students "or" teachers well. Convinced there was a better way to organize and…

Familiar high school problems include unprepared and apathetic students, inadequate teachers' salaries and benefits, and outmoded grade-level systems. Improvement requires new schooling models including clearer goals, advancement linked to skills mastery, promotion of thinking skills, less fragmented school time, elimination of age-grading, less…

First in a series of successful innovations reported by readers, the article describes the "House Group" concept at Shoreham-Wading River (New York) High School. The House Group emphasizes the individual relationship between a student and an adult adviser who serves as advocate and mature "friend." (Author/MLF)

In this 1979 replication of a 1974 survey, 234 high school principals provided information on perceived influences on curriculum, groups involved in curricular decision making, and use of 20 curricular arrangements and offerings, such as departmentalization, independent study, competencies, moral education, and unified studies. Five-year trends…

The trend away from closed teaching systems and toward open learning systems between 1965 and 1975 led to the introduction of a number of isolated innovations in Regis High School, a Catholic school in New York City. To provide a sense of coherence and direction to these changes, the faculty designed a comprehensive model for program development…

This report summarizes the procedures and results of a 2-year project carried our collaboratively by a university-based research and development center and a nearby high school. The first section summarizes the setting and rationale of the project (the Focused Flexibility project.) The ideas basic to the project were (1) a school should try to…

Presents a case study of student involvement in decision-making at Chicago's Metro High School and proposes a supportive role for research, evaluation, and feedback to strengthen alternative schools within a framework of shared analysis and decision-making. (Editor/GB)

The idea of organizing secondary schools into smaller units has gained support in the last decade. This guidebook is designed to support efforts to develop an effective small-unit plan for high schools. The first two sections highlight the benefits of small-unit organizations and identify the institutional barriers to implementation. Proponents of…

Describes Pope John Central High School in Elgin, Nebraska, one of the most innovative secondary schools in the state. (CB)

Author describes a design now being tried in a few schools in the midwest", and urges the idea of the school as supportive environment" for learning. (Author/SP)

To meet the changing needs of its young people, Atlanta Public Schools searched for an organizational structure that would (1) permit more flexibility and individualization of instruction; (2) allow pupils to take one course, two courses, or a combination of courses and activities; (3) permit a wider selection of options; and (4) expand the school…

Horizon High School combats student dropout rates in Bakersfield (California) by maintaining a small enrollment, high community involvement, close student-teacher relationships, flexible scheduling, and attention to individual students' educational needs and interests. Student attendance, graduation rates, and standardized test scores are…