A study team was commissioned to critically review three independent reports on youth and schooling: "Youth: Transition to Adulthood"; "The Education of Adolescents"; and "The Reform of Secondary Education." The study team examined the reports in light of the most recent available social science evidence. The three reports, presenting similar analyses of the status of American youth and the institutions serving them at the end of the 1960s, proposed a direction for reform: (1) dispersion of youth from schools to work place and community; (2) individualization and diversification of high school programs; (3) curricular reforms; and (4) new methods of school governance. This report is arranged into five major sections. The first three sections contain parallel and detailed analyses of the reports. Section I reviews the reports. Section II deals with some constraints of the adolescent life stage depicted by the reports, such as age segregation, prolongation of adolescence, and peer group development. Section III focuses on school youth's encounters with the labor market and Section IV covers findings and proposals that concern the organization and performance of high schools. Each chapter also spells out major considerations that the reports slight or omit. Section V attempts to define policy steps that seem feasible and sensible based on the review and events that have occurred since the three reports were written. The study team suggests that some findings of the three reports were overdrawn, the findings rest on a weak research base, and some proposed reforms may be less necessary or feasible than stated or would have effects other than those intended. (Author/ND)