This book approaches school reform from the perspective of high school students and their individual views of life within their high schools. Included are essays from students who have behavior disorders, attention deficit disorders, and learning disabilities. The introductory chapter suggests that administrators, teachers, and students all live in different realities, and discusses the reality gap in which students want to learn, but often cannot fit into the standardized roles in which teachers and administrators wish they would fit. In the second through the sixth chapters, students from a middle-class suburban high school outside of Chicago explain in their own written words the issues that concern them the most. Students chose their own topics, which address academics, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, the effects of long-term injury, sports, stalking, extracurricular activities, working, family, divorce, popularity, alcoholism, sexuality, AIDS, racial discrimination, religion, and other societal issues. (Contains 12 references.) (CR)