The Comprehensive High School Today

Does the comprehensive high school―the dominant form of secondary school in the United States―have relevance today? At a time when policy debates now turn toward high school reform, Floyd Hammack has gathered a distinguished group to assess current reform efforts in their sociological and historical context, taking into account the vision of James B. Conant, the major proponent of the comprehensive high school. This timely book:

• Examines how higher education has expanded in the post–World War II era and the consequences of secondary education: high rates of academic competition and disengagement, failure, drop out, violence, and disorder.
• Discusses the “core dilemma” of secondary education―how to serve everyone and still give students a competitive advantage.
• Focuses on how secondary education has been affected by urban and suburban development, demographics, racial segregation and desegregation, the rise of a distinctive youth culture, and the economy.
• Sheds light on why the context in which instruction takes place sets parameters for the nature of what can be taught and learned.
• Raises a number of critical issues about the social forces that create barriers to significant reform and provides a perspective from which to better view the multiple purposes of the high school.

Floyd M. Hammack is Associate Professor of Educational Sociology and Higher Education at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education.