Review of another look of Valirie Lee, Julia Smith and Robert Croninger at high school restructuring: More evidence that it improves student achievement and more insight into why

High schools have over the past few decades been discredited with institutionalization, standardization, and academic-orientation (Manno, 1995; NASSP, 1996). As a result, it has failed to prepare students for the society which has been undergoing exponential change. A majority of students have been either neglected or left uncared for because of their relatively low academic achievement. To meet with the persisting educational problems, the authors endeavor to investigate whether high schools, which have adopted the following four characteristics, are able to produce better-performing students than traditional institutionalized high schools. (1) More interactions between different members of the school. (2) Everyone holds responsibility for students' total development. (3) More teacher feel satisfaction and higher morale. (4) Less dropouts and fewer class-cuttings and lower rates of absenteeism. Based on the statistical data collected from 9,570 students in 781 high schools, the authors find that in both mathematics and science, academic gains are substantially higher in schools with higher levels of these four characteristics. One more important finding is that students are learning more in smaller schools, and the performance gaps between students from different backgrounds are smaller as well.