Life After High School

Taking the Education Gospel Seriously

By W. Norton Grubb

The American high school is perpetually in crisis. A succession of reports since 2004 has catalogued complaints about high dropout rates, the boredom and irrelevance of the curriculum, dreary teaching, and invidious tracking. The high school is a crucial junction in our education system, one at which students embark on very different paths toward the future: many dropping out, others struggling through but barely learning, a few aiming for the best universities in the world. Save for this latter elite, the American high school seems to be doing a poor job of preparing students for life thereafter—whether learning for the workforce, or for citizenship and community participation, family life, and the intellectual and aesthetic goals often pushed off the table by accountability...