Articulation between high school and life after high school must be rationalized and streamlined. Talk is cheap. It is easy to spin out a scenario of school reform and improvement on paper, but hard to execute in practice. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one. For this reason it is nearly impossible for lasting reform to appear spontaneously, from within the institution itself.
Outside stimulus is necessary.
They change because they feel the heat. John Murphy is president of Education Partners Inc., P.O. Box 100, Boca Raton, Fla. 33429. He is the former superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., schools. Denis Doyle is an educational consultant in Chevy Chase, Md., and co-author of Raising the Standards , published by Corwin Press.