1. What Is the Twentieth-Century American High School? An Introduction, Kyle P. Steele -- 2. Politics and Markets: The Enduring Dynamics of the US System of Schooling, David Labaree -- 3. Revisions in the Citadel, Robert L. Hampel -- 4. “Intellectual Power” For All: Theodore Sizer and the Origins of the Coalition of Essential Schools at Phillips Academy, Andover -- 5. “A Living, Breathing, Curriculum”: Harlem Prep and the Power of Cultural Relevance, 1967-1974, Barry M. Goldenberg -- 6. Gendered Anxieties Pave the Way for a Separate and Unequal Co-Educational High School, Erika Kitzmiller -- 7. A Window into the Worlds of Students: An Analysis of 1920s High School Student Newspapers, Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen -- 8. Books, Basketball, and Order of the Fish: Youth Culture in Midwest Small-Town High Schools, 1900-1930, Patricia Stovey -- 9. “Fight for Your Land”: Southern High School Activism and the Struggle for Youth Autonomy During and After the Second World War, Jon Hale -- 10. The Hidden Politics of High School Violence, Walter C. Stern -- 11. Shifting Public Perceptions of Wichita’s Southeast High School, 1957-2000, Lauren Elizabeth Coleman-Tempel -- 12. Funding the “High School of Tomorrow”: Inequity in Facility Construction in Rural North Carolina, 1964-1997, Esther Cyna -- 13. Epilogue, Kyle P. Steele.

The growth of the American high school that occurred in the twentieth century is among the most remarkable educational, social, and cultural phenomena of the twentieth century. The history of education, however, has often reduced the institution to its educational function alone, thus missing its significantly broader importance. As a corrective, this collection of essays serves four ends: as an introduction to the history of the high school; as a reevaluation of the power of narratives that privilege the perspective of school leaders and the curriculum; as a glimpse into the worlds created by students and their communities; and, most critically, as a means of sparking conversations about where we might look next for stories worth telling. .