Meg Riordan

Since it was first invented, Americans have been trying to re-design the American high school. One of the latest approaches - funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - is to find inventive high school designs that work well in one location and replicate them in other locations. The authors of this book followed a design team from Big Picture Learning as it worked to do exactly this, recording the challenges it faced, and the strategies it employed. Their accessible and entertaining account of Big Picture's work is laced with stories about 'scaling up' by other school design teams, and in other enterprises beyond high school. Based on careful research, the book is both a practical guide to a new dimension of school reform, and also an interesting read for anyone interested in school change.