A Modest Invitation

Overview & Synopsis

How can colleges advance secondary school reform? In this article, the authors explain that the first step forward is to acknowledge that secondary education and higher education are deeply and inextricably connected. The decisions made by American higher education leaders will directly, if not always obviously, impact secondary schools and students. Secondary education's influence on higher education is similarly profound, given that colleges endeavor to educate the students the nation's high schools produce, and success in this venture is contingent, in many ways, on the effectiveness of the systems that precede it. The next step is to start making decisions--and changing policies--that take this symbiotic relationship into consideration.