SPECIAL ISSUE RESTRUCTURING SCHOOLS The Relationship Between Secondary School Scheduling Models and ACT Assessment Scores

This article reports the results of the first phase of a longitudinal study of 568 public high schools in Illinois and Iowa in which the relationships among three common secondary school scheduling types and average com-posite scores on the ACT Assessment were examined. Preliminary findings suggest that merely adopting a different scheduling approach without engag-ing in any additional reform initiatives within a school will have little effect, if any, on student achievement. The school reform movement has stimulated the nation’s secondary school educators to examine carefully the relationships between their time-honored educational practices and student achievement. Reports pub-lished within the last few decades, in particular A Nation at Risk (Nationa