Coalition of Essential Schools

A network of schools joined by a common cur-ricular vision, the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) grew out of a decisive moment in U.S. educational history. Reports such as the 1983 A Nation at Risk sounded the alarm that U.S. students and workers were dangerously unprepared to compete in the global economy. For curriculum studies, it was a time of radical rethinking and comprehensive reform. It was against this backdrop that Theodore (Ted) Sizer and colleagues undertook “The Study of High Schools.” A history teacher and headmaster turned educational researcher, Sizer set out to observe a broad range of high schools and fundamentally reexamine the institution. The result was Horace's Compromise, Sizer's influential portrait of the problems and possibilities of the U.S. high school published ...