Most of the real obstacles to change in education are not out but inside us, Mr. Gregory argues. He describes the 10 most common barriers and suggests some tactics for getting around them. OVER the past 30 years educational researchers have learned some important lessons about the impact of school size.1 Gradually, a picture of the American high school of the future has emerged from this research, and it suggests that the high school of the future will be much smaller than it is today. Indeed, the most recent research study I can find that advocates the current concept of the high school was published in 1971.2 Essentially all the data since then point to the superiority - in school climate, in teacher satisfaction, in the ability to hold students, in levels of student participation, and even in achievement and school costs - of the newer, smaller schools.3 This should be good news for schools.4 Where are they in this new vision? Alternative are often treated as second-class citizens by their districts. They often find themselves in weak political positions; they often seem to be misunderstood by professionals in other and by the district administration. For these reasons, they may choose to maintain a low profile and to work hard not to make waves. In other words, alternative may play the game in ways that ensure that their sister conventional will be comfortable with the relationship, a phenomenon that has been labeled fear of success. At its most fundamental level, reform is about altering power relationships,5 and the issues I discuss here deal with the relationships of alternative to their districts and communities. Though they deal with affairs external to individual alternative schools, each issue has an impact, sometimes insidious, on the teaching, learning, and sense of community within the alternative The practices I outline below represent administrative conveniences for the school district, but they become Procrustean when applied to whose power emanates from variety, choice, and personal relationships. Each of these conditions is an indicator of the power that districts exercise to keep alternative in their place. It is thus understandable that alternative so often go along with these practices, because the complicated politics of alternative school directors and principals are simplified when they are seen by their districts as good team players. I believe that the experiences of alternative must play a central role in creating a new conception of the American high school. The 10 practices detailed below tend to retard progress toward that goal. When alternative school people look the other way - pulling their punches, if you will - the growth of their into more complete and more potent learning environments for their students is stunted. Moreover, the school system at large is cheated of the benefits to be derived from the leadership these exercise on the frontiers of school reform. When alternative school people choose to maintain a low profile, they are not only handicapping their own practice but also delaying the arrival of real reform in all public high People Issues Which students and teachers inhabit alternative and how they are selected are issues that need to be confronted. Districts or sending schools often wish to control who attends alternative and when they will attend them. Teacher unions often ally themselves with these interests in dictating who will teach in these 1. Control of who attends. Many alternative are populated by students who have freely chosen to attend them, but many others serve students who were sent there by someone else. Many start as solutions to the problems of disruption and alienation in schools. And it is the big that decide who should go to alternative …