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Middletown High School is a comprehensive high school with 1,970 students, located in the environs of Washington, DC. It is distinguished by an open enrollment policy for all courses; a strong emphasis on inclusion of students with learning disabilities (LD) in general education classrooms; block scheduling that allows for more in-depth and meaningful study of important concepts and ideas; and team teaching in English, mathematics, science, and social studies. In a schoolwide 30-minute daily Learning Seminar, all students learn study skills, do homework, take tests, or go to the library, and teachers have opportunities for departmental meetings and problem solving. A visual representation of a “percolator” frames the school's system of opportunities and supports. Through case studies of two students with LD and analyses of 55 transcripts of recent graduates, we describe the academic and social opportunities, support structures, and strategies that make Middletown a “good high school” for students with disabilities.

Located in the Florida panhandle, Apalachee High School has a student population of 1,894 students, 13% of whom have identified disabilities. The school has a highly experienced teaching staff and a special education faculty that provides acknowledged leadership in the school. Apalachee includes students with disabilities in all aspects of school life and sustains a high level of community involvement in students' success. The graphic metaphor used to represent Apalachee's approach is a set of globes and pathways that represent the academic programs and the support structures that students use to progress within and between programs. Three student case studies help to illustrate how the “pathways” respond to students with disabilities at different points on a continuum of academic and social needs and abilities. Four-year transcripts for 39 students reflect the range of opportunities and supports (pathways) that characterize Apalachee and are illustrated by the three students we shadowed.

This article summarizes the findings and themes from the three high schools we studied. All three schools engaged in five schoolwide strategies for educating students with disabilities. They provided a broad array of academic courses and program options; provided schoolwide support structures that could be combined and customized to the needs and strengths of individual students; worked intentionally to connect students to the school and build their motivation to succeed; created a connected and caring adult community to serve students' academic and social/personal needs; and developed responsive leaders who managed the tensions inherent in the commitment to prepare students with disabilities to be successful in their lives beyond school. The article also reviews the different ways these three school instantiated these strategies. We describe the “theory of action” that integrates the five schoolwide strategies into a synergistic approach in each school and explore implications of the Good High Schools study for practice and for future research.

This special issue presents findings from Good High Schools, a 3-year study of high schools that have strong participation and positive results for their students with disabilities. In this introductory article, we describe the national search for three “good high schools” and the final selection of schools in Virginia, New York, and Florida. We review the goals and research questions that guided the research and describe the mixed methods research approach used to study the three high schools. Methods included individual and focus group interviews of school administrators, department heads, community representatives, teachers, parents, and students; classroom observations; shadowing of students throughout a school day; surveys of students and teachers; collection of documents on the school mission, course offerings, and students' rights and responsibilities; achievement test scores; and 4-year transcripts of courses taken by senior students with disabilities. We foreshadow the finding from the three case studies that follow, that a theory of action underlies the approach to educating students with disabilities in the three schools.

Walter Cronkite High School is a comprehensive high school of nearly 4,000 students, located in New York City. The population of students with disabilities includes many students with severe and low-incidence disabilities, including 70 students with visual or hearing impairments and 20 students with orthopedic impairments. Cronkite High School's academic program reflects the belief that if students with disabilities can choose among a motivating set of intellectual options, receive appropriate academic support, and assume responsibility for their learning, they will be successful. The school puts that belief into practice through an “assembled puzzle” of academic opportunities, academic supports, and social opportunities designed to respond to highly varied student interests and academic needs. We describe “how the school works” through case studies of three students with learning disabilities and through an analysis of the high school transcripts of 36 students with disabilities who are recent graduates.

Opportunities to discuss literature with peers are critical to students' development of literary understanding. Despite the importance of these discourse experiences, many middle-school students are not afforded these opportunities or the necessary teacher support in their English language arts classrooms. Based on a sociocultural perspective, we set out to examine the ways that middle-grades students, particularly those with disabilities, contribute to peer-led discussions and how their participation enables them to build toward textual understanding, social understanding, and understanding of literary discourse. We conducted an in-depth analysis of a verbatim transcription of a video-taped literacy lesson in an urban classroom. Drawing on that analysis, we describe the ways students participated in the literary discourse and the teacher practices that supported students' participation in this discourse. This analysis provides evidence that students with disabilities can acquire the discourse practices needed for interpreting challenging literature with their regular education peers.