| Sumario: | This study explored complicated personal narratives of school reform generated by participants in response to a particular small schools reform initiative. Narrative data was dialogically generated in interviews with nine past participants of an urban high school conversion project planned and implemented over a span of five years toward the goal of converting five comprehensive high schools into a network of small schools. This narrative inquiry illuminates that the reform effort generated confusion, contradictory expectations, and unexpected changes for participants during and after the reform effort. Differing agendas and competing interests drove the small schools conversion leaving the small school leaders in rough and contested waters. To conclude that the small schools design caused the seeming failure of this initiative does not adequately consider the varied narratives of participants, the roles of external funding, or embedded language and images that position reform participants in submission to powerful reform leaders.
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