The sources of the chronic precariousness of order in public secondary schools are examined. The means of control available to principals and teachers are analyzed and the consequences of strategies of control are considered as they interact with strategies for academic education. Order and academic education as goals often require mutually contradictory actions supported by different organizational structures. The need for opposing practices to meet these two basic goals is greatest when incoming students are skeptical or challenging of the usefulness of the school's academic goals or of its good faith in pursuing them. The character of four junior high schools in two school districts is analyzed to illustrate the interaction of these factors. (Author/MLF)