The purpose of this study was to describe and explain the communication networks within two schools. The study was undertaken in two secondary schools in a metropolitan area and involved participant observation and interviews over the course of a school year. The purpose of the first part of the study was to enter the schools, identify the issues of importance, follow those issues, and trace out the communication networks. The investigator discovered minimal staff interaction around school issues. The second part of the model considered the set of relations that each teacher maintained with students for whom his or her particular approach worked. Teachers had considerable freedom in curriculum and instruction decisions, and based their approaches on personal predilections, background, and educational perspective, and on outside constraints. The third part of the model consists of the relations of teachers with professionals in the district. The report concludes that with their emphasis on a specialized elective system and the corresponding lack of standardized curriculum, supervision, and staff evaluation, these schools lack a generalized idea of what constitutes an education. Instead they have given control of the educational process to individual teachers who then strike agreements with sets of students. (Author/JK)