This study involved focus group interviews with 12 experienced Egyptian teachers working in academic and vocational secondary schools, comparing their perspectives on the implications of a 1999 educational reform which converted many vocational/commercial schools to academic schools and sought to reduce the need for extra-school, private tutoring. The study examined the reform's impact on: (1) the quality of secondary education and the postsecondary educational and occupational opportunities for students from different socioeconomic backgrounds and (2) the social status and income of teachers working in different types of secondary schools. Teachers' views on the effects of the 1999 reform differed, depending upon whether they conceived of schooling as promoting social mobility or social reproduction and whether their ideologically informed conception of professionalism emphasized remuneration or the service ideal. Far more students in academic schools than commercial schools were classified as academically above average or outstanding, and far more students in commercial schools than academic schools were classified as academically below average or weak. Teachers strongly criticized the absence of improving teachers' socioeconomic status as an objective of the reform, and they called for a new vision of teachers as intellectuals who deserve high remuneration and social reward. (Contains 45 references.) (SM)