This paper synthesizes the issues, problems, research, and current best practice in secondary education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Overall, Latin America and the Caribbean enroll much lower percentages of school age children in secondary education than the region's chief competitors, and the region's secondary education is inadequate by international standards. Secondary vocational education is usually low prestige, underfunded, and inadequately linked to the labor market. Expenditures per student are much lower than the region's competitors. The paper identifies six critical areas for quality improvement, including: increased learning of higher order skills in mathematics, communications, and language and better measurement of achievement; more effective instruction, schools, and systems; public school management reform; use of technology for improvement of educational quality; reassessment of the relationship between secondary schooling and the labor market; and more and better research on what works in secondary education in terms of increased learning, retention, and performance in the labor market. The paper estimates critical quantitative, financial, and human resources needs during the next 10 years and identifies a variety of strategies for meeting the challenges in a cost-efficient manner. (Contains 88 references.) (SM)