After over two-hundred years of academic malpractice, it is time to reset and reimagine the new American high school. We have been doing school wrong for much too long. Students are disengaged, failing, and feeling hopeless. We need strong school leaders to take a hard look at educational change. The transformation to a standards-based teaching, learning and grading system has ignited our school and moved the academic needle. The system allows our teachers to take ownership of the standards and create a skills-based system to provide students with hope, transparency and success.