Book excerpt: Have high schools killed the American Dream? Across America 857 unmotivated and unskilled students drop out of school each hour of every school day. Billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted. Solutions for this national disaster have eluded educators for decades. Until now. In Maximum Impact Education, Jack Oakes recounts a step-by-step journey that engaged an entire city. Local community leaders are united to overcome such obstacles as economic challenges, a lack of understanding about the importance of culture, resistance to systemic reform, and civic apathy. Maximum Impact Education provides useful insights on the work needed to gradually overcome the silos that divide people in their communities as they struggle to rebuild relevant education-to-employment systems for America's rapidly changing labor market.