Many Quit at School With Few Walls

A public high school near Brattleboro has about 350 students, few walls, and a high dropout rate. Most of the class “rooms” at Bellows Falls High School are separated only by makeshift barriers including bookshelves and the kind of low partitions usually found between office cubicles. “The noise was distracting,” Sam Bledsoe said. “Usually I could tune it out, but if the teacher in the next ‘room’ was talking loudly it would completely take you out of what you were supposed to be learning.” B...