The Houston A+ Challenge (HA+C) received funding from the Carnegie Corporation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, supplemented by the Annenberg Foundation and the Brown Foundation, to support a 5-year initiative to work with 24 large high schools in the Houston Independent School District engaged in a student-focused, whole-school change effort. The initiative, called the Study of High School Restructuring, redesigns high schools into small, theme-based academies to produce graduates ready for the demands of the 21st century.

The central goal of the challenge is to determine whether it is possible to develop and to institutionalize high school reform nationally by investing in specific urban areas through intensive intervention. The HA+C strategy undertakes work in four areas:

1. Restructure large comprehensive high schools into small learning communities.
2. Install a literacy framework across the core curriculum.
3. Create an adult advocacy program to mentor and to help each high school student.
4. Create new knowledge about the challenges and issues related to the restructuring of high schools in urban areas.