The Gesamtschule Reform
In some states, usually governed by the SPD (Social Democratic Party), there was an attempt to reform the system by creating a more inclusive kind of secondary school, more like the American high school. Beginning in the late 1960s, the Gesamtschule (comprehensive school) was introduced as an alternative to the traditional three-tiered secondary education system. Instead of three different schools, there are three different tracks within one school. Beginning in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the first Gesamtschulen appeared in West Berlin and a few other Länder, but soon there was resistance from the conservative CDU (Christian Democratic Party), teacher unions and parent groups, who felt that the comprehensive school was inferior to the traditional sytem.