Compiled from information gathered through questionnaires and other sources, this handbook documents educational practices conducted in the 55 counties of West Virginia. The data contained in this guide were collected in the spring of 1990. The text is divided into two parts: county profiles and high school descriptions. The high school descriptions, which immediately follow the profile of the county where the schools are located, outline the educational offerings at each high school in every county in the state and include statistics on such educational outcomes as college-going rate, dropout rate, and test scores. The county profiles provide a context for understanding the local educational challenges. Some counties are rural and sparsely populated; some are urban and densely populated. Most are struggling with high unemployment and declining enrollment, although some counties are coping with rapid growth and enrollment increases. The following educational trends are noted in the guide's preface: (1) significant inequities exist in the finance of county education systems, and these inequities appear closely related to disparities in county educational outcomes; (2) the level of education in the West Virginia general population is among the lowest in the nation and the schools are marked by high dropout rates and low college attendance rates; (3) attempts to accommodate the state's geography and increasingly sparse population include strategies such as distance learning via satellite, teacher sharing among schools, and cooperative arrangements with nearby colleges; (4) despite the significance of socioeconomic influences on schooling, no reliable methods exist for determining the number of low-income students in a school; and (5) there are no solid data on the kind of curriculum students actually complete. A list of sources for the data contained in this guide, as well as several data tables and maps are included in the book. (ALL)