Indictments and Alternatives
Our schools are too impersonal. Too many students have too little status. These young people are overlooked, and are therefore, lost in the system. One-size-fits-all curriculums, shotgun approaches and its-there-if-they-want-it rationalizations fail to recognize individual worth, capacities or acceptance. While schools may hit some young people on-target, many of the rest are not only untouched, but are turned-off. Healthy young people do not allow themselves to become mired in anonymity. When they fail to receive recognition in accepted ways, they find it through unacceptable behavior.
Alternatives include: Tailor curriculums to acceptance (taste, macho, and abstracting and cognitive abilities) and make students feel they are individually served while being handled in a group and feel respected by teachers and other students who are respected.
When planning for schools and classroom activities, individuals must be the aim, rather than classes, groups, subsidy payments, time allotments or teacher-administrative convenience. For examples: essential concepts must be taught until they are mastered by every pupil, not until most "get them" or until an allotted time has passed; establish departmentalization (where each discipline is taught by a different teacher) only for those who can successfully cope with it, not at a predetermined grade level, whether students are ready or not. Note: Departmentalized classrooms require a student to cope with anonymity (a teacher may see a hundred or more young people a day), to be comfortable with on-the-curve marking (see below) and by him or herself, to arrive at mastery and coordinate concepts of separate disciplines. In such classrooms, teachers are inclined to teach until understanding, then move on. In such classrooms, mastery for permanence must be accomplished by the student. Note: Understanding is not learning, and too few young people arrive at mastery learning by themselves.
Each young person (some have the need more than others) must have someone at school who can come to know him (or her) well enough to evaluate mastery (in addition to what tests might show), his capacity, how well he is approaching it. Schools must be organized so that the teacher can assign and schedule appropriate in-school experiences. Note: This condition can be accomplished if we teach only as individuals need teaching. The teacher power saved can be used to provide intense school experiences for those who need them. This is the reason why SOS do not increase costs.
Syllabi are too long for many young people and not long enough for others. Concepts are too poorly coordinated with concepts of many fields, and a vagueness exists about how thoroughly concepts are to be learned or on what level of cognition they are to be used. Syllabi are not designed to foster long-term retention. Further, some students encounter needless repetition of concepts and some are left with many voids.
Alternatives include: Separate Essential Concepts (communication, computation and life skills) from nice-to-know concepts. Teach Essential Concepts (ECs) until mastery (accurate rote response) and use them often to promote permanence. Teach nice-to-knows as reasons to learn essential concepts. Further, all concepts must be presented to each student on his or her acceptance (taste, level of cognitive ability and abstraction, in the right amount at the right time and speed) and with his full knowledge of how important they are, how well to learn them and on what level of cognition they will be tested.
Separate mastery (scholarship), creativeness, and cognition. Teach and evaluate for them separately. Consider mastery to be rote response (which may be reached after a certain length of time on task) and cognition to be comprehension and understanding of mastered concepts. Consider creativity to be the use to which mastered concepts can be put--the complexity of problems which can be solved. Cognition and creativity are dependent upon many factors which include working knowledge of ECs and maturation (interest, attention span, ingenuity, ability to coordinate concepts, think abstractly and concentrate). While to teach cognition directly may be impossible, students can be taught to approach their personal potential. When mastery, cognition and creativity are evaluated separately, students can obtain credit for the work they have done to reach mastery. After mastery is reached, cognition and creativity develop with maturity, inspiration and opportunity.
Assign students who have the need, for appropriate lengths of time, to teachers who teach more than one subject area. Thus, because of longer contact, a teacher becomes very familiar with each student. The various concepts are naturally interrelated (correlated), voids in each student's learning are discovered, unnecessary repetition is avoided and humanity is assured that a qualified someone is monitoring the maturation of each young person.
Note: Unnecessary repetition is as damaging as knowledge voids. Teacher familiarity with what is inside each student's head will inspire repetition for those who need it, minimize repetition for those who become turned off by it and fill voids. Much unnecessary repetition happens when teachers, under the guise of enrichment, preempt what will be taught in coming grades anyway, and when students who do not need review are required to sit in the same classroom with those who do.
Alternatives include: Separate students who have learned their lessons from those who need drill. Assign them wider variety of enrichment on higher cognitive levels. Insure that teachers stay with a planned, articulated, coordinated syllabus.
Students are grouped either by some arbitrary plan or by past academic performance (tracking). By such schemes, only the highest achievers (by having high scholastic goals) and lowest achievers (those with limiting disabilities) are homogeneously grouped. Most other young people are assigned to classrooms with a few who overachieve, a few more who achieve on level, but mostly with those who achieve below their capacities. In such classes, teachers must keep the group moving together whether all have reached mastery or not. Such classes, generally, have the greatest number of students, are assigned beginning teachers and suffer diminishing readiness (see evaluation, below)!
Alternatives include: Group by speed of reaching mastery, attitudes toward school and learning, and in higher grades by intelligence domains or interest. Place students who are most difficult to teach in appropriately smaller classes where curriculums, teaching methods and evaluation are tailored for them. Provide those students with teachers who are most capable of handling them and schedule time for them to reach mastery.
Note: Since scholastic students are not held back by slower ones, they can reach appropriate academic heights. Budgets are kept chaste, because people who are easiest to teach (those who are willing to be taught) can prosper although they are placed in larger classes.
Use strict grouping procedures for reaching mastery of essential concepts and less rigid grouping for their enrichment. Exchange students among teachers or utilize resource centers. Note: Such practices will help avoid de facto segregation situations and promote integration of attitude and ability types.
On-the-curve marking systems evaluate young people in relation to their comrades, on their relative ability to "measure up" to scholarship or on their ability to keep up with the class. They are neither diagnostic nor good indicators of what has been learned.
Conventional marking systems are predicated on the belief that young people will work to gain the highest possible marks--most will not. Instead of inspiring scholarship, C or D marks allow both ineffective passing (not good enough to learn later concepts effectively) and intellectual shirking. They thus allow and provide incentives for many to perform on levels below their capacities and to pass courses without really learning them (as did many of us with our required out-of-field, out-of-interest courses).
In summary, many 20th century school problems can be attributed to on-the-curve marking policies which:
- Evaluate students in relation to their comrades and promote competition rather than indicate what each does compared to his or her personal capacity.
- Distract the student from being in competition with himself.
- Evaluate young people on their relative ability to measure-up to scholarship or to keep up with the class.
- Are not good indicators of what has been learned, on what level of cognition a student is working or attitude toward learning and maturing.
- Promote diminishing readiness. Failure begins with C! Gaps between reality and potential can be demonstrated roughly (allowing for the breakdown inherent in all models). A child who earns a C in third-grade reading will be passed to Fourth Grade. Assume that child has C-aptitude for classroom learning, and is now in fourth-grade reading class. Were he to have 100 percent recall of third-grade reading, he will earn a C (0.75 x 100 = 75). Were he to have A-aptitude using C-skills, he can also be expected to earn a C (100 x 0.75 = 75). But with C-recall and C- capacity to apply what has been learned or to learn new material, the prospects of mastery are grim (0.75 x 0.75 = 56)! That child will probably enter Fifth Grade with lower potential to do fifth-grade work than was his potential to do fourth-grade work, and so on. That child is lock-stepped on low achievement levels, and doomed to a widening gap between reality and potential.
Chances are that child will be passed to each new grade because passing is based upon C-average from all concepts with little regard for their importance. A student can pass arithmetic without ever solving a word problem or learning essential concepts. A student can pass English on reports and knowledge of literature while not learning grammar, spelling, or communicating. Since most students fall in the C-or-lower range and are similarly lock-stepped, the school must lower its standards and expectations.
A good case can be made that the curve is responsible for the difference between education and educating. Education is impersonal. As long as C is acceptable for all learning, classes which fall on the curve (where most class members earn C or better) are acceptable to educators but not learners. Educating implies teaching each student well enough to know some things well enough.
When classrooms are organized so that teaching continues until all in them master Essential Concepts (EC's), the curve will disappear, but EDUCATING will improve. Contemporary bell curves indicating school outcomes are based upon learning after a given amount of time of instruction. Curves based upon mastery of ECs and curve learning of Enrichment Education) and cognition include much different populations. (See "Letter to Students and Parents)
Because high achievers are highly placed on conventional curves, we are deceived into believing a) that the curve is valid and 2) that those people are the only capable ones. Many people not highly placed upon the curve are highly capable, but are unwilling to comply; rather, they were unwilling to learn necessary feeder concepts. In other words, contemporary curves measure condition--not potential. This fact alone nullifies 1990's reporting which indicate cognitive differences between races. (See, for example: The Bell Curve, Murray and Herrenstein, 1994.). Note: When using the curve to describe cognition, we must be careful that attitudes and learning conditions do not interfere. Some young people, by attitude, reject school (by some degree). They do not learn feeder concepts well enough. Regardless of their potential, they will score low. Because this is a function of maturity and adequate time on task, their scores for potential cognition will also be inaccurate.
- Promote inferiority. Because of schools emphasis on scholarship, many wise, ingenious, personable, late-maturing young people who try but receive second-best marks are automatically conditioned into believing they are second-best humans. Since most teachers can govern the difficulty of their tests, they make tests which most can pass and preestablish the shape of the curve and levels of classroom standards. Thus, tests represent standing in the class. To avoid ongoing humiliation or intimidation, scholastic competition has become a game which many young people refuse to play---they cease to care. Reliance on marks as motivation devices is futile.
- Foster learning for extrinsic rewards. Too many young people work for class marks or for graduation rather than to master the material or acquire an education. Put another way, they learn only for the temporary recall necessary to pass tests. Such work habits continue into work places; many people work for money or to get the job done, rather than excellence.
- Measure only scholarship ability, and omit many desirable human traits (creativity, talent, maturity, development of demeanor, . . .)
Because C is an acceptable passing mark, a young person can pass a course on the number of secondary concepts recalled--without learning essential concepts. English, for example, can be passed on reports and knowledge of literature, instead of grammar, spelling or communicating. Many schools/teachers use marks as disciplinary and motivational devices: particularly ineffective tactics for risk youngsters.
Alternatives include: Make time the variable and mastery the constant; work with some students until essential concepts are mastered. As young people show they are not prospering or that they are being under served in a certain group, promptly shift them to an appropriate one (based upon the speed with which they reach mastery, the level of cognition upon which they can work and their attitude toward learning). Reports of progress include concepts the student has learned, the group in which he or she is presently placed and the level of cognition on which he or she is working. As students show they are mentally mature and capable enough, place them in departmentalized classes and mark by conventional systems.
Our schools are predicated upon, practice and perpetuate traditions and beliefs which work only for some pupils. Schools were created by scholars in their own image. While all scholars may be bright, ingenious or wise, not all bright, ingenious, wise people are scholars. Among the irrationalities we tend to accept as working philosophies are: 1) Failure (or the wish to avoid failure) is, for all young people, an incentive to work harder; 2) If students do not learn a concept at this time, they will pick it up somewhere along the way; 3) Humiliation and intimidation are effective motivational and disciplinary tools.
Since schools are for scholars, most young people who are not scholars tend to be ignored. Further, many nonscholars are not just untaught; they are turned off by practices which students who are successful, overlook.
Note: Turn-off is worse than naivete. It is a negative attitude toward learning. Among turn-off factors are lackluster content and classrooms, overwhelming, underserving, underteaching (from trying to cover syllabi which are too long), waiting (for the teacher to complete administrivia and for slower comrades to catch up), intimidation (from fear of failure, real or imagined evaluations by the teacher or quicker students), futility, unrealistic/pointless assignments and syllabi demands (busy-work, inappropriate content and duplication), anonymity, serving learning with denigration and teachers who are ineffective, inefficient, or are poor adult role models. All the above factors can be eliminated or modified with insight which allows them to be recognized, and with shrewd, diversionary planning.
Alternatives include: Organize schools so someone can work with each student until Essential Concepts are mastered (insure, at least, some success), who can know each student well enough to determine when mastery has been reached (in spite of what tests might show) and who can prescribe the most appropriate in-school enrichment and life orientation experiences.
At the least, set the stage for every young person to enjoy both the process and outcome of schooling. Through mastery, provide skills and confidence to attempt new challenges, and prevent the adverse effects of inadequacies. Through tailoring, modify conditions which turn so many young people off.
Too little effort is focused on training young people to be accepted in, to want to be a part of and to contribute to a complex society. We now allow those who are inappropriately parented to be hammered into shape by their associates and circumstances, and influenced by the media. The process is a willy-nilly, intuitive selection of wholesome attitudes, behavior and values. While it may work for some, it forces others into poor decisions, indecision or to assume undesirable characteristics.
Alternatives include: Avoid practices which deflate egos. Set the stage for each young person to meet challenges with confidence and a positive attitude. Train them to avoid basing decisions on such entities as impulse, vanity, rationalizations or emotion, and how to sculpt their own best attitudes, values and demeanors. We can avoid teaching values directly. We can offer rational decision-making processes, wholesome role models (upbeat, legal, moral, ethical and community approved), and allow each to select his or her own values. Ultimately, all wholesome values must stand up to logic.
The educational community fails to cultivate and coordinate parents as effective sources for wholesome youth attitudes and allies in school objectives. Unification is needed to counter the negative and powerful adolescent mores, and that part of the media which sells inappropriate attitudes and behavior to children. By establishing themselves as institutions with realistic offerings, demands and outcomes, and allying themselves with parents through Successful Parenting Workshops, schools can set the stage for the adult community to manage youth mores.
Schools fail to recognize the part they play in promoting the formation of a powerful subculture with adolescent attitudes and values. From early days in school, second-best scholars feel that their ability to perform does not provide enough recognition and respect. Their self-esteem is shattered. And rather than work harder to do well, they make associations with other young people who feel the same way. This group soon adopts unwritten codes of conduct and attitudes which are antagonistic to what parents, schools and clergy try to teach. These young people begin to perform for each other, thus forming an intra reinforcing adolescent subculture. Its codes include: it is not smart to be smart, don't offer anything, don't ask for help, don't study, look for a-thrill-a-minute, live for today, and if it feels good, do it. From a few members in the lower grades the numbers and influence grow until by high school almost all young people are affected a little and at least half are affected a serious amount, according to interpretation of data from the National Assessment of Education Reports.
The effect is probably pandemic. Certainly it covers the United States, and although these young people do not have names in all places, they are called "Punks" or "Hooligans" in some urban areas. Lately, we are hearing about defiant youth gangs in cities of Great Britain, the European Continent, Russia and Japan. Possibly, those youngsters are behaving in a common, inherent response to unrealistic demands.
While schools may not be the only cause of the formation of such adolescent subcultures, they exacerbate the situation, because they bring many young people close together and provide them with or force them into common, undesirable goals. Schools can be sources of deliverance, however.
Alternatives include: Early recognition of symptoms and using diversionary practices which prevent the forming of inappropriate attitudes and habits. Careful nurturing of the nature of each young person. We must never allow one young person to feel left behind or that we do not care. After mastery of essential concepts, we must monitor each student closely and be careful about what we ask him or her to learn and how we present it to be learned. (It must be realistic in amount and content and not be served with the denigration that comes from being evaluated in comparison to classmates.) Note: When individual young people are positively affected, youth management is achieved.
The Educational Community is too quick to cry, "Poor school results are the parents' fault." Undoubtedly, appropriate parenting can eliminate many school problems; however, many great children come from the worst of homes and many impossible children come from the best of homes. Further, were schools doing the job humanity needs, they would take children as they find them and bring all to a state of acceptable, functional literacy and numeracy and insure all would enjoy the process.
Alternatives include: Organize for someone to work long enough with each student for him to learn some things well enough.
Continuation of practices as outlined above, causes prolonged failure for many young people who subsequently learn to live with failure, rather than overcome it.
Remedies Usually Proposed
Most proposed school changes will not change total literacy or lower incidence of at-risk students.
Longer school day and school year. One can only approve; however, only when it means longer exposure to rational, sensible, adult role models, and realistic offerings and methods. Those young people who are prospering under the present school conditions do not need more exposure; those who are not prospering do not need more disenchantment. Longer exposure is not enough. More of the same ineffective medicine is not going to cure. Needed are new medicines and new methods of delivery.
Sadly, in contemporary schools, up to two of every three minutes of each quick learner's school day is spent waiting for the others to catch up. This robs them of the opportunity to reach their potentials. Further, the slow learners are overwhelmed as teachers try to keep classes moving toward covering the syllabus by school's year end.
More work, more discipline, more demands, higher aspirations. Were the answer that simplistic! Only those aspirations which young people adopt will be realized, and practices will work only for those willing to allow them to work. Young people have many ways to drop out of school without leaving the classroom.
Requiring competency to qualify for a diploma. Only the quality of the diploma is guaranteed; not guaranteed are more students trained well enough to receive one. This also, of course, applies to the many state mandated "aspirations"
Addition of particular courses. Appropriate courses have usually been offered, but they must have takers with necessary skills and inclinations.
Back to basics. Basics have always been offered, but that is not enough. Basics must not only be learned, but the learnings must be retained and they must become an integral part of each young person--as automatic as knowing the A-B-C's or reaching for the brake pedal without thinking. Furthermore, young people must be so glad they learned those basics that they want more. We will do well to organize schools so each student has the time and tutelage he needs to learn basics well enough for accurate, permanent recall, and then use them appropriately. Success in that venture will contribute to enjoyment rather than despondency and dropping-out.
Merit pay for teachers and administrative personnel. This old saw has been around for years, but generally has proven unworkable. However, merit pay may have value if faculty members' ability to handle difficult students and permanent, positive effects are demonstrated. Amount of teacher training, popularity, charisma, or golf scores must not be main selection factors. Higher pay for teachers or merit pay is not likely to affect literacy or numeracy very much. Effective school and classroom organization is the key.
Use of a variety of mechanical teaching devices (computer programs). While such programs are undoubtedly valuable, they do not provide the classroom practice of recitation or interaction. They are expensive to set up, and unfortunately, present ones have limited holding power. They can only be relied upon to hold interest for one or two hours each day. Their greatest uses are to reinforce the teacher, for catch-up or remediation, as sources of information and for personalized instruction. Since upward mobility in them is based on what is learned rather than standing in class, the user must answer every question, and since no denigration is associated with learning by them, they have appeal as devices for teaching those who are turned off usual classrooms.
Heterogeneous classrooms, cooperative/team learning, learning styles. While important devices, they are not panaceas. They are not workable by all teachers or effective with all students and probably will not greatly affect illiteracy. They will undoubtedly intensify the inspiration of some students who are already inspired and save many who are marginally inspired.
Experience indicates, that in any heterogeneous situation, "pecking orders" soon develop. Young people who are slow learners, not verbal or who work on low levels of cognition or competence (for example: poor golfers, dancers, bowlers, singers, students) know who they are. They realize their offerings are not respected either by the teacher or by their comrades, and their behavior/attitude responses can be retiring or as different from what we want as are those from certain rebellious young people who have model siblings. Also, the intellectually and physically lazy are always with us. With most teachers (even with cooperative learning) most of the student input eventually becomes provided by a small percent of the group. Further, little or no definitive evidence substantiates that low achieving young people are enriched by the quick, willing, or enthusiastic who are in their classrooms. Equally as likely, the slow are turned off and enthusiasm of the quick is diminished. Note: As in most quota shops, those who overproduce in quantity or quality are disliked by their fellow workers, and adjust their output accordingly.
Since nonacademic young people are labeled anyway, our choices are either they are labeled and remain untaught or labeled and someone works with them until they master. (According to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 50 percent of our seventeen-year-olds cannot read or do arithmetic above levels we can expect of seventh graders!) At least, having mastered, those young people can be successful at something. And logic suggests they can approach new challenges with better skills and greater confidence. And further, they will adopt more positive attitudes.
Popular, contemporary thinking includes that quick students do not sacrifice when they help others--that teaching helps learning. Often cited is evidence that in cooperative, heterogeneous classrooms, the high achievers do as well or better than their counterparts working competitively or individualistically. Almost any scholastic process is better than competition for Risk Youngsters (RYs). Little research or experience indicates what happens when high achievers work cooperatively with high achievers; or when low achievers work cooperatively with low achievers. Especially with teachers picked specifically for low achievers and who have ample time to teach them syllabi tailored to their acceptance--and without those (as they call them) smart-asses present.
Tinkering with patch-up programs. A variety of programs are being tried (many imposed by state legislation) which counter a variety of inappropriate youth behaviors. Some, for example, involve drop-out prevention and usually exist as special programs for at risk youngsters. The programs attempt to entice drop-outs back to school, save those who show they are on the verge of dropping out or provide some sort of baby-sitting service which allow teen mothers to attend school. We can only admire such activity--anything may help. But such programs are after the fact, tend to be expensive, involve too few young people, ignore that part of each young person which is at risk and do not hit the core of the problem. Human nature does not prompt people to drop out of profitable, realistic, rational, enjoyable or ego-enhancing situations. These are entities the 50-60 percent (or more) who perform below expectations for their grade levels do not find; and although they may continue to attend classes, they too, in reality, have dropped out. Certainly they must, in general, be overwhelmed. And probably 90 percent of the capable among them have been underserved or had their time wasted (kept waiting for the rest to catch up, working on cognitive levels which are too low and subjected to much needless repetition). To dilute offerings or expect benefits to be great enough to hold intolerant young people is not realistic, and to keep them (by law) in such alien situations borders on the inhumane. Dropping out is not an isolated entity. It is only one of a number of symptoms which result from inappropriate schools: low achievement, stress, despondency, turn-off, careless judgment and experimentation with substances, crime and suicide.
Alternatives: Realize the major solution is not band-aid programs which treat symptoms, but to adopt working philosophies and psychologies with subsequent revamping of curriculums, procedures, text books and laws to reinforce each other and make schools realistic for all young people. Extend the definition of youngster-at-risk to include not only those who have left school, but also include those who have dropped out and are still in school, and those who have high abilities, but are content to work on passing levels. The causes and cures are the same for each group and will cover that part of each young person which wants to underachieve or drop out.
Realize that to alter one aspect at a time is to tinker. Negating outcomes of other school experiences overwhelms positive results.
Increase local choice or local voice. Such moves away from bureaucracy do tend to bring a more personal aspect to education; but they overlook such observations as: one alternative to ineffective bureaucracy is effective bureaucracy. We are not going to eliminate bureaucracy. Inadequate local decisions are no better than inadequate bureaucratic decisions. Local voice, to what end? At the most, such a move can bring poor schools up to our best, which are not good enough. If our best were honest in their self-evaluations, we would learn that they too have an alarming number of dropouts, illiterate graduates and underachieving young people.
Alternatives include: 1) Eliminate bureaucratic entities which a) force teachers to aim projection at the mid-acceptance of the class, b) require students who have already learned the information, to sit and wait or help teach or to counsel, c) force teaching young people who do not need intense teaching, d) do not allow enough time to teach the slow until the learning is done, and e) do not allow enough time for slow or nonverbal students to compose adequate answers. 2) Provide a curricular menu large enough to include essential concepts for all and tailoring to acceptance (taste, macho, learning styles, levels of cognition, timing and amount). 3) Change textbooks which, because of their attempts to appeal to a wide variety of students, have little appeal to most. 4) Alter bureaucratic requirements which broaden teachers' projection spread.
Core curriculums and aspirations. Proponents argue, rightly, that all must know a core of knowledge, but the lists they usually offer (called "Cultural Literacy") are slanted toward their favorite literacy. Omitted are large portions of lore and technology in which they are apparently illiterate, and some concepts essential to survival and the learning of new concepts. Success with such Essential Concepts or concepts which "feed" into others provide skills, positive attitudes and confidence to attempt new learnings. Low achievement of lore is the least of the retributions young people exhibit against ineffective learning of feeder concepts. By the time cultural literacy concepts are offered, young people already have developed their attitudes toward school and schooling.
Alternatives include: a) Establish the "core of cores" or those concepts essential to survival (life skills, communication, and computation), and organize schools so a teacher can work with each student for as long as it takes that student to reach excellence and to use the essential concepts frequently enough to attain permanence, and b) Provide a curricular menu broad enough for enrichment concepts to be chosen to result in usefulness and enjoyment-- tailoring.
Corporate decision-making. In education, as with other enterprises (politics, business), executive mandates are suicide; hence, almost all classroom activities are a result of some committee's decision. It follows, that ineffective classrooms can be traced to our inability to make appropriate corporate decisions--a fundamental weakness in the human enterprise. In general, it can be said that committees offer "safe" solutions. They distribute the risk, and their result is often something which none of the members really wanted, but the only thing upon which all could agree. Their "safe" solution has not been what is needed by all young people. After they have disbanded, no one is responsible.
Alternatives: The causes of inappropriate corporate decisions may be legion and an algebraic sum of all the human weaknesses of the deciding committee; but the solution is as simple as adopting a set of standards (constitutions, postulates, or aims) on which decisions must be based.
Educational decisions must all be based on the assumptions that schools can be organized so a teacher can work with each young person long enough for him to learn some things well enough, and be tailored so he enjoys the experience.
Note: Many of the above alternatives to contemporary school practices overlap. Strength of proposals, such as SOS, becomes apparent when one change solves many problems. Many are repeated below under new headings.
Note: In general, any school reform plan which does not adequately accommodate for the special needs of at-risk students will not help literacy. |
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