PART III EDUCATION REFORM 1990-1994

Major Issues and Trends

A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

To Ensure Equal Access

A number of groups in the United States have historically found it difficult to gain equal access to education. The disadvantaged, racial and religious minorities, the disabled, women -- these have all, at one time or another in the Nation's history, been deprived of an equal opportunity for education. In some cases these inequities have been corrected by the natural evolution of society. In other cases they have been eliminated through legislation or the courts. In still others they remain a significant problem, one that American society must solve if it is to remain strong and vital.

Political and business leaders as well as educators have recognized that the failure to educate any significant segment of American society ultimately threatens the Nation's ability to compete in a global marketplace. For this reason, the educational system at every level has developed and promoted programs designed to serve at-risk children in all categories. Some of these have been in existence for many years. Others are new and highly experimental.

Long-Standing Programs for "At-Risk" Children

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education applied the phrase "at-risk" to the Nation as a whole. In 1985, the National Governor's Association applied the same phrase to those students who, because of the environment in which they live or the circumstances of their birth and upbringing, are most likely to fail in school, drop out, and in time pose substantial problems for society as a whole. The typical at-risk student starts behind more advantaged students in the first grade, is performing two years behind grade level by the sixth grade, and by the twelfth grade has either dropped out of school or is four years behind.

Educators tend to regard all at-risk children as having less than equal access, if only because circumstances have denied them a fair chance to finish school with a good education. While they know they cannot eliminate the conditions that have led to these inequities, school reformers have striven to devise programs and strategies that can compensate for whatever deprivation at-risk children have suffered.

Under Chapter I of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981, the Department's major program for educating the disadvantaged, nearly $7 billion currently assists elementary and secondary schools where 5.5 million of these children are enrolled. The ethnic breakdown of Chapter I beneficiaries include 5 percent Native American or Asian, 28 percent Black but not Hispanic, 27 percent Hispanic, and 41 percent White but not Hispanic. In addition to Chapter I, which is a Federal program, more than half the States have their own "compensatory education programs."

Disabilities and difficulties with the English language also place many students at risk of failure in school. About 4.5 million U.S. children under the age of 21 have disabilities, while about 2.4 million students are limited-English-proficient (LEP). Federal law requires a "free, appropriate public education" for all disabled children. U.S. Department of Education funds augment State and local support. Similarly, these three sources enable most LEP students to receive services, at least at the elementary level. In addition to the U.S. Department of Education, several other Federal agencies provide education-related services to disadvantaged students.

New Programs for the Disadvantaged

In order to solve the problems faced by disadvantaged children, U.S. educators are experimenting with innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Experimental in nature, these programs illustrate the intention of many U.S. educators to reinvent the educational system in order to address social and economic ills that affect the classroom performance of millions of at-risk children. A few of these programs are described below:

• Stanley Pogrow's Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) -- a program designed for Chapter 1 elementary school children. HOTS is based on the idea that current drill-and-practice remedial programs do not develop children's intellectual abilities. Instead, HOTS uses computers and Socratic questioning techniques to develop learning skills that strengthen the student in all academic areas. In a typical HOTS program, students spend at least 35 minutes a day in the computer lab in groups of 15 or fewer. Teachers use a scripted manual for each lesson. The first segment of 15 to 20 minutes consists of intensive conversation with the teacher, generally focusing on linkages between the previous day's work and concepts learned earlier. The teacher challenges and probes each student answer. Students must clearly articulate and justify their responses. Following this discussion, a new challenge is given, and students test their ideas on the computer. After mastering problems, students share their findings and strategies with each other.

• Henry Levin's Accelerated Schools --a program designed to enrich learning for educationally disadvantaged students. This program is characterized by high expectations for students, an elevated status for teachers, and the substantial involvement of parents. Levin believes that students will live up to adult expectations for them, and he insists that both teachers and parents expect students, regardless of background, to master a body of knowledge and skills at a rapid pace. So convinced is Levin of the essential role of parents that in most of his participating schools parents are required to sign contracts committing themselves to become involved in specific activities. There is a great deal of independence from school to school, including the right for each school to set its own goals; but the Accelerated Schools model recommends that all participating schools have as a goal to raise the performance levels of every student to at least grade level by the time he or she leaves school. In a typical Accelerated Schools program teachers are encouraged to move quickly through lessons, to enliven the classroom by developing the students' ability to think independently, and by relating instructional materials to the students' daily experience. The curriculum is organized according to themes that cut across traditional academic disciplines, and students are arranged in heterogeneous ability groups. The model encourages experimentation, and teachers use such techniques as peer tutoring and cooperative learning.

• James Comer's School Development Program -- a process designed to change the climate of schools that primarily serve disadvantaged children and youth to make schools more responsive to their needs and those of their families. The Comer program uses school-based decision making and revitalized bonds between the school, the family, and the community to help children learn, parents function more effectively in supporting and educating their children, and teachers develop professionally. The Schools Development Program is a process that includes three essential features: the School Planning and Management Team (SPMT), the Mental Health Team (MHT), and the Parent Program. The SPMT is the most important element of the program. This team is the governing body in a Comer school, and is made up of the principal, teachers, other school staff, a parent representative, and an expert in child development. The MHT is made up of classroom teachers, resource teachers, administrators, psychologists, social workers, and nurses who focus on improving school climate. By design, the MHT doesn't focus on individual children but looks at patterns that emerge in the school and seeks ways to solve recurrent problems. The Parents Program is designed to involve parents in social activities, volunteer activities, workshops, and home-learning activities. Parents select at least one representative to serve on the SPMT.

• Robert Slavin's Success for All --a program based on research that links the academic problems of children in their formative years (e.g., retention or poorly developed reading skills) to being at subsequent risk of dropping out. Success for All is designed to ensure that children do not experience this initial failure and are therefore able to reach the third grade with adequate basic skills. For best results, the sponsors of Success for All recommend a full- day preschool and kindergarten that emphasize language development, readiness, and self-concept. The children use the Peabody Language Development Kits and a program called Story Telling and Retelling (STAR). In grades 1-2, trained tutors work with children who are failing to keep up with classmates in reading. In addition to tutoring, daily 90- minute reading sessions are held with small homogeneous ability groups. The kindergarten and first-grade programs emphasize language skills and provide children with phonetically regular mini-books which they read to each other in pairs. In the second and third grades, students use basal readers, but not workbooks. In these grades the reading program emphasizes cooperative learning activities built around partner reading, identification of characters, settings, problems, and solutions in narratives. At all levels children are required to read books of their own choosing for twenty minutes at home. Students are assessed every eight weeks to determine if alternative teaching strategies, changes in reading group placement, or need for tutoring services is required. The Success for All program also has a Family Support Team and a Facilitator who works with teachers in all schools to help them implement the program.

• Theodore Sizer's Essential Schools Coalition --a program with the theme that "more is less." The developers believe that most high schools have too many offerings. Consequently, the Essential Schools Coalition focuses on student mastery and achievement in "essential" academic skills -- reading, writing, and mathematics. Essential Schools try to make students active learners by reducing the student/pupil ratio and by the use of coaching and personalized education. The program encourages teachers to have high aspirations and performance standards for their students. However, teachers are expected to be fair, tolerant, and generous in their exercise of authority. Schools participating in the Essential Schools Coalition must agree to develop school faculty governing boards, participate in staff development, share information on their school, undergo a self evaluation every three years, and demonstrate sufficient funds in their budget to support the required activities.

• Marie Clay's Reading Recovery -- an intensive early- intervention program for first grade children who are having trouble with reading. Based on years of research in New Zealand, Reading Recovery is designed to promote success by teaching reading strategies before a pattern of failure can develop. The program includes procedures for the teaching of reading, a staff development program directed by a "teacher leader" with a year's training, and a set of administrative systems that work together for quality control. In most cases, Reading Recovery teachers select the lowest achieving students in the first grade and provide them with one-on-one tutoring for 30 minutes each day. These tutoring sessions supplement rather than replace regular reading lessons, and they include both reading and writing activities as well as strategies to develop children's reasoning and thinking skills. When the Reading Recovery teacher concludes that a child has become a proficient reader, the treatment is discontinued; the success of individual programs is often measured by the rate of discontinuation.

• High School Partnership Academies --a program designed to provide academic and vocational training to disadvantaged students who lack skills for entry-level jobs. Academies build a partnership between business and public schools by satisfying corporate needs for employees in rapidly developing fields of employment and establish a model for dealing with youth unemployment. General Partnership Academies operate as a three-year school-within-a-school for students in grades 10 through 12. Students must meet certain entry criteria -- including a reading achievement level of at least grade 6 and sufficient motivation and self-discipline to succeed in the program. Although Academy programs vary from site to site, most have the following characteristics: (1) support from local business or government employees; (2) a school-within-a-school organizational structure; (3) a curriculum that integrates academic content, vocational training, job skills, and general enrichment; (4) a selection process that identifies at-risk students with academic potential and a commitment to the occupational area of the Academy (e.g., business, health, computer science); (5) clearly defined rules understood by students, parents, teachers, and administrators; (6) paid work experience for qualified students; and (7) school and district support for the program, including the granting of adequate preparation time for teachers. Each Academy has a Coordinator who is responsible for the daily operation of the program. Students are scheduled as a group; and teachers are organized as teams, with a common planning period each day. Academies usually have the extra personnel required to reduce class size to 15-20 students per hour. All students are assigned a mentor from the business partner and log work experience either in the summer or during their senior year. Participating businesses are asked to provide the following types of assistance: (1) sharing in decision-making authority with district personnel, (2) designating corporate employees who may assist Academy staff, (3) offering students part-time or summer jobs, (4) sponsoring the mentor program, and (5) serving as hosts for field trips to supplement student's in-class learning.

• Mortimer Adler's Paideia Program --based on the idea that all children are entitled to the same education both in terms of content and instructional methodology. Thus all children are given the same course of study, regardless of background or ability. Adler's program is based on three methods of instruction: (1) Didactic Instruction -- the classroom activity which focuses on teacher lectures (the kind of instruction more appropriate for the "acquisition of knowledge"); (2) Coaching -- one-on-one instruction in which the teacher/coach or a peer works closely with students to improve their skills rather than assuming that students are able to transfer general corrective statements to their own work (the kind of instruction most appropriate for the "development of the intellect"); and (3) Socratic seminars - - discussions among students and teachers based primarily on questions asked to explore ideas (designed to improve the students' expression of ideas, their ability to support ideas with relevant information, and develop better thinking and listening habits).

• Computer-Assisted Instruction -- a technology that is being adopted by schools across the country. One company, Computer Curriculum Corporation (CCC), has been researching, developing, and marketing educational software for over two decades. Nationally, CCC is used to instruct nearly 750,000 students. The software is designed to give instant feedback, positive reinforcement for student achievement, and tutoring when necessary -- all tailored to the performance level of the individual student. Using this technology, students can achieve mastery of several different subjects (reading, language arts, math, basic computer literacy, and science); and the subjects are selected by the school district to match its curricular goals. Typically, CCC is set up in a computer lab used solely for that purpose and staffed by trained para- professionals. The software is designed to complement the schools' curricula and help the schools reach achievement and testing goals. Audio packages are available for use with students who have linguistic problems. At the beginning of the academic year, students are assessed with a set of questions. Depending on the student's performance and the school's goals, the initial assessment provides an estimate of the number of sessions required for the student to demonstrate mastery. That estimate then translates into specified number of minutes on-line for each of the target subject areas (e.g., 11 and 13 minutes a day, respectively, for math and reading). CCC also provides extensive performance reports -- available for each subject at the student, class, and grade levels. Districts can choose daily, weekly, monthly, or other reporting formats for the monitoring of student progress. Students log on by name and unique identification number. Questions are calibrated to begin at the difficulty level mastered at the student's last session. Correct answers are rewarded by colorful displays of fireworks, ribbons, or other positive feedbacks. Incorrect answers are followed by an encouraging phrase, and a second incorrect response is followed by the right answer along with a demonstration of the correct approach. Students can ask for on-line tutorial help if they are unable to answer a question. At the end of the session, the computer indicates the number attempted, the number and percentage correct.

To Promote Educational Excellence

Virtually all recent reform efforts have addressed either the problems of at-risk children or the more general problem of educational excellence. To be sure, the two are interrelated; but even students who do not share common "at-risk factors -- i.e., a disadvantaged background, a physical or mental disability, or a linguistic problem -- too often fail to perform at a satisfactory level; and educators point to a long-term decline in test scores as an indication that the system is not working as well as should in order to prepare the Nation's youth for success in the 21st century, which promises to be global in its intellectual concerns and highly competitive in its economic activities.

Because of the adoption in 1989 of National Education Goals, U.S. educational assessment has been increasingly designed to measure progress toward the achievement of each of these six original Goals. This new focus has alerted the public to specific weaknesses in the system and has provided them with preliminary information so that they can track improvement (or the lack of it) in these six areas of concern.

The development of standards of learning for the subjects which were added in 1994 under Goal 3, i.e., foreign languages, civics and government, and economics, has begun, but no assessments are yet available. Standards with regard to the arts were completed in 1994. Possible assessment of progress with relation to the two new goals, teacher education and professional development, and parental participation, is yet to be determined. Therefore, the succeeding pages describe the progress toward the fulfillment of the six original goals only.

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[Part III - Reform at the Local Level]

[Part III - Goals 1-3]