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[Summary of Literature Review Part 4]Education Reforms and Students At Risk - October 1996
In the context of formal schooling, being different has too often meant being deficient, and being deficient has meant "being at risk of academic failure." Student retention and tracking have been used since the turn of the century as the primary strategy to address this problem. The compensatory education movement, founded in the 1960s, is based on the assumption that many students, because of their minority and poverty status and their low academic achievement, are disadvantaged and should be provided with extra help and programs such as Title I and special education to "compensate" for those disadvantages. This "deficit model" has been criticized for rationalizing students' failure in terms of alleged deficiencies in their background -- a version of blaming the victim, which often serves to uncritically legitimize the existing school system (Baratz and Baratz, 1970; Valentine, 1971).
Grouping. Students at all school levels are placed in instructional groups, with age- or grade-groupings being the most obvious examples. One of the most pervasive and controversial forms of instructional grouping is the placement of students in homogeneous learning groups within a grade or even within a classroom according to evaluations of their academic performance. There are a number of labels applied to this practice, with the term "ability grouping" most often used to describe this kind of organization at the elementary level, and "tracking" most often applied at the high school and sometimes the middle school levels.
Instructional grouping by ability is designed to enable teachers to most efficiently match content with students' apparent ability levels and learning paces. However, both ability grouping and tracking have been severely criticized as methods for dealing with student diversity because poor children and children of color are disproportionately represented in lower groups or tracks. There is evidence that lower-level classes are often stigmatized and are likely to provide poor climates for learning and lower expectations for student achievement (Oakes, 1985, 1989, 1992; Slavin, 1989; Gamoran and Berends, 1987; Braddock, 1990).
The relationship between different forms of instructional grouping and academic achievement is inconclusive, however. At the elementary level, Slavin (1986, 1987) synthesizes empirical evidence and shows that some forms of ability grouping do appear to be beneficial, especially when students are grouped for only one or two subjects while remaining in heterogeneous classes most of the day. At the high school level, students are often tracked into distinct academic, general, or vocational curricular streams. This has consequences not only in terms of the quality of education they receive but for peer-group formation, likelihood of graduation, and future education and employment opportunities (Oakes, 1992; Braddock, 1990; Gamoran and Berends, 1987). Moreover, there is little evidence that students at the secondary level benefit academically from being in tracked classes (Slavin, 1990).
Retention. Like tracking, the practice of retaining, or holding back, students who fail to demonstrate required levels of achievement has been a common response to the challenge of educating low-achieving students. Also like tracking, the bulk of the research evidence shows that retention, as it is currently practiced in most schools, has few positive and mostly negative effects on student learning (Shepard and Smith, 1989; Holmes, 1989; Grissom and Shepard, 1989; Natriello, McDill and Pallas, 1990). McPartland and Slavin (1990) point out that, as with tracking and ability grouping, retention might help improve the achievement of students at risk, but only if it is done in a "timely and effective" way (i. e., only holding back very young students who are less affected by the stigma of being retained, or only holding back students at certain key transition points in their school careers and providing them with high quality special programs if they have failed to master the skills required to advance).
Special education. Special education services have been provided since 1975 to students who have identified disabilities, typically in the form of small group instruction from specially certified teachers. In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the number of students with mild learning disabilities who are receiving special education services. While the percentage of students categorized as physically disabled and mentally retarded stayed at about the same level from 1976 to 1989, the number of students categorized as learning disabled (LD) increased by more than 250 percent during the same period (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1990). These LD students are typically the lowest of the low achievers with no distinctive characteristics of birth defects or biological damage (Deshler et al., 1982). According to Slavin (1989), almost 90 percent of this increase represents the entry into the special education system of low achievers who would not have been served in special education in the 1970s. Hence, he concludes, "special education has assumed a substantial burden in trying to meet the needs of students at risk of school failure..." in spite of the fact that "... research comparing students with mild academic handicaps in special education to similar students left in regular classrooms finds few benefits for this very expensive service" (Leinhardt and Pallay, 1982; Madden and Slavin, 1983).
Title I. The largest compensatory education program that provides extra help to impoverished students is the national Title I program, created in 1965. In the 1991-92 school year alone, Title I provided more than $6 billion to programs in 90 percent of public school districts serving approximately 5 million students nationwide (LeTendre, 1991; Anderson, 1992). Though some nonacademic services such as transportation, counseling, and health and nutrition programs are funded through Title I, reading and mathematics instruction are the most commonly provided services (Anderson, 1992).
Most Title I programs follow one of five service delivery models: in-class, limited pull-out, replacement, add-on, or schoolwide. Because regulations require that Title I programs "supplement and not supplant" regular education services, and because, until recently, Title I funds had to be targeted only to eligible students, pull-out has been the strategy most widely used (Slavin, 1989; Birman, Orland and Jung et al., 1987; Natriello, McDill, and Pallas, 1990). Under this model, students who are having difficulty in a particular subject typically are removed from their regular classrooms for 30 to 40 minutes per day to participate in subject-specific, small-group remedial instruction. Researchers have criticized pull-out programs for their lack of coordination with the regular classroom, disruption of classes, and diffused responsibility for individual children (Stein, Leinhardt, and Bickel, 1987; Rowan and Guthrie, 1989). While Title I programs do have modest positive effects on skills, they are less effective for the most disadvantaged students (Carter, 1984), and the effects fade out after two years (Natriello, McDill, and Pallas, 1990).
In our review of current and emerging strategies, to respond to diversity and the needs of underachieving students, we find tensions emerging from the knowledge base of nearly 30 years of practice -- tensions that question traditional responses and indicate a shift away from the deficit model that has guided compensatory education. For example, the practice of remediation is being challenged by a powerful policy of prevention in early childhood. Remedial or special education programs that have focused on improving basic skills are now encouraged to emphasize higher order thinking and problem-solving skills. Acknowledging that students must be engaged in the culture of the school as well as challenged academically, an emerging emphasis on mainstreaming and whole-school restructuring is calling into question the often-used approach of pulling children out of their regular programs for special instruction. Finally, in response to increasingly diverse student populations, many educators are calling for less emphasis on compensating for what poor children and children of color lack, and greater emphasis on pedagogical techniques that make use of the students' strengths and sociocultural experiences as stepping stones for further learning.
While these emerging strategies challenge traditional assumptions about educating impoverished students, they do not go uncriticized. Too great an emphasis on early childhood prevention can lead to an overidentification of "problem" students. It also can direct resources away from programs in later grades that are necessary to ensure that children's academic gains do not "fade out" as they progress through school. There also are practical questions as reforms are phased in at one level of the education system but not in another. Similarly, though higher order thinking skills may be at a premium in the workplace, state competency tests continue to emphasize mastery of basic skills; teachers are still reinforced to teach to the test. Finally, whole-school restructuring strategies may pull resources away from the neediest students. While doing away with the deficit model may have positive effects on students' cognitive and emotional development, alternative approaches must not fail to acknowledge the very real disadvantages that may impair many students' learning.
Compensatory education is no monolith. The 1980s have seen the maintenance of traditional approaches combined with new approaches that may subvert the meaning behind the term "compensatory" itself. The strategies and programs outlined in the following section reflect some of these tensions. To create a challenging, nonstigmatizing learning environment that meets student needs, policymakers have proposed significant changes in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and organizational strategies. Specific proposals are surveyed below.
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[Summary of Literature Review Part 2] [Summary of Literature Review Part 4]