What to Do with Students Who are Not Succeeding

If the current accountability movement contents itself with exposing failure and assumes that everybody will then straighten up and fly right, another reform flop is in the making, Ms. Raywid warns. Educators involved with schools have some better ideas for reaching the accountability movement's goals. IF I WERE advising a superintendent or a group of teachers on what to do with students who are not successful in the first thing I'd try to do is convince them to stop beating their heads against the wall. More of the same (as, for instance, detention halls, required summer and other new forms of discipline) will not work. Not even if up the ante and intensify the punishments. Intensifying efforts that have repeatedly failed is not a route to success. However, the necessary first step toward success is not very complicated: it lies in simply recognizing that, when it comes to schools, one size cannot possibly fit all. Thus, if a student has demonstrated she's not going to make it in one kind of should let her try another. And it can't reasonably be another that is essentially the same as the one she left. Let her try a different kind of school - which in turn calls for a diversified school system. We've done our best to standardize schools, just as we've standardized cars and clothes, food and housing. But even though schools have been likened to production systems, unsuccessful students aren't like Fords or blue jeans or plumbing that somehow got damaged in the assembly line and needs straightening out. That's why can't just establish one straightening-out center to fix them, whether you call it an alternative school, an opportunity center, or a second-chance What a youngster who doesn't thrive in one school environment needs is another environment. And obviously, one that strikes her as worse than the last one isn't going to cut it. That's why the frightening number of schools Tom Gregory calls soft jails aren't going to solve the problem. What's needed is a school with a different sort of personality - one that feels different - and a program that strikes the youngster as a clear change from the one she left. As the scholars have put it, we must change the experience of school1 - the way it looks, tastes, and smells, and the reactions it produces in those who are there. What kind of school is needed then? We can't accurately predict the kind, because students - like adults - may thrive in different environments. There isn't one right kind. You need several schools that are genuinely different from one another, among which unsuccessful youngsters - and successful ones, too - may choose. Some youngsters may need a fairly structured school environment; others, a fairly open one. Some may want a curriculum that centers on science-oriented topics; others, a curriculum that centers on democratic living. Some may do their best work in a program that relies heavily on classroom learning; others, in a program that draws heavily on experiential learning. Policy wonks to the contrary notwithstanding, there's no single formula yielding a model (for replication and upscaling) that is an ideal School for the Unsuccessful. We do know some things, however, that suggest some clear general principles. Unsuccessful students need a good education a lot more than do the youngsters who manage to succeed under virtually any circumstances. Children whose parents have themselves been fortunate and who spend a lot of time with them can often thrive despite a bad school. Those lucky few whom researchers have labeled resilient appear similarly blessed. Despite poor home circumstances and poor schools, they manage to adapt and succeed. Not so with the students call unsuccessful. They require really good schools in order to thrive. What would be nice for others is essential for them. We know, for instance, that small schools would benefit virtually every youngster. …