Compensatory and Remedial Programs: What School Leaders Should Know

If managed correctly, there are suffi-cient program options in today’s greatly expanded curriculum to pro-vide appropriate educational opportu-nities for virtually all students. The time is fast approaching when American schools will no longer be curriculum driven in the conventional sense; rather, they will be program driven. Nudging aside the standard cur-riculum is a collection of diverse programs, such as special edu-cation, remedial and compensatory education, and gifted and talented education. These programs have been more nearly designed to meet the individual and collective needs of selected youngsters, to provide them with the knowledge, skills, atti-tudes, and values embedded within a standard curriculum. As youngsters progress from grade to grade, they are con-tinually being sorted and placed in these special programs. By the time students in South Carolina reach the middle school years, youngsters in special programs outnumber their school-mates who are not in special programs (Anderson et al., 1989). This startling reality has come to pass for a number of rea-sons. School desegregation, coupled with major federal initia-at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 17, 2016bul.sagepub.comDownloaded fro