A model school takes on severe and persistent behavioral and attendance problems that inhibit kid's ability to be successful in a typical classroom.

Note the Twilight School idea at Talent Development.

Is there anything novel in this approach?

One of the jobs of researchers is filtering out the "opinions" and assumptions that litter education systems.

We learned in an earlier trail that  class size doesn't significantly effect teacher interactions with students. The same applies to "at risk" students.

GRAYBOX

In spite of the plethora of measures, most of the findings were negative. Teachers expected smaller classes to facilitate more individualized programs and stated later that their expectations were confirmed. They generally had more positive attitudes in the smaller classes and were pleased with the ease of managing and teaching in a small-class setting. They felt that they had made changes to adapt to the different class sizes. However: The observation of classroom process variables revealed very few effects of class size. Class size did not affect the amount of time teachers spent talking about course content or classroom routines. Nor did it affect the choice of audience for teachers' verbal interactions; that is, when they changed class sizes, teachers did not alter the proportion of their time spent interacting with the whole class, with groups, or with individual pupils. (pp. 149-150) No differences were found in pupil satisfaction or affective measures, and no differences were found for most teacher activities, subject emphasis, classroom atmosphere, or the quality measures. -US Dept. of Education

Helping Students with Behavioral Issues

Web Quest Exercise Upon completion of this WebQuest, you will be familiar with various support features available on the Behavior Home Page. Thus, when presented with questions concerning children with challenging behavior, you should be able to use the Behavior Home Page as a resource.