Identify at Risk Students

By David B. Richards

The students advance based on their performance on standardized tests given once a year. The students who do not perform well will have additional training without taking them out of the main stream process immediately. Students will advance in curriculum modules and not by age. If they do well in English and not Math, they will be tutored in math to catch up and or if necessary kept in the same math module again. If the child is not challenged, they will be placed in a higher level module.

The students will also be sorted by their behavior. These students will be place at separate school sites where they will get instruction on how to modify their behavior along with the same academic instruction given to all other students. This will also minimize the bulling and disruption for the other students thus improving the quality of education for the better behaved students. This will also allow the teachers to focus the lessons on what the students need to succeed and create a more efficient learning process. The goal will be to prepare these students to return to the other school sites the next year.

A software package will be developed to calculate this information along with the accounting, scheduling and forecasting for the school. Someone just enters test scores and the school almost manages itself thus improving the efficiency and removing some of the politics. This system will be easy to duplicate and manage.

The placement of students will be determined by the test and behavior points only and not the teacher, the school administrator or the parents. This will insure that race, economic status and culture are not a factor.