Compensatory Education

Instructional programs designed to overcome the effects of poor education associated with poverty and racial segregation. The most renowned of these is HEAD START, a government-sponsored preschool program that has helped provide millions of socially disadvantaged youngsters with learning skills generally lumped together as “school-readiness.” In addition to preschool programs, compensatory education is available in many schools throughout the elementary and secondary school years and in most public colleges.

Compensatory education dates back to the passage of the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964, which ordered a survey “concerning the lack of availability of equal educational opportunity by reason of race, color, religion, or national origin in public educational institutions at all levels. . . .” Two surveys followed. In 1965, the COLEMAN REPORT studied 600,000 children at 4,000 schools and found that the academic achievement of minority children was one to two years behind that of whites in first grade and three to five years behind in the twelfth grade. A second study by the CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION confirmed the Coleman Report findings. On that basis, Congress passed the ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT OF 1965, which provided funds for compensatory education programs to close the educational gap between the races and between the poor and rich.

Since then, Head Start alone has serve about 20 million children. More than 1 million fouryear- olds apply to Head Start each year. At the primary and secondary school levels, CHAPTER 1 of the act provides more than $6 billion a year to improve the academic skills of poor children by offering remedial work in basic subjects. Chapter 1 reaches about 6 million children in two-thirds of the nation’s schools. About 70% of the students are in elementary schools. Although there are no enrollment figures for remedial instruction at the college and university level, about 95% of all four-year and twoyear public colleges and 65% of all private colleges offer such programs.

Since its inception, compensatory education has been the target of considerable criticism. Critics of Head Start, for example, point out that the program relies on pulling students from their regular classes for 30 minutes of remedial work. Meanwhile, the students fall behind in the classes they would normally have been attending. Others say that its annual budget of $4 billion to $5 billion has yet to produce any lasting results. Proponents insist it results in lower school dropout and juvenile delinquency rates.

Although critics of compensatory education at the primary and secondary school levels agree on the value of standard remediation programs, many oppose bilingual education as a subversion of the historic “AMERICANIZATION” process that teaches immigrant children to become U.S. citizens.

At the college level, compensatory education began in the late 1960s, as colleges compensated for historically discriminatory admissions practices by admitting disadvantaged students whose primary and secondary school education had not prepared them for college-level work. To help such students, the colleges introduced costly compensatory remediation and one-to-one tutoring. Critics, however, contend that it is not the function of a college to provide education that should be available at the primary and secondary level and that doing so deprived academically qualified students of the higher-level education colleges should be providing.

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