dent population. Even so, the present school-age population is more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before. The readiness gap is growing, whereby an increasing number of young children come to school ill-prepared to succeed in a traditional classroom milieu. Those same children who do not do well when they begin their schooling frequently evidence learning and behavior problems across the elementary school years. These behavior problems are exacerbated by exposure to inconsistent and largely punitive classroom management strategies. Left untreated, student problems multiply, diversify, and intensify which, in turn, increases the probability that school personnel will seek to remove the student from the regular classroom (Skiba & Peterson, 2000, 2003).
Students who experience repeated academic frustration and failure are more likely to exhibit behavior problems, many of which are escape motivated. Students who are unable to participate successfully in daily classroom instruction look for ways to escape what they perceive as a highly aversive situation (Gable, 2004; Shores, Gunter, & Jacks, 1993). The inordinate amount of attention given to pupil compliance rather than teacher accommodations compounds the problem and increases significantly the probability of academic difficulties (e.g., Zigmond, 2000).
Discipline in schools. Students faced with repeated academic failure often engage in noncompliant or acting-out behavior to protect themselves from the constant drubbing associated with a negative learning environment. The noncompliant behavior triggers predictably an office referral, in-school or out-of-school suspension, failing grades, and grade retention; for many students, a growing sense of alienation and despair causes them to drop out of school. Many students suffer this fate; however, students variously labeled emotionally disturbed, emotionally handicapped, and behaviorally disordered are disproportionately affected (Gable, 2004). As one principal said, “you don’t get it… we don’t want to understand these kids; we want to get them out” (Skiba & Peterson, 2000, p. 340). It is not surprising that, the drop-out rate among students with disabilities is nearly twice that of the general education population. Of those students who fail to complete a high school education, nearly 60% are labeled emotionally disturbed (Blackorby & Wagner, 1996). Steinberg and Knitzer’s (1992) blunt assessment that our system of public education is miserably failing these students’ captures well the untenable position in which many children and youth find themselves. Unfortunately, failure to properly educate these youngsters seems to be an acceptable option.
Emergence of alternative education programs. One of the earliest references to the role of education in addressing the needs of children and adolescents with challenging behavior appeared in 1925, in a book entitled Wayward Youth by August Aichhorn. About that time, school boards across the United States began to explore different approaches to providing an education to high-risk students, some of whom had already dropped out of school (Fitzsimmons Hughes, Baker, Criste, Huffty, Link, Roberts, Snipes, Valore, Ware, Xander, 2006; Lange & Sletten, 2002). For example, in 1946, the New York City School Board established the 600 schools for children with emotional disturbances (Berkowitz & Rothman, 1967). In the early 1950s, Kornberg established Hawthorne-Cedar Knolls School and Fenichel started the League School, in Brooklyn, NY, in attempts to keep children with severe emotional problems in the community by substituting day treatment for hospitalization (Knoblock, 1966). At about the same time, Redl and Wineman (1952) established Pioneer House in Detroit, MI, to serve troubled adolescents from which emerged the life-space interview. In the early 1960s, Hobbs and his colleagues established Project Re-ED (Bullock, 2004; Hobbs, 1965). In Project Re-ED, emphasis was on mental healthnot mental illness and on the present-not the past. Another alternative school, Croton- on-Campu