Finally, in response to increasingly diverse student populations, many educators are calling for less emphasis on compensating for what poor children and children of color lack, and greater emphasis on pedagogical techniques that make use of the students' strengths and sociocultural experiences as stepping stones for further learning. While these emerging strategies challenge traditional assumptions about educating impoverished students, they do not go uncriticized. There also are practical questions as reforms are phased in at one level of the education system but not in another. Finally, whole-school restructuring strategies may pull resources away from the neediest students. While doing away with the deficit model may have positive effects on students' cognitive and emotional development, alternative approaches must not fail to acknowledge the very real disadvantages that may impair many students' learning.
Compensatory education is no monolith.
The strategies and programs outlined in the following review reflect some of these tensions. While there is much that is promising, there is also a dearth of well-designed studies to assess the effectiveness of many of these programs. Only a commitment to rigorous evaluation of the effects of these various strategies will provide the evidence necessary to determine what, in practice, does and does not work.