Two school districts in southern California recently set up special schools for 8th-graders who don't meet the criteria to enter high school. Each has different criteria and a different educational program than Chicago does. Here's how they operate. Long Beach Preparatory Academy, now in its second year, enrolled about 323 students last fall for a one-year program.
Students take the standard course load but get untraditional instruction.
For instance, students submit quarterly projects in every subject. After studying the United States Constitution, some wrote skits or newspaper articles dramatizing events from the time period. The idea is to get them more interested in school, Issa Lahera explains. Kids, if they've had failures over a period of time, it seems hopeless. They don't see any reason why school should be a place they want to be.