The school, located in Oberlin, was founded four years ago as an alternative middle school for public-school students with behavioral problems. The school has six teachers, a behavioral specialist, a social worker, and many student volunteers from the College. Gandha's largest project at LCA involves an assessment of the school's effectiveness in preparing students to reenter the public school system.
Some kids are here more than a year, some only three weeks.
So our data was kind of spotty. But what Gandha and Gilder found after visiting home schools and interviewing past LCA graduates was that 50 percent still were attending school. Some were supposedly home-schooled, but we don't know, really. But half are still in school, which is a good sign. These kids would have been expelled otherwise.