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ALTERNATIVE schools have, from their inception, stood for very different things. They have been launched to fulfill disparate purposes and designed to function quite differently from one another. They've functioned almost as an empty glass to be filled with any sort of liquid-or even used for something other than a glass.
Doubtless such adaptability has contributed to their durability. But it may also be such flexibility that leaves them somewhat marginal to the educational mainstream and a "fringe" rather than a fully accepted member of the educational establishment. As a result, even after decades, and even when providing accepted leadership for others, they have never achieved full institutional legitimacy.
The first schools to be known as "alternatives" emerged in the 1960s, initially in the private sector and eventually in the public. They began to appear across the nation in all sorts of communities, but more often in urban and suburban locales than in rural ones. The urban alternatives were aimed largely at making school work for populations that were not succeeding there-minority youngsters and the poor. The early suburban alternatives, on the other hand, became innovative programs seeking to invent and pursue new ways to educate.
Both types continue to thrive, partly because many early alternatives appeared so successful that alternative schools were adopted to serve all sorts of purposes, including as an answer to juvenile crime and delinquency, a means of preventing school vandalism and violence, a means of dropout prevention, a means of desegregation, and a means of heighteningschool effectiveness. Each purpose shaped the alternative school in a different way, and supplied the criteria by which it was judged-pecially when external funding was involved, and it often was.
Measures of Success
For instance, if the purpose was reducing delinquency, recidivism rates were typically the measure of success. If helping problem youngsters was the purpose, successful school completion and job placement were often the measure. If the purpose was to provide an innovative, engaging education, the criteria more typically involved attitudes toward schooling-as evident in current behavior and effort, and in post-high school aspirations. If the purpose was to change school systems, as in the '70s, the measure of success was the extent of system change that occurred.
By the mid-'70s, a substantial number...