The Alternative Education Program

The purpose of the NEKLS Alternative Education Program is to help school districts prevent at-risk students from leaving school without graduating by offering the school districts a high quality, off-site, behaviorally based academic alternative for their students who have not been successful in the traditional school setting.

PROGRAM PHILOSOPHY

NEKLS believes that quality educational services can be delivered only when programming begins with the recognition of the student as a whole person with unique and widely varying, frequently changing needs. By centering the service on the needs of the student and delivering it in an environmentally and nurturing setting those behaviors which lead to identification as "at-risk" can be changed and replaced with positive, life enhancing ones.

PROGRAM GOALS

• To prevent at-risk students from leaving the educational system completely.
• To motivate students to return to school, continue to post secondary status or to accept employment or training.
• To introduce a service design that will emphasize student identification and practice of behavior appropriate academic, vocational and personal growth and success.
• To develop a school/NEKLS/community partnership that supports and participates in the program.
• To involve parents to the extent appropriate in program activities.
• To access resources of existing human services organizations.

INDIVIDUALIZED LEARNING PLAN

Because the program focus will be student centered and emphasizes behavioral change, virtually all individual and program goals will relate to the Individualized Learning Plan (ILP).

The ILP will be a cooperative on-going planning project between the student, the parent, the school and NEKLS staff. As ILP objectives are met, others will be adopted until finally the student is ready to transition back to school, to college or job training or to a job. As the student completes ILP objectives and redefines his/her program support needs, so also will the roles of the school, parents and NEKLS be redefined. By recognizing the fluidity inherent in any type of progress, the ILP will become the vehicle for ensuring that the program responds effectively to newly identified student needs and avoids being unprepared and thus an actual barrier to continued student progress.

The ILP will have three main content categories: personal development, academic growth and vocational readiness. All objectives in the three categories will be stated in behavioral terms. Students will not just be expected to learn tasks (as for example, math addition operations) on a rote basis. Rather, they will be expected to have identified, understood, accepted and practiced the behaviors necessary to complete such tasks in a timely, environmentally appropriate, self-directed manner.

The ILP will identify and integrate the behaviors necessary for the student to complete all ILP goals and thus demonstrate readiness to move beyond the NEKLS alternative education service.

The behavioral outcome towards which ILP objectives will progress the students in self-sufficiency as demonstrated by the ability to: function productively in diverse settings, take personal responsibility for task completion, strive for product excellence in key endeavors, accept direction from authority figures, and about self-destructive personal and social behaviors.

The ILP should contain assessment information, basic goal statement, behavioral objectives, progress milestone and timelines. It should be formatted using the personal, academic and vocational categories.