Supplement to Schooling

12SUPPLEMENTS TO SCHOOLING

Edmund W. Gordon and Mariana I. VergaraTeachers College, Columbia University

Before schools became the colloquially recognized institutionscharged with responsibility for the education of the next generation, itwas to family and immediate community that human beings turned forthe education and socialization of young people. Since it was in orthrough families that humans participated in commercial and socialintercourse, preparation for such participation occurred in that setting. James Coleman (1974) argues that during the period that domestic art-isanship, agriculture and home-crafting dominated as the means ofproduction, families were the dominant welfare agencies, and individu-ally assumed responsibility for the education and training of its mem-bers. It was as these means of production shifted to commercial in-dustries outside of the home that extra-familial communal institutionsemerged for the purpose of educating young people in the knowledgeand skills required for such participation. These institutions calledschools came to dominate the formal process by which persons learnedto read, write, and count, and later on to learn common cultural know-ledge, citizenship and social graces.

The founders of this Country whose musings concerning philoso-phies of education in the course of their lives as public citizens con-sumed with nation building conceived of schooling as training. Thistraining was in the essential knowledge and skills of reading, writing, andarithmetic. They depended upon commercial, political and socialintercourse for other dimensions of education. It is interesting thatsome 200 years later Dewey and even later Cremin similarly viewed

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education as occurring in life as well as in the more deliberate pedagogi-cal processes of schooling. It is interesting that in the latter half of thetwentieth century, as the limitations of schooling and school reform forthe universal achievement of the purposes of schooling became obvious,many students of education have observed the widespread use of a widevariety of supplements to schooling to ensure academic achievementand preparation for life. As a relatively late comer, to this theorizingconcerning education I have referred to the "scaffolding of care" that isorchestrated around the lives of children so as to ensure that opportuni-ties to learn are redundant in the lives of those we would educate.

As the requirements for human adaptation and survival haveincreased and become more complex, the processes of education havebecome more convoluted. Schools, faith based institutions, family life,museums, libraries, commerce, work place, politics and recreation ebband flow between foreground and background for what Markarenko(1955) called "the Road to Life." Education occurs along this road andit is the task of those of us who would understand and orchestrate it inthe lives of individual learners to recognize the varieties of educationexperiences which together must achieve comprehensiveness.

Despite efforts by Dewey (1920), Cremin (1970), Weiss (2000),Gordon (2002), Varenne (2007) and others to define education morebroadly than schooling, most people think of education as co-terminuswith schooling. This anomaly exists while, for years, we have celebratedthe contributions of 4H Clubs, boys' clubs, girl scouts, tutorial services,after school care, and preschool education. Even these formal settingsfor directed learning do not exhaust the almost endless list of opportuni-ties and places where teaching and learning occur. There is room fordebate concerning which of these settings for education and forms ofteaching and learning is primary, but since schooling is the mostcommonly recognized of these forms of education in the USA, in thisarticle we refer to the other than school forms and sources as supple-mentary (Gordon, Bridglall and Meroe 2005).

Teaching and learning experiences that occur in-school can bestrengthened by the learning and teaching experiences that occurout-of-school. In one of James Comer's books (1997) Waiting for a mir-acle: Why schools cannot solve our problems and how we can, Dr. Comer wiselyadvises parents that good schools are essential to the academic andpersonal development of children, but good schools alone are notsufficient. Wise and sophisticated parents know that additional educat-ive resources must be made available to our children if optimal

Supplements to schooling - 3

development is to occur. Lawrence Cremin, the distinguished historianof education in the United States has made a similar point. Afterestablishing himself as the nation's premier historian of education, heconcluded that schools are only one of the nation's education institu-tions. Education also occurs at home, in faith-based institutions, on thefarm, in the streets, at museums and libraries, and on the athletic courtor field. The list is endless and wise parents selectively choose from allof these and other sources to ensure that their children are welleducated.

Investigators such as Wilkerson (1979) have established that manylow income and immigrant families have high educational expectations. However, these families do not know how to transfer these aspirationswhen interacting with the school system. To address this problem forfinancially disadvantaged families to better understand the sophisticatedways in navigating the education systems, the authors of this paper havebeen investigating the promotion of supplementary education throughthe BRIDGE® model of supplementary education. The BRIDGE®model includes the creation of customize programs in local communitysites serving the targeted financially disadvantaged families with thesupport of the Supplementary Education Centers at local highereducation institutions. With the support of the SupplementaryEducation Centers, BRIDGE® is orchestrated around the lives ofchildren so as to ensure that opportunities to learn are redundant in thelives of these students. Currently, we are developing SupplementaryEducation Centers at the Morristown Salvation Army, a nonprofit agencyin Morristown in New Jersey and at the State University of New YorkRockland Community College.

Communities and even nations, in addition to families, have relevantroles to play in support of the learning and teaching that occur outsideof schools. It can be argued that more equitable access to the variousforms of education relevant capital, i.e., health, human, polity, socialcapital, and to adequately resourced institutions of human learning anddevelopment, i.e., families, homes, schools, hospitals, cultural andrecreational facilities, may be the most fundamental supplement toformal schooling. Available research concerning education supports theconclusion that such access to these forms of education relevant capitalis a strong predictor of academic achievement. We also know that suchaccess is a correlate of social economic status (SES). It may not be SESthat is so important, but what counts are the experiences that are oftenassociated with SES in our society. Despite inequalities in status and


access to education relevant forms of capital, children tend to performbetter in school when there are supports for academic and personaldevelopment in their homes and communities, Mercer (1973) and Wolf(1966). Among these supports are:

� A place to read, study and do academic work;� Adequate and protected time for such work;� Books and other reading and study materials;� Adults, older siblings, peers who read and who read with children,

talk with them and engage them in relevant decision making;� Persons who expect them to put forth effort, to succeed, and who

reward them for it;� Adequate health maintenance and good nutrition; and� Consistency and stability in relationships and resources.

Gordon and Bridglall (Gordon et al., 2005, Chapter 2) define supple-mentary education as the formal and informal learning and develop-mental enrichment opportunities that are provided for students outsideof school and beyond the regular school day or year. Some of theseactivities may occur inside the school building but are beyond thoseexperiences that are included in the formal curriculum of the school. Scouting, Future Teachers of America, Boys' and Girls' Clubs areexamples of activities that often use the school building, but arenon-school sponsored. Some families have used mealtime to engagetheir children in discussions about current events, activities at school,family values, personal relationships, and allocation of family responsibil-ities. Prior to the industrial revolution (Price 2002), children in ruralareas had critical responsibilities for helping with farming and animalhusbandry. In the process of such work and related discussions,children acquired attitudes, knowledge and skills that served them wellin school and in life. The corporate sector promoted the sale of modelairplanes, cars, ships, and trains; board games such as checkers,Monopoly and Scrabble; bicycles, dolls, doll houses, and athleticequipment. All of these commercial products were used to impartknowledge, skills and values to children. More recent times have seenthe advent of organized recreation, electronic games, custodial services,after-school programs, arts/crafts/music clubs, field trips, study groupsand tutorial services. Many of these were designed to keep children busyand off the streets, but they also constitute a rich legacy of supplementaleducational experiences that have not been equally available to advant-


aged and less advantaged children. Increasingly it is clear that thesedifferences in access to this supplemental education sector may beassociated with the disparities that we see in academic achievement. Inthe early 50's, when many of these programs and activities were designedto keep children busy and off the streets, about 80% of all jobs in theU.S. economy were semiskilled or unskilled. Most of the factory workersdid not require graduate from high school to enjoy a decent standard ofliving, buy a house, a car, a week vacation with their family, and sendtheir children to college. Currently manufacturing jobs are decreasingin America and going overseas. Eighty five percent of all jobs today inthe U.S. economy require a skill or professional degree. In the 21stcentury, under the Information Age there is the need of a solideducation for all children to become productive work force of thefuture. Keeping kids busy and off the streets does not work anymore;these children have to have access to equal quality education to pursuepost secondary education.

In the current period, private, corporate and public governancesectors are encouraging the use of corporate sponsored after-school,guidance and tutorial services. While these constitute important formsof supplemental education, this list is not exhaustive. These forms ofsupplementary education may be popular because they fit the excessiveconsumerism of the age. They are services that are provided by the"professional other." While we argue that well chosen professionalservices are a part of supplementary education, we are also arguing thatsupplementary education includes the involvement of significant others(parents, community members, peers, etc) in the delivery and mediationof these teaching and learning experiences. We strongly advocate:

� Reading to and with children;� Involving children in serious discussion;� High expectations and standards;� Participatory supervision with children in all dimensions of their

lives;� Museum, field and vacation trips;� Exposing children to the work place and to institutions of contin-

uing education;� Multicultural and multi-lingual experiences; and� Supervising and regulating the media exposure of children.


Supplementary education involves more than the extra service forwhich one must pay. In fact, its most important feature may be theactive concern with and participation in the process by significant others- parents, parent surrogates, peers and interested adults. A variety ofopportunities for learning exist in the lives of young people. There issome tension between those who may choose to think of these opportu-nities as supplemental only if they actively support academic learning,and those who view all learning as enabling of intellective competence. We embrace the broader view and tend to include in supplementaleducation the settings and opportunities provided by such widely varyingsituations as:

� Family environments, relationships and supports (include nutri-tion and health).

� Community social networks and resources� Faith-based institutions� Libraries, museums and internet� Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs and scouting� Guidance, tutoring, student academic development services� Parent development resource agencies� Travel

Families and communities have primary responsibility for the physical,personal, social and emotional development of children and the activesupport of children's academic and personal development in a contextthat is trustworthy. This includes nutrition where families must be awareof the health risks that some of their favorite dishes may produce in theirfamilies' health. Food related issues including safe food handling, foodallergies and everyday microbial hazards. Food safety basics such as howto prevent cross contamination, proper personal hygiene, safe tempera-tures and proper procedures for cleaning and sanitizing and how toprotect our loved ones from these everyday hazards. Understandingwhat a food allergy is and how to protect our children. Also howimportant is the pyramid food when we are trying to raise healthyfamilies for which mypyramid.org is a good resource of informationfrom the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Among the implicit supplementary education interventions, we needto go back to the beginning when there was transmission of educationwithout schooling through families. Education has as one of itsfundamental aspects the transmission of culture from one generation to


another. Through culture as a society, we teach our children ourexpectation of them to follow our moral norms, attitudes, values,motives, social roles and language. Family talk is a phenomenon ofimplicit supplementary education (Gordon, Bridglall, and Meroe, 2005)that occurs in a variety of informal ways in a child's home. Activitiesconsidered routine - such us talking to and with children and includingthem in conversations at the dinner table, for example - seem to enableyoungsters to cope with the verbal demands of academic settings andsupport the intellective and social development of children (Gordon1999).

In many communities there are already resources for supplementaryeducation for financially disadvantaged students, but these families donot always know how to access them. Thus one of the challenges createdby this lack of awareness is to provide access to both informationconcerning and resources for Supplementary Education to suchfamilies. One possibility for meeting this challenge is the creation ofSupplementary Education Centers that provide education to parentsand broker access to the appropriate resources. The creation ofSupplementary Education Centers at local higher education institutionsand nonprofit agencies facilitate access for unsophisticated families toequal quality education for their children through implicit and explicitsupplementary education interventions described in the taxonomy ofsupplementary education programs (Gordon, Bridglall, and Meroe,2005). The Supplementary Education Center works in conjunction withthe BRIDGE® model of supplementary education orchestrating theresources around the family.

Social cultural interventions include diverse cultural celebration(such as cotillion, for example) that some communities use as rites ofpassage for adolescence. The preparation for the cotillion representsthe educational expression of practice. Among certain ethnic groups,social cultural interventions are used as vehicles in delivering religiousand cultural instructions. While the main focus of these efforts may notbe that of enhancing academic performance in the regular school, thereappear to be indirect benefits for students engaged in additionallearning opportunities (Ravid 1988; Schneider and Lee 1999). Theo-dore Sizer (1973) makes reference to teaching and learning experiencesin cultural institutions that are more fun and sensitive to culturaldifferences but nonetheless supportive of academic work. In Gordon'sreview of Sizer's Places of Learning and Places of Joy, he indicates that Sizer "identifies three purposes of education": to equip the learner with (1)


"individual power" or the "intellectual and physical faculty in corporateends " calling (2) "a personal style, assurance, and self control that allowshim [or her] to act in both socially acceptable and personally meaning-ful ways"; and (3) "joy, the fruit of aesthetic discipline, of faith and ofcommitment" (Gordon 1973). Sizer suggests that we separate theseoverlapping purposes and that we assign primary responsibility for thedevelopment of power, or skill in the use of the intellectual and physicalfaculties, to neighborhood schools. "Let us have the academies," heargues "primarily devoted to power. And let us have different kinds ofactivity (Collegia) through which society may provide . . . for agencyand joy. Let us have, in sum, two kinds of schools with childrenexpected to attend both, often concurrently" (Sizer 1973). Sizer arguespersuasively in support of this separation of functions. He reminds usthat schools have failed to meet this dual expectation, and he suggeststhat while academies (neighborhood based) would likely be ethnicallyand economically homogenous, Collegia could be placed–as well asmanaged–so as to provide for participant heterogeneity.

Virtually all poor and immigrant parents have a strong sense of howto rear their children (Trumbull, Rothstein-Fisch, Greenfield, Quiroz,Altchech, Daley 2001); but, rather than building on parents' strengthswithin their culture and circumstances, many programs presented oftenseek to tell parents what they must do. This results in a negativeperception that is demanding and not family-friendly. Such a strategycan lower parents' confidence in their own parenting competenceand/or make them resent an intervention that is undermining theirmore situationally oriented development goals, such as learning how tosurvive under difficult circumstances. Such survival may require thatolder siblings learn how to care for younger children or that theyactually contribute to the income of the family. Without cultural andcircumstantial knowledge of the children and families we are servingplus their own lack of command of the English language, parents mayfeel inadequate to interact in the expected ways. For these reasons inour work when we provide supplementary education programs such astutorial services, after school care, and preschool education we makesure that we design these services with sensitivity to the circumstancesand needs of the families from which the students come. For example,if we are targeting middle school students, and we just make the tutorialservices available for them, there will be students not going to thesesessions because they have to take care of siblings or have other familyrelated demands on their time. So, besides the space and resources for


the tutorial services, we provide additional space and programs for theyounger siblings of these students. The younger siblings take advantageof the after school care and the preschool educational experience in thecase of the youngest siblings. With this approach, we are buildingsupplementary education within the context of their culture andcircumstances, even as we are helping them to establish study habitsfrom early ages. As a second example, in our work with these familiesemphasis is placed on education to look for ways to make sure thestudents will pursue higher education. Sometimes, the student'spart-time job to contribute income to the family is interfering with theacademic goals. As part of the training for families, we help them tounderstand their budget. Families identify where their money is goingand they find that expenses such as a daily coffee with a pastry as anunnecessary expense. Families set up their own strategies such asdeciding to buy a coffee machine to make coffee at home and othersstrategies. The feeling of taking control of their finances will help themencourage their student to not work that part time job to help to bringincome to the family. These decisions are made by the family; we justprovide them with the right questions. In this way, we facilitate for themto begin their own thought process regarding how they spend theirmoney while pursuing the academic goals for their children.

Our concern is the implementation of supplementary education asa medium to achieve academic and personal expectations amongstudents of differing race, ethnicity and differing levels of family income. This effort begins identifying family conditions that the researchcommunity, to a reasonable extent, agrees are closely associated withacademic achievement. We looked closely to "The Family: America'sSmallest School" (2007) and "Parsing the Achievement Gap" (2003)Educational Testing Service (ETS) Policy Information Reports andothers.

Literacy development begins long before our children enter informal education. Among the actions and efforts described in "TheFamily: America's Smallest School", the research findings point to theneed for reading to young children, center-based child care needs to beexpanded and in many places, needs to be improved and it should reachdown to earlier ages. Currently, we as a nation are taking action in orderto address these recommendations from the ETS study with childrenwho are born in America and are poor or children from immigrantparents; these are children using the resources available to them likeEarly Head Start and Head Start programs. These children under the


insistence of Head Start, they might have older siblings that help themto read every day. Studies done in Head Start programs show that thesechildren are making academic progress and they are ready to go to firstgrade. However, by fourth grade these children are academically behindtheir white peers. Our school districts believe that students learn mosteffectively when they are tracked into classes with peers assumed to besimilar in ability. However, research on the effectiveness of tracking isinconclusive. One of the few consistent findings of large scale studies ontracking is that although high-achieving students show slightly fastergrowth when tracked with similar achieving peers, our most disenfran-chised students, those populating the lower tracks, learn best inheterogeneous ability groups (Oakes, 2005). Once students are ontrack, upward mobility is rare. Moreover, what students learn dependslargely on their learning opportunities and unfortunately students inlower tracks tend to be subject to lower-order thinking pedagogy whichdoes not provide learning opportunities (Landsman & Gorski 2007). For this reason, we develop the BRIDGE® model of supplementaryeducation programs for families to learn how to navigate the educationalsystem in order for their children to be placed in a class environmentwhere they can utilize the vocabulary acquired at Head Start.

Again, we need to go back to these families and find out who theyare and from where they are coming. "The Family: America's SmallestSchool" study also points out the parent-pupil ratio where the percent-age of two-parent family has been long-term decline. Single-parentfamilies are rapidly becoming a significant segment of the country'sfamily population. The family finances where income is an importantfactor in a family's ability to fund the tangible and intangible elementsthat contribute to making the home an educationally supportiveenvironment. At all income levels, however, parents have importantroles to play in facilitating their children's learning, many of which arenot dependent upon the availability of money. Their challenges as pooror/and immigrant families do not allow them to provide supplementaleducation because they cannot afford them or they do not have thelanguage to have access to them. We are referring to supplementaleducation as activities such as leisure traveling, tutoring sessions, fieldtrips, summer camps, sports where a parent has to take the children tothe practice and games, etc. However, there are other kind of supple-mentary education parents are providing, for example an immigrantchild may have less English words than his American classmates when hegoes to first grade, but he has the asset of another language and as the


study of Charlene Rivera, "Defining and Refining AccommodationsAppropriate for English Language Learners" (Rivera 2008) points out,that native language serves as a scaffolding when the child is learning theEnglish language.

Another recommendation from "The Family: America's SmallestSchool" and "Parsing the Achievement Gap" studies is Parent Involve-ment. In our work, we have learned that parents have a genuine desireto support their children to succeed in life. Investigators such asWilkerson (1979) have established that many low income and immigrantfamilies have high educational expectations. However, these families donot know how to transfer these aspirations. To address this problem forfinancially disadvantaged families to better understand the sophisticatedways in navigating the American systems, they can access to ourBRIDGE® parental guide as part of the Supplementary EducationCenters for families. However, it is not only about how to navigate theeducational system, Hugh B. Price (Price 2002) talks about Achieve-ment Benchmarks besides navigating the system. In his book Achieve-ment Matters, he provides a helpful guideline for parents of childrenfrom K to 8 grade.

As part of the explicit and implicit supplementary educationinterventions through our work at the Supplementary EducationCenters we include the BRIDGE® model intervention. BRIDGE®overcomes the primary obstacles to success through a "CommitmentAgreement" (Levin 2005). When parents sign the commitmentagreement, ownership is established in the process of making sure theirchildren will achieve post secondary education. This helps to build ameaningful parent engagement interaction when working with theschool. Henry Levin has concluded that most school systems presentlydo not have the mechanism and background to bridge this communica-tions gap. While many schools' attempt to incorporate various means ofparental involvement, such involvement is limited largely to the marginsof the educational process rather than viewed as a critical component ofthat process. The Appleseed Study (Coleman, Starzynski, Winnick,Palmer & Furr 2006) found, among other problems in the system, thattoo many parents fail to receive clear and timely information about theirchildren and their schools. This poor communication hinders parents'ability to exercise NCLB's choice and supplemental education servicesoptions. Further complicating the issue, parental involvement is notuniformly valued by school leaders as a key accountability strategy. Finally, many of the parents face significant barriers to parental


involvement, including poverty, limited English proficiency, and varyingcultural expectations. The BRIDGE® model intervention address thislack of communication between parents and schools. By orchestratingcreative, multi-faceted communication and engagement strategies thatpromote better parental involvement in schools. To ensure thatopportunities to learn are redundant in the lives of those children. While many studies speak of "parental involvement," this group underthe BRIDGE® model intervention includes all adults responsible forraising children. This definition should in no way be read as challengingthe critical role that many adults who may technically not be parents orguardians must play to help students in many instances succeed. Indeed, as the Findings and Recommendations of the Appleseed Studyexplain, (Epstein 2001) helping students (particularly high-risk stud-ents) succeed in school is frequently dependent on the critical and"overlapping spheres of influence" of parents, schools and communityorganizations.

The BRIDGE® model seeks to improve several areas of the educa-tion system, many of which were also highlighted in the AppleseedStudy. These areas include the following:

Quality of Information. States, districts and schools must providemeaningful, understandable and timely information to parentsregarding key school and student performance data.

Proactive, Targeted Engagement Strategies. States, districts andschools must pursue multiple, proactive strategies for communica-tion with and engaging parents, particularly parents who arelow-income or whose first language is not English.

Community Support. Districts and schools should leverage theirown limited resources by engaging community organizations.

Professional Development. Federal, state and districts officialsneed to prioritize and fund more comprehensive professionaldevelopment for teachers and administrators, with special emphasison challenges of culture and language.

Better Implementation and Stronger Accountability. Federal, stateand local policymakers and educators should recognize parentalinvolvement as central to school improvement and place parental


involvement strategies on par with other steps taken to improvestudent achievement.

Information: In order for advocacy to happen we need well informedparental support. Our supplementary education intervention about wellinformed parental support provides parents/guardians information torecognize the opportunities and challenges of parental awareness aboutstudent and school performance. This intervention provides informa-tion to low income and immigrant families about the expectations,challenges and opportunities in the American educational system. Alsoit guides parents to better understand the choices that are available fortheir children in the public school system. However, currently majorcommunication challenges remain. The problem is not a lack of gooddata about student and school performance. In fact, parents fromseveral of the focus groups from the Appleseed Study expressedfrustration with receiving too much data, which proved to be overwhelm-ing. Rather, there is frequently no way to extract clear timely messagesabout what the performance data mean and then what parents shoulddo in response.

For instance, standardized test scores provided directly from testpublishers often use highly technical language and unexplained terms. As a result, parents reported that they were not able to determine whatskills the test scores measured or what the report told "or did not tell"them. This problem was worse for parents in poverty and parents whoare not proficiency in English. For these reasons, our supplementaryeducation intervention for parents explains them about the test scoresand the state standards, and most critically, explains what steps may beneeded next to improve a student's performance and understanding.

Parents, educators, advocates, and attorneys can go tohttp:/ /www.wrightslaw.com for accurate, reliable information aboutspecial education law, education law, and advocacy for children withdisabilities. Begin your search for information in the Advocacy Librariesand Law Libraries. You will find thousands of articles, cases, andresources about dozen of topics: IDEA 2004, Special Education, Law,Advocacy, Books, DVDs, and Websites.

Advocacy: Effective parent advocacy based on good information andinformed engagement, plays a critical role in student and schoolperformance. Given the many competing demands that principals andteachers face every day, it is incumbent upon parent "often in concertwith the Supplementary Education Center that provide much needed


support" be their child's best advocate. Our supplementary educationintervention fills this role by bridging the gap between parents, schoolsand community agencies to support the academic and social develop-ment of students. Our supplementary education intervention for wellinformed parental support helps parents to better communicate toschools by translating at parent-school conferences and translatingdocuments. Also, this intervention includes teaching computers toparents to communicate with teachers via e-mail.

An excellent resource for advocacy is "From Emotions to Advocacy"(Wright & Wright 2006); this book was written by Pam Wright, a lawyer,mother of two children with disabilities. This book is filled with tips,techniques and a wealth of resources from websites, worksheets, formsand sample letters.

Academic tutoring addressing remediation: As part of a wellinformed parental support, parents would ask schools if their childrenare reading at grade level. And then, if their children are reading belowgrade level, parents can request 504 funds for 45 minutes of tutoringservices before or after regular classes. If the child is classified theparent can request flex funds for the tutoring sessions and othersupports. In addition, the creation of the Supplementary EducationCenter at the university facilitates minority college students to serve astutors and mentors at local non profit agencies where BRIDGE® isimplemented. In this way, we create sustainability in supporting thetutoring efforts as a strategy to ensure college readiness for financiallydisadvantaged students.

In the Report To The Field, concerning collegiate programs fordisadvantage students (Gordon 1986), Gordon called attention togrowing awareness of the importance of a critical mass of minoritystudents in a single site to enable these students to provide moralesupport for each other and places into which to retreat briefly for arespite from the tensions of adjustment to an environment that may beculturally different or otherwise alien. It is important that attention begiven to the identification of minority role models of successful careerswho are brought in to contact with students in mentor relationship,informal social contacts and work related encounters. This finding andother observations from that period continue to appear to be importantin the adjustment of minority students to academic challenging coursesin the school, collegiate environments and the teaching and learningopportunities that occur out-side of school.


In "A Taxonomy of Supplementary Education Programs" (Bridgall,Green, & Meija 2005) talk about math and other courses available onlineincluding those programs sponsored by universities and privatecompanies are increasingly available. The Institute for AcademicAdvancement of Youth (IAAY) at Johns Hopkins University and theEducation Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) at Stanford University, forexample, cosponsor the Center for Distance Education, which offersMath Tutorials, a K-8 mathematics sequence divided into five fundamen-tal content areas. This program requires students to complete offlinehomework in additions to computer-guided lessons. Students must alsomaintain contact with their tutors via e-mail and telephone. Thisstrategy provides a forum in which students can discuss mathematics. Students are expected regularly send e-mail reports to their tutors, atleast once a week. These reports are used by the tutor to assess progressand to isolate any difficulties that the student may be having. Tutors aresubject-area specialists trained to provide instructional and technicalassistance and ensure that students get feedback on their work.

Swarthmore College has online project called Elementary Problemsof the Week and Visiting Math Mentors. This program, which has justcompleted its second year, posts weekly non-routine math problems tochallenge third to sixth grade students and to encourage them to verbal-ize their solutions. Students have the option to participate as part of aclassroom activity, weekly school assignment or through the pursuit ofindependent interests. Participating students submit their solutions,which are reviewed by a Visiting Math Mentor. Students who correctlyanswer the challenge are recognized on the program 's website, and themost creative solutions are highlighted. Visiting Math Mentorsvolunteer for one or more weeks by replying to the solutions submitted. Volunteer mentors are expected to improve their abilities to developassessment criteria and increase their own problem-solving skills whilehelping elementary school students to discover the joy of solvingchallenging problems. Mentors may include advanced students fromclasses of elementary school students, high school students, pre-serviceteachers, regular teachers, college professors, and anyone else interestedin problem solving and a willingness to share it with others.

In addition to after-school activities, a number of effective weekendand summer programs exist. Oklahoma State University, for example,has a program called Summer Academies for High School Students atOSU. This initiative is associated with the Mathematics Department atOSU and includes the Oklahoma Principals' Science Scholars (OPSS)


program, which is a four-week residential summer academy for talentedjunior high school students. This program is part of larger programdedicated to enhancing science and mathematics skills and awarenessamong Oklahoma minority students. Each summer since 1992, throughfunding from Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Educations, fortybright young scholars from across Oklahoma have studied aquatic andplant biology, data collection and analysis, ecology, mathematicalproblem solving, computers, and graphing calculators. The frequentlycited decline in academic skills for some students during the threemonths away from school over the summer has been responded to by amovement to significantly increase the availability of opportunities forcontinued academic learning during the summer months.

Expeditionary learning: Parents, teachers and schools pursue theseprograms for a number of reasons, including life skills, career explora-tion, establishing connection with the community, and the applicationof academic skills. Additionally, expeditionary learning programs notonly challenge students to cooperate and depend on each other but alsoemphasize strategic problem solving, logical / traditional actions, andsocial reinforcements. However, financially disadvantaged families havelittle or no access to expeditionary learning. Through the Supplemen-tary Education Center partnership with the schools, our work includesthe creation of a Club at the local school to facilitate expeditionarylearning. In this way, students can feel connected when they go to fieldtrips to colleges, universities and corporations as part of the strategy toreadiness for post secondary education. As part of the Club activities,the transportation will be provided by the school district.

Gordon and Bridglall argue that intellective competence is, increa-singly, the universal currently of technologically advanced societies. Allover the world, the ability to use words, numbers and reasoning to solveproblems is in demand. More and more familiarity with and facility inthe use of a common arts, humanities and sciences knowledge base areessential to participation and survival. All over the world, communica-tion with and effective relations with others are essential skills. Undersuch circumstances Robert Moses is correct in declaring that wellresourced education is a Civil Right. We believe that well resourcededucation, including good schooling and rich supplementary educationexperience is a fundamental right to which all children are entitled.

What are the common features of these supplements to schoolingthat we seek to achieve no matter what the form or venue? Supplementsto schooling involve redundancy and orchestration in the opportunities


to learn for the persons we seek to educate. Novice learners benefitfrom opportunities to learn that are omni-present, ubiquitous, re-occur-ring so that if learning is not achieved in one, it can be achieved orreinforced in another. Novices and advancing learners benefit from thedesign and mediation - orchestration of the learning experiences in waysthat are both appropriate and sufficient to the requirements of thelearner. The rich educational environment provides the redundancy. Caring and informed adults provide the orchestration.

References

Barton, P.E. (2003). Parsing the achievement gap, baselines for trackingprogress. Educational Testing Service, Policy Information Report. RetrievedOctober 6, 2007, from http:/ /www.ets.org

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