Can Every Child Learn? An Evaluation of "Success for All" in an Urban Elementary School

Abstract

Every child can learn. The late Ron Edmonds stated this as a fact,' extraordinary practitioners prove it every day, and short-term laboratory studies have demonstrated it.2 Thus, Edmonds's statement has become a simple and compelling rallying cry. However, if every child can learn, then the responsibility lies with the school system, not with the children, when so many do not. If educators were truly convinced that every child could learn under conditions that all schools could provide, then the political calculus surrounding education most likely would change, and school failure would be perceived as tantamount to allowing a preventable or curable disease to run rampant among children. Despite the appealing rhetoric, the stories of Jaime Escalante and Marva Collins, and all of the laboratory demonstration experiments, it is not true that reliably effective methods exist today that can be taken into any school and that guarantee that virtually all children will succeed. Until such methods exist and are evaluated