Education Reform and Services to Poor Children: Can the Two Policies be Compatible?

This article discusses the interaction between comprehensive state education reform and curricular services for special needs students—mainly economically disadvantaged students eligible for state and federal compensatory education services. The interaction between education reform and categorical programs fuses several central issues related to federal and state educational program implementation: (a) can top-down mandates for change work, (b) what rules and regulations are needed to insure faithful implementation of key programmatic goals, (c) what local discretion is needed to insure local commitment to substantive program elements, and (d) what central government strategies are needed to produce high program quality? California addressed these issues by adopting a mix of top-down and bottom-up tactics, regulations and assistance mechanisms as the key to education improvement for both regular and categorical program students. Data from eight schools in three California districts provide encouraging evidence that the strategies seem to be taking hold at the school level, including the intended services for students in compensatory education programs. Evidence suggests that excellence and equity are not necessarily incompatible. Whether student performance improves is as yet unclear.