Evaluation of Project Pass

Abstract

In February 1979, the Pittsburgh public schools administrative staff proposed a new program that was designed to supplement the desegregation plan prepared by the Magnet School Advisory Committee. Called Project Pass, it was intended to provide a special program for students who had failed a grade. Students who were scheduled for retention were to be removed from regular classrooms for a year and placed in a special class called Pass. Limited to 14 students, Pass classrooms were to be self-contained, with a teacher and an aide in each classroom. Since the Pass classrooms would not necessarily be in the failing student’s home school, it was hoped that enrollment in Pass would improve racial balance among schools. The instructional program in Pass classrooms was designed as an intensive, individualized program of remedial education in the basic skills. The students who had failed a grade would be taken “off the track” for a year and would then rejoin their original cohorts if they did well in Pass or, at least, would be promoted to the next grade following their year in Pass.