This book presents six instructional models for teaching at-risk students. Each chapter is followed by a commentary section by an educational expert. Chapter 1 contrasts compensatory education as it is today with the kind of curriculum and instruction that would emerge based on the principles espoused in later chapters. Chapter 2 describes an experimental arithmetic curriculum that draws the child's informal knowledge about numbers and mathematics concepts into the classroom and treats educationally disadvantaged children as mathematical reasoners. Chapter 3 presents Cognitively Guided Instruction, another elementary school mathematics program that increases students' mathematics reasoning by increasing teachers' understanding of the way children think about mathematics. Chapter 4 covers reciprocal teaching, an approach to fostering strategies of reading comprehension. Chapter 5 examines how to teach the advanced skills of writing using a model for engaging at-risk students in "epistemic" writing. Chapter 6 describes two programs aimed at instilling the comprehension and composition skills of critical literacy, arguing for a fundamental change in the school as a whole. Chapter 7 examines a cognitive apprenticeship for disadvantaged students, drawing on the experiences of two schools. Chapter 8 focuses on issues surrounding the implementation of these instructional models. Each chapter provides references. (JB)