Gerald Dreyfuss

Gerald Dreyfuss, assistant superintendent of Dade County Public Schools in Dade County, Florida, discusses the benefits of cooperative learning for at-risk students. Excerpted from the video series Reconstructing to Promote Learning in America's Schools, videoconference #9, Reconnecting Students at Risk to the Learning Process (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1990).

"In k-3, there is no such thing as a failure, that the youngsters progress at their own rate. We have to look at grades and make sure that we don't give a kindergarten youngster or three kindergarten youngsters failures. That way they have success in their lives and that they can move ahead. Tracking has to be done away with in many of our practices so that youngsters no longer are forced into a situation where they stay learning disabled for the rest of their lives, for example and so what we're doing in that sense is looking at the idea of cooperative learning, where youngsters from various levels can work together cooperatively to come up with answers, and everyone learns that way."

This Critical Issue was researched and written by Donna M. Ogle, professor of reading and language at National-Louis University in Evanston, Illinois.

Date posted: 1997