Peer Tutoring in Elementary and Secondary Programs

The task facing professionals who teach ' students with handicaps is clear enoughhow to raise achievement rates and thereby reduce the discrepancy between handicapped children and their peers. Teachers with whom we have talked are confident they could teach almost anything to almost anyone, if they had the time. A student who requires 80 repetitions of a rule before applying it consistently has a problem only if the teacher does not have enough time to provide the repetitions. Of course, time spent with this student is probably time taken away from other students who already have learned the rule, or who are at an earlier spot in the curriculum. Whether, or when, a particular student learns a rule will probably not be determined by the teacher's ability to teach but, rather, by the teacher's available time. The pr:oblem of having sufficient time for teaching is a function of class size and of the varieties of human differences found in schools.