The Legislature hereby finds and declares that several schools have developed programs of individualized instruction based upon performance criteria, including the integration of vocational education with the regular coursework, which have greatly improved their students’ achievement and that the success of such programs offers great promise for improving the effectiveness of education throughout the state. The Legislature intends to extend the use of individualized instruction programs on a large scale and to immediately organize a comprehensive program of individualized instruction based upon performance criteria in a major urban school district. Such a comprehensive program shall:
(a)
Address the range of socioeconomic-educational problems of urban school children which will be faced by other urban school districts which may desire to develop individualized instruction programs.
(b)
Convert the entire curriculum for kindergarten through 12th grade and articulate the curriculum with a community college.
(c)
Fully integrate vocational education with the regular curriculum in order to acquaint students with a variety of career alternatives and to provide them with flexible opportunities to acquire the combination of vocational and academic skills required for their individual educational and career objectives.
(d)
Draw together existing experience, techniques, and material in the field of individualized instruction, and produce an increased fund of economically reproducible instructional resources to accelerate large-scale conversion of schools in other school districts of the state.
(e)
Provide a careful evaluation of the effectiveness of individualized instruction and the problems of conversion, including teacher training, curriculum design and production, integration of vocational education with the regular coursework, and plant utilization. Such an evaluation will help other school districts avoid pitfalls and unnecessary expenditures and permit their programs of individualized instruction to be developed with maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
(f)
Provide a major opportunity to design and test the criteria and tools for measuring educational performance. Such an opportunity shall contribute essential information and experience to efforts to set goals and measure performance in all the schools of this state.
(g)
Provide the Governor and the Legislature with more precise information on the fiscal requirements for converting schools in this state to programs of individualized instruction.