History & Background

The Accelerated Schools Project was launched at Stanford University by Dr. Henry Levin as a comprehensive approach to school change, designed to improve schooling for children in at-risk communities. During his research, Dr. Levin was perplexed by the practice of “remediating” certain students, despite the fact that it rarely helped them make it into the educational mainstream. Struck by the inequity of this system, he proposed a new kind of school, where staff, parents, students, district office representatives, and local community members would work together to accelerate learning by providing all students with the challenging activities that have traditionally been reserved for students identified as gifted and talented. His viewpoint was that children caught in at-risk situations have exactly the same characteristics and potential of all children, including curiosity, desire to learn, imagination, and need for love, support, and affirmation.

Consequently, accelerated schools are designed to bring all students into the educational mainstream by building on their natural strengths, and by having consistently high expectations for them, regardless of their background.

In 1986, Dr. Levin first tested his idea that all students will thrive in an atmosphere of high expectations and engaging curriculum by working with two pilot elementary schools located in the Bay Area. These two schools both had high populations of at-risk students, with large numbers of minority children who qualified for free or reduced lunches. While the accelerated schools model was essentially only a concept and philosophy at this time, through the coaching provided by Dr. Levin’s doctoral students from Stanford, both schools began to thrive. By the third year of working with accelerated schools, they began to show increases in test scores, as well as improved student and staff morale and greater parent involvement.

The Accelerated Schools Project network has now expanded to more than 1,000 elementary, middle, and high schools in 41 states across the country. In 2002 TIME magazine named the Accelerated Charter School in Los Angeles as their School of the Year. The Accelerated Schools model is one of ten school reform models supported by the New American Schools Corporation.

The Southwest Center of Accelerated Schools was founded in 1996 as part of the Accelerated Schools Project network.