Required Daily school attendance

Students are required to attend school every day and are escorted by JRC staff members. Students are not permitted to stay home or skip school. Classrooms feature computerized and group lessons. The school building is deliberately designed to be visually attractive and contains many special reward activities (movies, video games, retail store, indoor and outdoor basketball courts, Internet lounge, recording studio, etc.) to motivate school attendance.

Programmed self-instruction using computers as teaching machines

A portion of a student’s learning makes use of self-instructional teaching software. Each student is provided with his/her own computer. The software enables students to progress through the subject matter at their own pace and provides immediate feedback to individual students as to whether answers are correct.

Precision teaching

JRC also makes use of Precision Teaching, meaning that educational progress is evaluated by the rates of correct and incorrect responses that the students show as they do their lessons. Data for each student is entered automatically in a database.

JRC’s education staff update students charts daily and are able to display the student’s progress on each academic skill being taught. This enables the teacher and clinician to see immediately how the student is progressing and to take any remedial steps needed to insure continued progress.

Behavior modification

JRC uses the same powerful reward system as is used to motivate improvements in the student’s problem behaviors to motivate improvements in academic skills.

Normally, when a student first comes to JRC, the reward systems are primarily used to improve the student’s problem behaviors. As those behaviors improve, the reward systems are re-allocated so that they are increasingly focused to encourage the student’s educational progress.

One computer per student

JRC provides one computer for each student. Students functioning at a lower level use touch screen computers.

Self-instructional software in a variety of subject areas

Developed by JRC’s own software development group, this software has allowed students who have fallen behind in their academic skills for such reasons as having spent time in a psychiatric facility, or been home instead of at school for a variety of reasons, to be able to make up as much as several grade levels in a single semester. Subjects taught include spelling, math, money management, science, typing, memorization skills, and more.

A rich variety of after-school activities

Many types of activities are offered for students to enjoy during the afternoons and evenings. These include but are not limited to: basketball, board games, soccer, movies, photography, billiards, group debates, Zumba, chorus, and arts and crafts.