(Program on Hiatus)
The purpose of the Correctional and Alternative Education Program is to help develop an army of change agents to improve and consolidate the delivery of educational services for marginalized students—drop outs, "push outs," and confined learners. The traditional outcomes of education have been knowledge, skills and attitudes in that priority order, but our goal is to reverse those priorities: attitudes, skills, and knowledge.
Our work has a profound rationale or meaning—to leave the world better off than it was when we first encountered it, to give back to community so interested individuals and groups can transform their lives by aligning their daily experiences with their aspirations.
We do these things in the most difficult settings for education: among students who are often embittered toward education, frequently with educational disabilities and poorly developed self concepts, and among fellow professionals who are not sure whether or how these students can learn. We improve the world one person and one program at a time.
Today correctional education professionals work with (a) students who have dropped out, been pushed out, or experienced repeated failure in the regular schools, (b) embittered and apathetic or alienated learners, (c) a high incidence of educationally disabling, emotional, and/or drug-related problems, and (d) students who lack study skills, often with a history of violence and poor self-concept. In addition, the environments in our training schools, court schools, reformatories, jails, and prisons are often bleak and antithetical to the educational mission. Outside observers expect these conditions to minimize student learning. Yet most correctional education programs demonstrate outstanding success according to all traditional measures of learning gain.
For more information contact Dr. Carolyn Eggleston, the program coordinator. She can be reached at egglesto@csusb.edu or (909) 537-5654. We also encourage you to visit the Center for the Study of Correctional and Alternative Education, located in CE-310 - College of Education Building.