Woodbury Reports
Bonners Ferry, ID

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Parent Choices Features ISPA

Regarding School: Small is Beautiful

Andy Anderson, Founder and Executive Director of the Independent Small Program Alliance (ISPA), was the guest speaker on Parent Choices for Struggling Teens on LATalkRadio.com, hosted by Lon Woodbury, July 25, 2011.

"When it comes to schools and youth programs," he asserted, "often small is really better.

"While larger programs do have some advantages through economies of scale, small programs of below 50 students allow students to receive more personal individualized services, and the mission of a small program can be more narrowly focused to a particular niche." (Of course as with anything, there are exceptions to this rule. Some larger schools will often break groups of students into smaller programs to obtain the same objective.)

"I founded ISPA so small programs could band together in mutual support to achieve some of the advantages larger programs have," continued Andy, "while each small program can still maintain their individual sense of community and the safety that comes from a small group where everybody knows everybody else very well and is not so large as to introduce the element of stranger or semi-strangers.

"Anthropologists have reported that in pre-historic times any time a tribe got over 50 members, some relationships within the group became weak, and there was a push for some to leave and form a new community.

"It seems there is something in human nature where a community changes and becomes a little less personal at about fifty. By having a student body at or below that number a program can better maintain the sense of safety and community that is so important to healing.

"Small programs have been doing well despite the current recession. One reason might be they realize they need outside help to remain viable. As a result ISPA has been growing the last few years."

In looking at the future of this network/industry of private parent-choice residential programs for struggling teens, Andy stated, "There are several threats. The threat of over-regulation is probably the greatest one. An example was the original version of Congressman Miller's legislation a few years ago. If that had been passed into law as originally drafted, most private programs would have been unable to survive and what would have been left to serve this population would have been only public programs for juvenile delinquents and perhaps a few private programs run by large corporations.

"Another important threat is the common existence of slick marketing web pages that claim to be whatever a child needs even though that is impossible for a single program to be. As private programs proliferate, it is more necessary than ever for parents to call on knowledgeable professionals like Independent Educational Consultants to help parents make good placement decisions."

Lon Woodbury, MA, IECA, CEP is the owner/founder of Woodbury Reports, Inc and www.strugglingteens.com. He has been working with families and struggling teens since 1984, and is the Host of Parent Choices for Struggling Teens on LATalkRadio Mondays at 12:00 Noon, PT.

Andy Anderson is the Founder/ Executive Director of the Independent Small Program Alliance (ISPA) in Clearwater, FL. ISPA is an alliance of small programs organized by Andy Anderson of Florida to help small schools and programs with small budgets, to help each other improve their visibility, academics and therapy for children, adolescents and adults.