Synthesis of Research on Compensatory and Remedial Education.

O ver the past quarter century, programs designed to provide quality education for children who are economically disadvantaged and educationally deficient have re ceived substantial funding. The major federally-funded program of this type, Chapter 1, accounts for 20 percent of the U.S. Department of Education's to tal budget, or almost four billion dol lars a year. Approximately one of every nine school-age children is enrolled in the Chapter 1 program fOERI 1987). In recent years, individual states have begun to fund their own pro grams targeted toward students who fail to meet state achievement stan dards. In South Carolina, for example, at least one-fourth of the children en rolled in public schools are in statefunded compensatory and remedial programs. 1 Since 1985, the cost of the program in South Carolina has aver aged over $55 million per year, a figure which represents approxi mately 20 percent of the total monies raised in support of the school reform legislation (Anderson et al. 1989). Whether the money is supplied by federal, state, or locaJ funds, large amounts of money are spent on the