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An Effective Institute of Science and Technology Summer Program

Kandy Steel

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Based in Aurora, Colorado, Dr. Kandy Steel is an educational administrator with more than two decades of experience in facilitating learning in economically diverse districts. Dr. Kandy Steel has past experience as principal of Prairie Middle School and set in place a program summer school classes at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST).

The six-week IST program spanned subjects such as geometry, pre-algebra, and algebra 1, with elective courses also available. With the usual social pecking order of high school not present, students had a singular purpose of accomplishing a semester’s course load on an expedited schedule.
As Dr. Steel described it, the emphasis of this unique program was on acceleration instead of remediation. The IST approach effectively went beyond the remedial programming common in summer school and actively challenged students to expand their knowledge basis. The results were definitive; of 300 annual attendees, 87 percent were able to pass final exams and achieve Bs or higher in their normal classes after one semester.