What is the purpose of behavior modification schools?

Question

Are they like prisons for children who are sentenced away from their home school district for behaviorial and/or emotional problems? That's what it felt like to me. Although I got to go home after school it felt like a freakin' prison sentence because I picked fights in the 8th grade at my last public middle school and my teachers at Gateway-Longview constantly penalized me for fighting in th 8th grade, which by the way didn't involve them. Visit http://www.gateway-longview.org for deatails.

Answer 1

These schools provide strict, constant environments for students who need them in order to learn to control their behaviors.  I have a friend whose son has bi-polar disorder.  He was constantly fighting and getting into trouble.  When he went to a behavioral school he was able to get more one-on-one help in smaller classes, got more counseling when he was wanting to fight and learned what to do when he felt he was losing control.  It was not a prison, but did have many staff members there in case a kid got physically violent.   I talked to this boy and he qualified to go back to regular high school.  He didn't want to go because he was afraid he wouldn't have enough support.

Answer 2

Behavioral modification schools are for kids who broke rules at their regular school such as your fighting.  They are a lot stricter than regular schools so that you will learn that you had it made in regular school and won't repeat the same mistakes that got you there to begin with.

Some of these schools actually make the kids feel better though so the kids keep misbehaving to stay in them instead of going back to regular school.