In the past, schools were founded on an authoritarian model, which promoted individual achievement, and supported acculturation rather than on ethnic group identification, thus minimizing accommodation to individual differences (Hurtado & Garcia, 1994). Research that focuses on student deficiencies in terms of their personal and background characteristics continues to be one of the main reasons to explain student failure. Many educators and researchers look at the characteristics of minority students in identifying the causal factors of school failure. The interventions for school failure are typically limited to the characteristics of the students, generally leaving the institution and the social structure free from critical examination (Donmoyer & Kos, 1993).
During the late 1970´s to cope with the growing number of students who were failing in traditional centers, alternative schools were introduced. Alternative schools were designed with the flexibility to adapt specifically at the school level in order to fulfill the unmet needs of traditional education (Fenton, 1998).
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