A “Zero‐Reject” Program in a Comprehensive School District

The San Mateo Union High School District serves five communities in the San Francisco Peninsula. The organizational structure of the district is designed so that each school can reach beyond its own curriculum to satisfy the needs of all its students. Though each school offers all of the programs for which the number of students is sufficiently large, particular schools within the district are designated to offer special programs for which the number of students is too limited or the specialized facilities and equipment required are too costly for offering at every school in the district. Since the adoption of the “zero‐reject” comprehensive principle the drop‐out rate has been reduced from approximately fifteen per cent to under two per cent.