A Level Playing Field

For years, a computer-assisted methodology called Universal Design for Learning has enabled special-needs kids in the Boston area to stay in regular classrooms. But can it work nationwide?

Kelly Driscoll’s humanities class wasn’t nearly as rowdy as the group next door, but it was far from quiet. A computer-generated voice occasionally penetrated the muted clicketyclack of 19 middle schoolers working on laptops, and a handful of kids tossed play-insults at each other between discussions of what they were reading. Punctuating the buzz were intermittent pronouncements from a corner of the room. "Yessss!" Anais Perez exclaimed, setting her gold nameplate earrings swinging. "That’s so sad," she said a few minutes later. Then, with conviction and a strong New England accent: "Such a liuh."

Her thick black hair wrapped in a messy bun, Anais and her classmates were using software called Thinking Reader to read Bud, Not Buddy , Christopher Paul Curtis’ tale of an orphan’s childhood during the Great Depression. Though the tone of the book is light, Bud’s life in Flint, Michigan, is hard, with stints in cruel foster homes. As the class wrapped up on a morning in late May, Anais got into an exchange with Michael Guerra, a lanky boy seated across from her, about what happens during Bud’s first night with a new family, the Amoses. Their son, Todd, makes a habit of harassing foster kids with a pencil, and Bud is no exception—although he’s the one who gets punished by Todd’s mother after the two boys are caught fighting.

"It’s nasty, sticking a pencil up someone’s nose," Anais observed. "I’d wanna go back to the [orphanage]. She didn’t even hear Bud’s...