Stellar Schools rely on many proven methods of instruction, including hardcopy textbooks, hardcopy supplementary documents, digitized texts, on-line workbooks, on-line drills, video based lectures, video based supplementary lectures, hardcopy lecture notes, digitized lecture notes, on-line practice tests, on-line homework, hardcopy homework, on-line assessment systems. Instruction will be individualized in a self-paced learning environment. We shall rely on six different kinds of instructors:

• University or college professors in the video lectures.
• Expert K-12 instructors in the video lectures.
• K-12 teachers located at the school sites.
• Teaching assistants located at the school sites.
• Student tutors who are at the school sites.
• Help desk experts located at the network’s central service facility.


The video instruction will be taught by two-person teams composed of an expert K-12 instructor and a college level professor. These two-person teams will also create and maintain the examination databases for each course as well as author the lecture notes. All of the computer based and Web based instruction will be available asynchronously on-demand. Many of the digitized content materials will be linked from the practice tests and other on-line courseware systems as appropriate.

A key feature of Stellar Schools is that students no longer receive group instruction nor do they advance from course to course in groups. Rather they advance in a self-paced fashion when they have mastered each course. Within this environment social promotion is automatically elliminated by virtue of the fact that age based groups have been abolished. Given that social promotion produces so much harm to students and other stakeholders we believe that its ellimination will greatly improve the outcomes.