I think you are right that that is an issue. But what school does handle that well? Also, the value of Sudbury is community. If someone is in a gang, they alrea

I think you are right that that is an issue. But what school does handle that well? Also, the value of Sudbury is community. If someone is in a gang, they already have that (I presume). They do have experience with "troubled" kids doing just fine and thriving, but these are a small number injected into an otherwise pleasant environment. They also do occasionally expel students. But I also remember a story from the Jerusalem Sudbury school in which one of their students left and fell into drugs, etc. Later, the founder of the school asked the kid if they had failed him. He said "failed me? You were the only ones that didn't fail me. You are the reason I sought rehabilitation instead of dying on the streets. I always carried you and the school with me, voices of support." Take from that what you will. The most important thing is to have a good environment for students to come into. People adapt to their environments, for better or worse. If you were to take a single gang member away and put them in a strongly functioning Sudbury school, I would give them great odds of succeeding. But if you plopped a number of gang members into such a community, I bet that would be a major problem. The hardest part for a Sudbury school is starting and dealing with huge influx of students. It takes time to assimilate to such an environment. There is also another big question along these lines. The students at Sudbury learn the R's quite well on their own. But their parents are generally well-educated, demonstrating the value of those skills. Would kids from homes without those values do so well? Again, injecting a single kid from such an environment into a Sudbury school would be much more likely to succeed than having a majority of the school from such an environment. But, as far as I know, no one has attempted it. Perhaps someone should.