Designed as a comprehensive district-wide elementary education program, the Directed Learning Program, funded under Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is meant to encourage learning at an individual rate related to achievement ability rather than to age. The basic for instruction is the home base group in which students are assigned to one teacher, and where most of the school day is spent in order to provide the students with a core of stability. Science, social studies, music, art, and physical education are most often taught in the home base group. Many opportunities are available to bring students from different home base groups together for special science, social studies, music, or art units or projects. Instruction in reading, language arts, spelling, written and oral expression, and mathematics are taught in the learning family, which consists of four or five home base groups with similar achievement levels in these basic skill areas supported by a team of four teachers, four educational aides, and several student teachers. Each family is headed by a Learning Director, who supervises curriculum matters, selection of instructional materials, and coordination of resources, and who helps train teachers and educational assistants. (Author/JM)