Therapeutic schools are NOT true specialty schools.

The two are often confusing and hard to distinguish and is put into the WRONG category since "special needs" is an umbrella term for all sorts of differences. This is where most parents end up sending their kids to the wrong school and placement. They search special schools instead of college prep and end up with the wrong schools they are looking for. Contrary to popular belief therapeutic boarding schools and specialty boarding schools are two different things. Most notably the WWASPS torture chambers disregard the terms regarding their namesake. (World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools)



Specialty Boarding Schools
Normal academic boarding schools that exclusively works with learning differences and ADD/ADHD that are mostly college preparatory. For students that are academic underachievers who want to do better and try out new things and activities they love already.

Therapeutic Boarding Schools
Small, sheltered schools that exclusively works with troubled out of control teenagers. These students have behavior problems and drug addictions. Over time however, these issues come first and result in low grades in school. Very little academics and extra-curricular activities are done here cause these schools focus more on behavior modification rather than college preparatory.

See there is a major difference between the two and this is why therapeutic and special schools should NOT be under the same category. Even worse, therapeutic schools will try to fall under the college prep category as they lie about what they offer. This seems to be the case with the Family Foundation School of Hancock, New York.