Despite the differences, there were points of agreement among all sponsors. Sponsors agreed that their interventions should be developmentally appropriate—that is, models take account of where students are in their development as learners. Second, everyone agreed that teaching and learning should be responsive to the needs of individual learners. Third, they agreed that all students—even those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds—could learn to the level of their more fortunate peers. Fourth, classroom management procedures that create an appropriate learning environment should be emphasized. Fifth, school should be a place where students experience both high self-esteem and academic success. Ironically, the last point of agreement—as far as Maccoby and Zellner were concerned—was that all interventions should have very clear objectives about the content and skills that students should know and be able to do. This last detail is worth noting for two reasons. First, the program outcome goals that were provided by sponsors appeared relatively broad. For example, the sponsors of the Tucson Early Education Model explain that "there is relatively less emphasis on which items are taught and on the transmission of specific content, and more emphasis on 'learning to learn'". Likewise, teachers of the Cognitive Curriculum design their own approaches to instruction (including the specification of learning goals), with assistance from sponsors and fellow staff members. While the outcome goals might commonly be described as high levels of academic achievement or mastery of basic and higher-order thinking skills, exactly how students demonstrate these skills is missing in the "Follow Through" literature. During sponsor meetings, there were several heated arguments between some sponsors about the degree of specificity to which they should link facets of their models to student outcomes or behaviors. "Follow Through" administrators could not investigate models more thoroughly because of limited time; indeed, only eight months separated the selection of the sponsored model approach and the start of the experiment. Because Congress had already reduced the program budget, there was legitimate concern among planners that a delay in implementation could be disastrous to the program. Another reality was simply the lack of alternate interventions. Because such a large-scale experiment in education had never been done before, the Office of Education had no arsenal of interventions to try out.