ED 081 875

AUTHCRTITLEINSTITUTIONPUB DATENOTEAVAILABLE FROM

DOCUMENT RESUME

UD 013 792

Gaines, Edythe J.72 Annual Report, The Learning Cooperative.Learning Cooperative, New York, N.Y.30 Jun 7258p.Learning Cooperative, 475 Riverside Dr., Suite 425,New York, N. Y. 10027 ($1.00)

EDRS PRICE MF-$0.65 HC-$3.29DESCRIPTORS College School Cooperation; *Decentralization;

Educational Accountability; EducationalAdministration; Educational Change; EducationalPlanning; Educational Programs; Financial Support;*Information Dissemination; Interagency Cooperation;*Interinstitutional Cooperation; Private FinancialSupport; Teacher Education; *Urban Education

IDENTIFIERS Learning Cooperative; *New York City

ABSTRACTThe Learning Cooperative, after completion of certain

transitional and start-up activities following the announcement ofits establishment on September 9, got under way in its newly-acquiredheadquarters on the afternoon of October 15, 1971. The 145 workingdays from that date to June 30, 1972, marked a period of activitywhich resulted in the significant accomplishments which arechronicled in the report. In summary, the following were the majoraccomplishments of those 145 days: (1) the establishment of a medium,a mechanism, an organization "in the system" but considered not quite"of the system," which provided a point of useful contact both for"system insiders" and for "system outsiders" to meet on the commonground of wanting to.effect fundamental reform and improvement in NewYork City public education; (2) the establishment of aninstrumentality by which educational leadership could be exercisedand exerted in a unitary school system which is also characterized bydual governance; the Cooperative provided an instrument by whichcooperative and collaborative activity proceeding from sharedleadership in a dual governance school system could be tested out onreasonably appropriate proving grounds; important issues in thisregard remain as yet unresolved; and, (3) the writing, publication,and wide dissemination of "Design for Change," a consensus documentwhich sets forth comprehensively but concisely the new mission of NewYork City public education and the strategy by which that mission maybe accomplished. (Author /JM)

prologueAny plan for education redesign is shaped in a crucial

way by the ultimate goal to be attained. In words res-tricted by. the inherent imprecision of our language, thegoal of education today in New York City and elsewheremay be stated as follows:

To enable youth to function effectively in and tocontribute thoughtfully and creatively to presentand future society with a satisfactory degree ofsuccess, with a commitment to human and hu-mane values, and with the realization of personalsatisfaction and contentment.

Implicit in this statement of purpose is the recognitionof the pervasiveness of change in our time. We livein an age of discontinuities, one in which the one thingof which we may be absolutely certain is uncertainty.Consequently, one of the most important abilities modernman must cultivate is the ability to handle change anduncertainty while maintaining some degree of personalstability, contentment and even serenity. Also implicitin this statement of purpose is the humanistic foundationof education. Together, these two elements define themission of contemporary and future education. It is tothese ends that we set about the task of redesigningpublic education in New York City for the 70's and be-yond.

Design for ChangeFILMED FROM BEST AVAILABLE -60PY

Eon [mug PLOVD5ETHE LEARNING COOPERATIVE

BOARD OF EDUCATION

Letter of Tranimittal:

To The Members of

The Board of Education and theThe Community Boards and theThe Other Cooperators

Ladies and Gentlemen,

DIRECTOR

DR. EDYTHE J. GAINESASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS

the Learning Cooperative

ChancellorCommunity Superintendents

It is my honor and privilege to transmit to you the first annualreport of the Learning Cooperative of the Board of Education of theCity of New York for the 1971-72 academic year. The report provides:an historical background which indicates how the Learning Cooperativecame into being; a survey of the work accomplished during the 145days of its existence from October 15, 1971 through June 30, 1972;and an indication from the Director of the direction the work shouldtake during the second year of operations.

The staff of the Cooperative take this opportunity to express sincereappreciation to all who assisted them and others in the collaborativeefforts which alone account for the substantial accomplishments achievedin a very short span of time. Special thanks must go to Dr. HarveyB. Scribner, who originated the idea and who dreamed the dream.Thanks, too, must go to the Board of Education and especially to itsPresident, Hon. Isaiah Robinson, Jr., who gave every support at thepolicy level.

Of course, the comments of the readers of this report will beappreciated not merely because the Learning Cooperative staff wouldlike to have such reactions but, more important, because they needsuch reactions as a guide to shaping the next phase of the work. Please,therefore, write to us at the office of the Learning Cooperative.

EJG:smEnc.

Yours very truly,

lefiescEDYTHE J. GAINESAssistant Superintendent

475 RIVERSIDE DRIVE, SUITE 425, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10027 TELEPHONE: (2 ) 2) 666-0300

to thecooperative's members

THE COMMUNITY DISTRICTS

DISTRICT BOARD CHAIRMAN. COMMUNITY SUPERINTENDENT1 Antoinette DiMauro Jerome Kovalcik, Actg.2 Justin Finger Rhoda Lansky, Actg.3 Jerry Evans Alfredo Mathew4 Carmen T. Rexach Eugene Calderone, Actg.5 Calvin Alston Dr. Abraham Cohen, Admin. Asst.6 John B. Fenwick, Actg. Dr. Edwin J. Haas7 Carmen Martinez Lucille Rosenberg, Actg.8 James Phelan Dr. William Dorney9 Eunice Mattis Andrew Donaldson*

10 Rev. Mario Zicarelli Dr. Theodore Wiesenthal*11 Jerome Reinstein Nicholas Cicchetti12 Eloise Krause Dr. Felton Lewis, Actg.13 Dimas E. Guzman Stanley Taylor*14 Bro. Robert Lally William Rogers, Actg.15 Philip Kaplan Anthony J. Ferrerio16 Laverne Cox Joyce Coppin, Actg.17 Rev. William Smartt Charles Schonhaut18 Jack Zimmer Harvey Garner, Actg.19 Edward Griffith Annette Goldman20 Rev. Michael Charles French Dr. Juliet Saunders21 Celia Kushner Dolores Chitraro22 J. Vincent Gallagher Ralph Brande**23 Samuel Wright David Marcus, Deputy C.S.24 Frank Weldon Dr. Irving Berchuck*25 Vincent Pitaro Dr. Cormac K. Meagher26 Lawrence Kryger Josephine S. O'Brien27 Horatio Proce Rose L. Schwab28 Jacqueline Grant Dr. Carl King; Actg.29 M. Michael Stern Max G. Rubinstein30 Ethel Mulieri Sol Silver*31 Francis C. Evans Maurice Wollin

Hon. Sophie K. Pricepresident of the new york city school boards' associationmember district 28 community school board

*superintendents' committee on the learning cooperative**president of the association of assistant and community superintendents

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION of the CITY OF NEW YORKHon. Murry BergtraumHon. Seymour P. Lachman

Hon. Isaiah E. Robinson, Jr.President

Hon. Mary E. MeadeHon. Joseph Monserrat

Harvey B. ScribnerChancellor

... and their many cooperators

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH,EDUCATION & WELFARENATIONAL INSTITUTE OF

EDUCATIONTHIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCCD EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROMTHE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINAT1NG IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONSSTATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OFEDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY

nannuai report

the learning coop rative475 riverside drive, ite 425

new york, new yo 27212.666.03

submitted by:edythe j. gainer

assistant superintendent /director

for the period ended June 30.1972

table of contentsTHE 145 DAYS: 1

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 2

THE YEAR'S WORK 6

At the Beginning, A Flurry of Activity 7

Defining the Cooperative and its Role 8

Design For Change Emerges 10

Responding to Purposes Delineated by the Chancellor 11

Purpose #1: Identification and Disseminationof Effective Programs 11

Theme 1: Reading a 12

Theme 2: Mathematics 13

Theme 3: Bilingual Education 14

Theme 4: Personnel Development and Training 14

Theme 5: Alternative Schools 14

Theme 6: Non-School Routes to Education 15

Theme 7: Creative School Space 16

Theme 8: Parent and Community Participation 17

Theme 9: Policy and Action Implications 17

Four Surprising Outcomes 19

Purpose #2: Development of New Educational Models 20

Purpose #3: Creation of Linkages 21

Purpose #4: Staff Development 22

Purpose #5: Attraction of Outside Financial Support 24

PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE 27

A CONCLUDING WORD 31

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS... WITH THANKS 35

APPENDIX: DESIGN FOR CHANGE 45

the145Adi 111111.

IIIa su mary

The 145 Days: A SummaryThe Learning Cooperative, after completion of certain

transitional and start-up activities following the an-

nouncement of its establishment by Board of EducationPresident Isaiah Robinson, Jr. and by Chancellor HarveyB. Scribner on September 9, got under way in its newiy-acquired headquarters on the afternoon of October 15,1971. The 145 working days from that date to June30, 1972, marked a period of activity which resultedin the significant accomplishments which are chronicledin the report which follows. In summary, the followingwere the major accomplishments of those 145 days:

Three Fundamental AccomplishmentsThe establishment of a medium, a mechanism,an organization in the system" but considerednot quite "of the system," which provided a pointof useful contact both for "system insiders" andfor "system outsiders" to meet on the commonground of wanting to effect fundamental reformand improvement in New York City public edu-cation.No other extant system-connected organization oragency is perceived in quite the way this neworganization came to be perceived, i.e., as thesystem-connected agency concerned exclusivelywith educational innovation, change, reform, andimprovement. The very establishment of this or-ganization along with this special perception ofits purpose and meaning hate made possible farmore rapid implementation of new ways of work-ing, new ideas put into practice, new models de-signed and built. Probably this alone constitutesthe major accomplishment of the year.

The establishment of an instrumentality by whicheducational leadership could be exercised andexerted in a unitary school system which is alsocharacterized by dual governance.Our school system is unitary in that it exists inone city under one central Board of Educationhaving one chief executive, the Chancellor. Yet,it is decentralized in that it is comprised of thirty-one quasi-autonomous Community School Dis-tricts, each governed by a Community SchoolBoard and each haying a chief executive officer,the Community Superintendent. Shared leadershipis clearly indicated by such a dual governance sit-uation and cooperative and collaborative actionin support of such leadership is the clearly in-dicated mode of operation. The Learning Coop-erative made possible putting such concepts intooperation. Thus, the Cooperative provided anstrument by which cooperative and collaborativeactivity proceeding from shared leadership in a

dual governance school system could be testedout on reasonably appropriate proving grounds.While important issues in this regard remain asyet unresolved, this too constitutes another majoraccomplishment for the year.

The writing, publication, and wide disseminationof Design for Change, a consensus documentwhich sets forth comprehensively but conciselythe new mission of New York City public edu-cation and the strategy by which that mission maybe accomplished.Not since the nineteen forties, when the Educa-tional Policies Commission undertook the task,has there been published a comprehensive state-ment as to the fundamental mission of public edu-cation. While Design for Change is not a perfectdocument, it does set forth in broad stroke termsthe shape and direction of education as today'sthoughtful people see it and a strategy by whichto reach the goal. Thus, for the first time in de-cades New York City educators have c, relativelyfixed star by which to guide their various efforts.That, too, constitutes a major contribution for thisyear.

Other AccomplishmentsIdentification of and dissemination of informationabout useful programs and practices that "work,"not as a "white wash" move, but as a powerfulstrategy for bringing about change.While the June 2-3 Dissemination Conferencewas the culminating activity by which informationabout such programs was made available to thepublic, other means were also used. Newspaperswere the least useful and cooperative in this mat-ter but good coverage was had via the other me-dia. The areas in which we sought and foundprograms that work include: reading, mathemat-ics, bilingual education, alternative schools, al-ternative non-school routes to education, creativeuse of "found space ," parent and communityparticipation, staff and other human resource de-velopment.

Development of the beginnings of a "Beacon LightSchools" network.Schools so identified are schools "in the processof becoming." Each is unique. What unifies themis their commitment to work actively to implementthe basic principles set forth in Design forChange.

Development of the beginnings of several strate-gies by which to link the schools with the non-school resources and educational opportunitiesavailable in this great metropolis and its environs.

In this regard, we supported and thus helped tostrengthen such existing district-based linkagesas the District 4 El Museo del Barrio, the District8 Kelly Street Brownstone and the District 12 Her-itage Museum. We supported the school-relatedprograms of such organizations as the Studio Mu-seum in Harlem (with District 5); the Children'sArt Workshop with the Satellite Academy andDistrict 1); High Rock (with District 31); UpperManhattan Artists Cooperative (with District 6);

and The Arts, Inc. with District 2). Staff begandevelopmental work for new linkages in suchareas as: utilization of urban and out-of-city areasas learning environments; development of a dis-trict arts resources center; development of a pro-totype science resources center; development ofa source book in the area of the performing arts.In addition, speci? Jffort has been made to sup-port the Children's Art Carnival, the Children's ArtCaravan and the Showboat, and district-basedexemplary programs such as District 4's El Museodel Barrio and District 12's Heritage Museum andMuiti-Purpose Educational Center.

By developing the "Beacon Light Schools'' net-work and by developing strategies by which tolink such schools to the non-school educative op-portunities, the Cooperative has set out upon thepath of totally redefining what education is (asdistinguished from "schooling") and what aneducational system is (as distinguished from a"school system").

Development of mechanisms by which like-minded people or people concerned about thesane problems and issues could be linked to-gether to pursue mutual goals. Our ad-hoccommittee meetings and Learning Cooperative"events" are examples.

The development of connecting mechanismsbetween "system insiders" and "system out-siders" in pursuance of mutual goals. Joint effortsbetween the Learning Cooperative and the Muse-ums Collaborative and joint efforts with variousfoundations, businesses, colleges, and universitiesare examples.

The provision of advocacy for a variety of exem-plary or promising programs and schools, thusproviding needed support at critical times andplaces. Presentation of the case for support ofthe Satellite Academies before the executive com-mittee of the Board of Trustees of a major bank;writing letters and making oral presentations insupport of foundation grants; speaking before avariety of groups (civic. educational, philanthrop-ic, business); writing for publications; and appear-ing on radio and television programs carrying themessage that there are good things happeningin New York City public education and thus work-ing to rekindle faith in such public education onthe part of the general public are examples.

The extension of existing exemplary staff de-velopment programs such as the Open EducationAdvisory programs; support for the planning ofschool based prototype "teacher centers" at P.S.3, Manhattan and P.S. 152, Brooklyn; collabo-ration with Bank Street College and the ChaseManhattan Bank in designing an exemplary pro-gram for the development of a new breed" ofeducational leader and a new dimension of "ed-ucational accountability" resting upon the traininginstitution.

The winning of tangible support for educationalreform and improvement efforts by attractingoutside financial support. Along with such finan-cial support came the equally valuable interactionat the level of lively idea exchange. An unanticipa-ted consequence is that the aggregate amounts ofmoney attracted directly and indirectly more thancompensated for the total cost to the Board ofEducation in establishing and supporting theLearning Cooperative. The Cooperative turned outto cost the Board of Education nothing. Indeed,a profit was made!

For the reader who really cares, read on. While thereport that follows does not tell all that happened duringthese vigorously-used 145 days, it does tell enoughto inform both the mind and the heart about one ofthe most promising recent developments in New YorkCity public education.

historical perspective

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Origin of the learning Cooperative IdeaThe first formal mention of the term "Learning Co-

operative" was made in Chancellor Harvey Scribner'sbudget request for the fiscal year 1971-72, made publicin December, 1970.' The Chancellor envisioned at thattime five cooperatives, ale in each borough, each ofwhich would consist of a cluster of about five schoolsand, in cooperation with institutions of higher learning,each would seek to bring about fundamental educationalreform through the performance of the following func-tio ns:

1. Serving as cer,',ers for the !raining and retrainingof the staff of the member schools;

2. Operating demonstration projects of a variety ofkinds;

3. Offering seminars and stimulating in other waysfresh thinking about the purposes of schools, thenature of learning, the character of the teaching-learning process, and alternative learning styles.

A budget request in the amount of five million dollars($5,000,000) was made in support of this program.

It was stipulated in the Chancellor's message thateach cooperative be created on district request and thateach would be comprised of schools which volunteeredto participate. The Chancellor thus underscored twobasic principles: that of local district initiative as an in-dication of local district autonomy; and that of volun-tarism with respect to any proposal originating from thecentral educational authority. In both cases, the Chan-cellor demonstrated his faith in and support for the de-centralization concept. In both cases the position takenis in conformity with the policy of the Board of Educationof the City of New York.

In an effort to flesh out the idea of learning coop-eratives beyond the skeleton presented in the budgetmessage, the New York City Center for Planning, underthe leadership of its director, Mrs. Shelly Umans, heldmeetings of representative members of poss'ole par-ticipating groups early in 1971.2 Meetings were held with:school principals (Feb. 19); parents (Feb. 22); "OutsideExperts," many if not most of whom could be describedas "articulate and respected critics of the public schools"(Feb. 23); community superintendents (Feb. 26); teach-ers (notes not dated); and college and university facultymembers engaged in the training of teachers and ofother school personnel (notes not dated). All saw positiveadvantages in the establishment of a learning coop-erative. All used these meetings to give vent to theirpast frustrations and to express their hopes and aspi-rations for the future. Of course, some of those as-pirations revealed some degree of conflict not only be-

2

tween groups, but also among different members of thesame group. What is important is that all groups ex-pressed a yearning for a way out of present dilemmasand all groups saw the idea of a learning cooperativeas a promising route to a better future.

Certain themes recur in the notes from these meetings(which !lave been made available generously by Mrs.Umans for this report) as the groups probed for answersto what a learning cooperative could and should do.The accomplishment of such aims as the following ap-pear as recurring themes among the notes of these meet-ings:

1. To provide time for teachers, principals and othersto engage in introspective, self-evaluative and cre-ative professional development and training ac-tivities. In this regard, an especially poignant notewas struck by higher-level supervisory and man-agement personnel (especially school principals)who felt great need for training and role-development, particularly i n this time of dynamicchange.

2. To provide for a more realistic and, ultimately,a more productive relationship between formalteacher-training institutions and the public schoolswho are "consumers" of their graduates and,while so doing, also provide for, as a corollary,a more organic relationship between the pre-service and in-service education and training ofschool staffs, including teachers, principals andother personnel.

3. To suggest realistic yet effective ways of reachingindividual learners and solving their learning prob-lems while enhancing their learning abilities.

4. To suggest ways of better relating schools to com-munity to the mutual benefit of all, "accountability"being required arid accepted, without being threat-ening in implication. (This aim is implicit ratherthan explicit in the reports.)

5. To help find the way back to the previous positionof excellence in New York City public education,and to help all participants feel good about them-selves and their work again, based on good per-formance and results achieved with the children,and on mutually-satisfying rapport with the pa-rents and the community from which they come.

In late April of 1971,3 the Chancellor, still hoping forcity funding of the cooperatives and desiring to engagea director before the end of the school year, requestedof the Rockefeller Brothers Fund monies sufficient tocover minor start-up costs and to pay the salary of adirector for the project. Soon thereafter a :.,arable re-sponse to this request was indicated and, indeed a grantin the amount of fifty thousand dollars was made inJune, 1971.

41%

IA 6

Establishment of One CooperativeThe education budget received from the city in June,

1971, ushered in a year of severe budgetary stringency.It became readily apparent that the Chancellor's five-million-dollar request to support the learning cooperativeproject could not be granted. There was. however, theRockefeller Brothers Fund grant and there was also arelatively small sum of money in the Chancellor's fund.Perhaps all need not be lost.

It was at this juncture that the Chancellor engagedin a series of conversations with Community Superin-tendent Edythe Gaines which led to the establishmentof one learning cooperative under her direction despitethe denial of the budgetary requests. The mutual con-cerns of the Chancellor and Dr. Gaines were:

1. To strengthen the concept of decentralization byassisting the districts to demonstrate that im-proved educational programs could be carriedout under their aegis;

2. To strengthen the ties between and amongschools and other agencies and to encouragetheir cooperation in finding solutions to major ed-ucational problems;

3. To keep alive the idea of the learning cooperativeas an appropriate catalytic agent in those respectsand as a useful mechanism to help stimulate fun-damental educational reform.

These mutual aims, coupled with Dr. Gaines' especialdesire to make a contribution in support of the edu-cational (as distinguished from political) validity of thedecentralization idea, led her to view favorably the Chan-cellor's request that she become director of The LearningCooperative on special assignment fror the CommunitySuperintendency of District 12. Community SchoolBoard 12's generosity in concurring in this arrangementmade it possible.

Thus it was that the establishment of The LearningCooperative and the assignment of Dr. Gaines as itsdirector were announced by the Hon. Isaiah Robinson,Jr., President of the Board of Education, and by Dr.Scribner, Chancellor, at a press conference held onSeptember 9, 1971. Mrs. Eloise Krause. Chairman ofCommunity School Board 12. spoke on behalf of District12.

Redefinition of Functions for The LearningCooperative

While the fundamental concept of a learning coop-erative remained intact, there was a need to define inmore realistic terms what one cooperative, operatingon a budgetary shoestring, :and seeking to serve all 31community school districts, could reasonably be ex-pected to accomplish. The resolution of this questionformed the following statement of purpose issued bythe Chancellor on September 9.4

3

1. To help identify useful practices and programSthat mirk, disseminate information about them,and encourage the spread of their benefits to asmany students as possible.

2. To help develop new models and new alternativesfor learning and thereby provide parents and staffwith a wid choice of learning programs.

3. To help create linkages among school districts,schools, individual teachers or groups of teach-ers, institutions of higher education, and variousother agencies and programs. The goal is. tb linkforward-looking institutions or individuals forspecific purposes which are focused on resultsat the level of the student.

4. To help construct new forms of staff developmentin the belief that the best programs are ultimatelyas good as their practitioners.

5. To help attract various kinds of financial supportfor special programs, in the belief that there aremany agencies, institutions and individuals in thecity who want to make a contribution to education.

The Cooperative Gets Under WayIt was understood by all that the director would as-

sume the new duties only after discharging the obligationof insuring an orderly transfer of authority in District12. Fulfilling that obligation quickly was made possibleby two factors: that key members of the district staffhad been willing to work with the superintendent all sum-

4

mer, without vacation, to insure the orderly organizationof the schools and other district programs despite Inebudget crisis; and that Dr. Felton E. Lewis, Deputy tothe Superintendent and a long-term key member of Dr.Gaines' staff, was named acting Community Superin-tendent, thus insuring the district a signik;ant degreeof continuity in educational philosophy and in leadership.

After suitable office space had been found and a corestaff had been engaged, The Learning Cooperative, oc-cupying quarters located at 475 Riverside Drive, becameoperational by October 15, 1971. The report which fol-lows covers the period from mid-October, 1971, to theend of June, 1972, a period of 145 working days.

Footnotes

'The Budget Message for FY 71-72December, 1970.

=Summary notes of meetings held by the New York CityCenter for Planning in February and March, 1971. Un-published.

'Letter from the Chancellor to Mr. William Dietel of theRockefeller Brothers Fund, April 21, 1971.

4Press release for press conference (one statement fromChancellor Scribner and one statement from Dr. Games).Office of Information Services, Board of Education ofthe City of New York. September 9, 1971.

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A Flurry of Activity...The opening announcement was made and mailed

thanks to the help of the Board of Education's mail roompersonnel following the quick authorization by Dr.

Henrietta Percell of the Deputy Chancellor's Office. Thestaff assumed residence in the unfurnished offices pend-ing completion of certain details of tha lease, thanksto the cooper Ilion `the landlord, The lnterchurch Cen-ter. Tempora,y basic furniture and emergency officesupplies were generously lent and expeditiously deliv-ered thanks to the Bureau of Supplies. Throuoh theextraordinary efforts of the Bureau of Finance, tele-phones were installed within four days despite the strikethat kept other New Yorkers waiting for such servicefor the better part of a yeara major coup in itself.The intricate and time-consuming procedure by whichthe Board of Education and the government of the Cityof New York authorize entering into a lease agreement,a process usually taking four to eight months, was com-pleted in less than one month thanks to the staff workof the Office of School Planning, the Office of Counsel,the Bureau of Real Estate of the City of New York,and above all, thanks to each member of the Boardof Education and to each member of the Board of Es-timate without whose unanimous consent votes thatspeed would have been impossible. (Note: Problemsdeveloped later with respect to the lease, but not asa consequence of any of the supportive work reportedhere.) Last, but far from least in this thoughtful but fren-zied gearing-up period, was the continued and vital helpof Community School District 12its Board, its actingsuperintendent, its staff. They took care of staff payrollsand saw to the continuity in salary payments (a moraleinsurer if ever there was one); they provided temporaryoffice space while the move was being planned; theyprovided clerical help and other office support duringthe interim period; they helped "schedulize" the LearningCooperative budget, consisting of $250,000 from theChancellor's Fund and $50,000 from the RockefellerBrothers Fund grant. What friends!

During this transitional period, on October 5, 1971,Superintendent Ralph Brande, President of the New YorkAssociation of Superintendents called a special meetingof the Association for the purpose of exploring the re-lationship of the Superintendents and their Boards tothe Learning Cooperative and its working concept. Foursupportive directions for action came out of that meeting:

Endorsement of the concept of voluntary coop-eration among the districts through the LearningCooperative mechanism, as well as through otherestablished mechanisms, for advancing educa-tional improvement;

Establishment of a Superintendents' Committee towork with the Learning Cooperative's staff to thisend (the committee members are: Superinten-

7

tints Berchuck, Donaldson. Taylor, Si:ver, andWiesenthal);

Endorsement of a questionnaire wherein super-intendents could cite "programs that work" in theirdistricts, the results of which would assist theLearning Cooperative staff in carrying out one ofits mandates;

Agreement that it would be procedurally both ap-propriate and convenient for communication withthe Community Boards and schools and person-nel in the districts concerning Learning .Coop-erative activities to go through the respective su-perintendents, just as communication with theBoard of Education would go through the Chan-cellor.

versity people began to seek out discussions about waysto work together. Foundation personnei began to contactstaff for advice about proposals from public schoolsor related organizations requesting funding for innovativeprojects. Of course, commercial companies beganknocking at the door to sell their wares. It was a periodor furious activity, often leaving staff drained of energy,but it clearly established that a broad spectrum of peoplewere responding positively to our coocept of and ex-pecations for a "learning cooperative." This broad spec-trum produced often conflicting concepts and expec-tations but at least one mistaken idea was firmly refuted.the notion that the Learning Cooperative had some fivemillion dollars to spend in support of "innovation andchange."

Thus it was that on Friday afternoon, October 15,the staff of the Learning Cooperative moved into thestarkly empty but somehow gracious (probably becauseof the view of the Hudson, "the mighty river of the moun-tains") suite 425 at 475 Riverside Drive. The new or-ganization was underway by the aimed-for date.

On Monday and from then on, the staff were off andrunning. The telephones began to ring, bringing requestsfor information, for appointments, for money, and foropportunities to share ideas. The mail began to bringsimilar requests. People dropped in and, unbotheredby the lack of furniture, got down to whatever businesshad brought them. Questionnaires began to come infrom the districts and staff began to go out to visit dis-tricts to see the exemplary programs specified and totalk with the district personnel involved. College and uni-

8

Defining the Learning Cooperative and itsRole

The staff's work during this highly active, thoughsomewhat formless, period (October-December) ledthem to perceive certain recurring themes or leitmotifswhich helped to define more clearly the rote of the Co-operative. Some of these themes, expressed as needsfelt, are:

1. The need for help with the money problem.Everywhere there was expressed a need for fundsto support innovative and effective programs.especially in this period of budget crisis and se-vere cutbacks. This was the most recurrent theme.Direct funding from the Learning Cooperative wassought in the mistaken belief that the Cooperative

had five million dollars to allocate for such pur-poses. When the facts about the funding levelwere known, the need for a strategy for findingother sources for funds and for finding alternativeways of redirecting presently available funds sur-faced and defined an important role for the Learn-ing Cooperative.

2. The need for a connection among like-mindedschool people. For example. people involved indeveloping "alternative schools" and "alternative"school programs felt somewhat isolated, there-fore, somewhat vulnerable. They wantea oppor-tunities to meet with each other, to share exper-iences with each other, to gain nourishment andsuccor from each other. The linkages they soughtwould, of necessity, cross district lines, cross linesbetween elementary, junior and senior highschools, cross lines between cities (e.g. contactwith the Parkway School in Philadelphia and withthe Adams School in Oregon), and cross linesbetween public and private efforts (e.g., contactwith "independent public schools" such as TheChildren's Community Workshop School). Devel-opment of networks of like-minded people andtheir schools defined an important role for theLearning Cooperative.

3. The need for a connecting mechanism betweensystem "insiders" and "outsiders" so that ed-ucational ideas, services and resources of bothcould be made available in a more powerful wayto their mutual or overlapping clientele. For exam-ple, museums, performing arts groups, commu-nity corporations, and certain businesses all arecarrying out educational programs for school-aged youth. On the other hand, schools seekeducative opportunities and experiences for theftstudents outside the viz:Hs of the schools. A needto serve this mutual concern defined another im-portant role for the Learning Cooperative.

4. The need for a conduit for ideas and proposalsfor districts that would simply be more convenientthan is travelling to see people in all thirty-onedistricts, especially when the likelihood is that notall of the districts need or could profitably usea given idea or service. This need, too, defineda role for the Learning Cooperative.

5. The need for program development and model-building assistance, almost of the consultativekind, so that basically good ideas could be turnedinto viable proposals, and programs that couldindeed be adopted and implemented. This de-fined another role for the Learning Cooperative,especially vis-a-vis people outside the school sys-tem (e.g. college personnel who are planningtraining programs for teachers and other staff)

who wanted to develop something that could beused by those inside the system.

6. The need for advocacy. Second only to the needfor funding, the need for advocacy was the mostfrequently expressed. It came in many guises andfrom all directions. There were teachers, oftenjust a cluster of teachers working together in "apiece" of one school who knew that what theywere doing was good and right and effective, butfelt a lack of supportnot just tangible supportin resources, but also in terms of psychologicalsupport. There were manyparents, teachers,principals, even studentswho said in effect,The Chancellor seems to be on our side and

so does the Board of Education, but despite thatadvocacy, it is still difficult to effect change withoutaction-type support." Others talked about thegood things that are happening in the schoolsout in the districts and detried the fact that thenews media seem interested only in carrying the"horror stories." "Who is going to speak up forour side?" was a continuing plea put, in questionform. Others expressed concern about what theyperceived as a powerful and perhaps organizedeffort to discredit the decentralized districts, ac-cusing them variously: as being run by inept ama-teurs; or as being run by venal politicos bentupon reinstituting the spoils system in education;or as being too conservative to care about andencourage fundamental change; or as being runby racists interested in Maintaining and extendingracial isolation in the schools. Those who ex-pressed this concern were as angry and frustratedas anyone else, if not more so, about whatevermalfunctioning aspects of decentralization exist,but they still held to a fundamental belief thatbetter education will ensue from grass-roots in-volvement in the educational process and thatdecentralization is the best hope in that regard.Advocacy for this position was sought. Finally,there was a pervasive belief that excellence inNew York City public education could be re-created and there was a yearning for both ad-vocacy on this point and for joint effort towardthis end. These feelings and expressions shapedin a major way the role of the Learning Coop-erative.

Clearly none of these needs could be met by a smallstaff working alone. Equally clearly, all of them couldbe addressed with some hope of success by the as-siduous efforts of a cooperative group catalyzed by asmall supportive staff. It is that reality which definedthe Learning Cooperative and the function of its head-quarters' staff.

Thus, as a result of the flurry of activity in the October

9

through December period, greater clarity of definitionof the Cooperative and of the function of its headquar-ters' staff emerged:

The Learning Cooperative consists of the voluntarycooperative effort among the thirty-one commu-nity school districts, their constituenciesstudents, teachers, -administrators, parents, com-munity peopleand individuals and groups fromthe private and public sectors to promote con-structive educational change and improvementwhich can be seen in results obtained for chil-dren.

The role of the Learning Cooperative's headquar-ters' personnel is to provide staff support to thateffort. Thus, while organizationally an arm of theOffice of the Chancellor, the Learning Cooper-ative's office functions in the field, serving as acatalytic agent among the cooperating groups intheir educational change and development effortsand serving to assist in disseminating informationpertinent to those efforts.

The basic mission of the Cooperative is to re-create educational excellence by making educa-tional failure in New York City public educationillegitimate.

The chief strategy for accomplishing the missionis to demonstrate that there are solutions to urbaneducation problems, that some of them existnow, that many of them exist in New York Citypublic schools. The purpose of such demonstra-tions is to move others to positive action to improveeducation throughout the city.

The central enabling concept is that whatever isto be accomplished can be accomplished by co-operative and collaborative efforts.

"Design for Change" Emerges and GivesShape and Direction to the Work.

One other major outcome of these early activitieswas the development of Design for Change, a con-sensus document indicating the shape and directionNew York City education is taking and suggestinga strategy by which to achieve its goals. Everyoneseemed to be talking about educational reform, aword which suggests a new shape for the educationalsystem and its processes. While that new shape wasnot expressed in precise and explicit terms, it wassuggested by certain ideas which recurred both inthings people said and in the kinds of programsthey were developing.

Primarily, people are engaged in changingschools. Some of the recurring ideas in this regardare:

10

sm^.!Inessfewer pupils in contact wit! a few con-cerned adults providing a firmer foundation forbetter education, and for a stronger sense of com-munity as well as of individual identity.

choicechoice being a crucial ingredient forlearning if that choice iP among viable options.

learningeducation being a process, not an ac-quisition.

effectivenessdelivering what has been promisedby the inherent meaning of the term "profession-alism."

humanismeducation in schools being preemi-nently a human transaction between individualsand groups who appreciate one another's worthand value.

Secondly, people are trying to develop stronger, morerealistic, and more relevant -to- daily -life- and learninglinkages between school experiences and educativeexperiences available outside the schools.

students learn outside school as well as in, andwhat they learn elsewhere :s not only seminalto their development but also should be creditedin school as learning.

metropolitan New York has a wealth of resourcesthat the schools can put to the use of all studentsby integrating those resources into the curri-culum.

The schools and the out-of school resources, workingtogether as an interacting :'ietwork, form the new ed-ucational system people are trying to bring into being.To make this work well, however, thre' support mech-anisms are deemed essential.

1Adequate and appropriately used human resources.a comprehensive staff development and trainingprogram within the context of developing all ofthe human resources needed to devise, carry out,and maintain programs of educational change,reform, renewal, and improvement.

2Adequate and appropriately used financial resources.a program through which educators and con-cerned laymen, having secured, as they must,a higher level of monetarj, support for public edu-cation, may learn how better to handle whateverbudget allocation is ultimately made in such away as to get the most in educational results fromthe monetary investment, using a zero-base ornon-incremental planning, programming andbudgeting approach.

3An information systeman educational information and feedback systemfor personnel working in well-designed programsto make timely and accurate mid-course correc-

tions, and for the interested public to know aboutthe results ensuing from this work in compre-hensible and trustworthy terms.

The Learning Cooperative staff in cooperation witha member of the Chancellor's personal staff and a mem-ber of the staff of the New York City Center for Planningdecided, late in December, to commit to paper whatexperience suggested was the consensus of thoughtamong those with whom they had been in contact. Thatstatement, after having been written in synthesized formby the Learning Cooperative's director, distributedbroadly, and revised in terms of the reactions received,became the document, Design for Change, publishedas a special supplement to The Staff Bulletin, May 15,1972. (See Appendix.)

The Design represents the consensus of thoughtamong forward-looking people in the districts, at centralheadquarters, and among others concerned about thedirection New York City public ek Jcation should take(and is taking, to some degree) at this juncture in time.It also suggests a comprehensive strategy fcr bringinginto being the kind of education envisioned.

The rest of this report is organized around the pur-poses delineated by the Chancellor on September 9,1971, but by January, 1972, Design for Change hadbecome the central organizing principle of the LearningCooperative's work since it did represent the kind ofconsensus referred to and it did provide the strategyneeded to implement that consensus.

Responding to the Purposes Delineated bythe Chancellor

Purpose #1:To help identify useful practices and programsthat work; disseminate information about them,and encourage the spread of their benefits toas many students as possible.

There is a dynamic interaction between the identi-fication of successful programs and practices on theone hand and the dissemination of information aboutthem on the other. Dissemination processes generateresponses which lead to the identification of programsnot discovered by previously used identification tech-niques and procedures. Thus what is reported belowwas not the result of a linear process but rather of a spiral-ling process involving bOth program identification pro-cedures and dissemination processes.

While the June 2-3 Conference served as the majorand culminating event for disseminating informationabout "programs that work," there were other activitiesduring the year which also served that purpose. Includedin this category were radio and television programs,

newspaper articles, and internal school system memoran-da, as well as meetings and special events.

Among the most effective means of dissemination,aside from periodic memoranda to superintendents withcopies to Community Boards, was by way of meetingsof "ad hoc committees" and other "special event" meet-ings which brought together individuals and groupsaround mutual interests and cer.(;erns. For example, adhoc committees were formed on each of the problemsand issues which, ultimately, became the major themesfor the June 2-3 Conference. Ad hoc committees onreading, mathematics, bilingual education, alternativeschools, and alternative non-school routes to educationwere formed and these met over severet weeks' ormonths' time to hammer out the issues, to share in-formation on working and workable solutions, and toplan the best ways of disseminating such informationto a broader audience. Special events, meetings, andworkshops (such as the on solutions in readingwhich was attended by f,om 1krly-five heads of schools)made for another dissemination mechanism. These meet-ings and events, held at the Learning Cooperative'sheadquarters (which headquarters were increasinglyfunctioning as a prototype "teachers center"), were par-ticularly effective in that action back at the school andschool district levels tended to flow from them.

Brief articles appeared in the New York Times, theDaily News, the New York Post, and other general-distribution publications. Other articles appeared in

special-audience publications such as the Board ofEducation's Staff Bulletin and (a brief piece in) the NewYork Elementary School Principals' Association'sNYPAN. For the most part, very little appeared in thepublic press.

Learning Cooperative staff appeared on "These areYour Schools" (Joy Fisher, WHN-Radio), presenting anoverview of the Learning Cooperative concept, its ac-tivities, the Design for Change document, and someof the "linkage" programs which were in the develop-mental stages. The appearance of the Director of theLearning Cooperative on Not for Women Only" (Bar-bara Walters, NBC-TV) proved to be an excellent op-portunity to present positive statements about publiceducation in New York City. Originally, the planners ofthe program desired to do a program highlighting prob-lems in the public school system and to contrast theseby presenting alternative schools and programs outsidethe public sector. The Learning Cooperative Directorargued forcefully that by dwelling upon failures the pro-gram would add nothing new to the educational dialogue,would give parents and others no reason to hold on tohope, and would nurture the failure syndrome. Sheinsisted on stressing positive features of public educa-tion, focusing upon solutions rather than on prob-lems. This turned the whole tone of the program around,

11

a fact generously and openly and publicly acknow-ledged by Ms. Walters at the end of the five-day seriesof half-hour programs. Interestingly, too, during thesummer this program was selected for re-run as beingamong the programs which had gained, during the reg-ular season, the greatest amount of favorable publicreaction.

Other appearances were made on "Black Pride" (Al-ma John, WOR-TV), "Straight Talk" (Ellie Guggenheim,WNEW-TV), "Su Sistema Escolar" (Carlos Dominici,WADO-Radio), and "Notinias" (Nydia Negron, Channel41-TV). During each of these appearances staff con-tinued to focus on solutions in a consistent effort tomake educational failure illegitimate.

In every instance of such publicity described above,the initiative was not taken by Learning Ccoper:Itive staff.Press releases were never issued by the Ccooerative.A :nw profile on the staff operation, right or wrong, wasan intentional and deliberate decision. The staff's de-termination was to lay stress on the cooperative natureof what was being done and to focus attention on whatCommunity Districts and the other "cooperators" wereachieving. Staff were especially concerned about seem-ing to be in the public relations business, rather thanin the business of supporting districts in their educationalchange and development efforts. It was this concernthat led to the decision cited above. It may prove tohave been a mistake, given the realities of our times,but staff stand by the decision and by the motivationsfrom which it proceeded.

We Are Into Solutions" was the watchword of theCity-wide June 2-3 Dissemination Conference held atTeachers College, Columbia University. As the majorculminating activity of the year's work, the Conferenceprovided an opportunity for bringing to the public at-tention practices and programs that had been found

,onal Success

dr the Children

of N. Y. C.?

Then you are invited to a

CONFERENCEWe are intoSolutions for

Education in N. Y. C.

JUNE 2 and 3,19729 A.M. to 5 P.M.

`CHEM COLLEGE,

UNIVERSITY

12

I. I tWh?

II. THE MrsWhy Not

BILINGUAL E.Why Not Effe.

IV. TRAINED PEOPL,Why Not Create

V THERE ARE ALTERV.Why Not Create I

VI. SCHOOLING IS

ROUTES TO EDUCIWhy Not Provide 1

VII. CREATIVE SCHOOOUT SPENDING 1C.

Why Not Do It WI-

VIII. PARENT AND CCMORE THAN CA

Why Not Crept,

Ix. SOLUTIONS RF

THE BOARDBOARD ANr

Why nowhich

to work well. The Conference boldly asserted that viablesolutions exist. The following crucial questions wereposed:

If there are solutions anywhere in our city, whyare there not solutions wherever similar conditionsprevail?

If there are viable solutions to our educationalproblems, why do we continue to tolerate edu-cational failure?

Do we dare make educational failure in New YorkCity illegitimate?

Do we dare succeed with New York City'schildren?

Nine conference themes gave order to the presen-tations made by participants in community district pro-grams, college-affiliated programs, cultural programs,community-based programs as well as educational pro-grams developed in the private sector. The presentationswere given at plenary sessions, workshops, seminars,and through exhibits and the use of the media.

Theme 1.The Reading Problem has been solved; whynot solve it where you are?

The conference dared to assert and to prove thatthe reading problem has been solved. By that assertionthe point was made that we know enough to eliminatemost of the reading failure that is now so evident inour school system. The problem lies not so much innot knowing what to do as in not applying widely, deeplyand pervasively the best of what is known in this field.Thus just as children are still contracting measles despiteour knowing how to prevent that disease, so too donsreading failure persist despite our knowing enough toprevent most of such failure. The Conference asserted,therefore, that we don't have a reading problem; we havean instructional problem and an instructional personneldevelopment and training problem; we have a testingand evaluation and interpretation problem; we have aninformation gathering and dissemination problem; and,at the very foundation, we have a problem of consolida-tion of relevant and reliable research findings in the fieldof reading. Together, these constitute "the readingproblem" and they should be solvable. Certainly con-certed and thoughtful attention should be given to themand informed action with respect to them must be taken.

In order to focus sharply and clearly on that pointin the learning-to-read process which probably is themajor cause of most reading failure, the Conferencezeroed in on programs which are successful in helpingbeginning readers to acquire basic literacy quickly andwell. Basic literacy is defined as the ability to read andwrite what one can say and understand. Thus, the Con-ference focused on that small but crucially importantaspect of learning to read which consists in gaining

command of a written symbol code by the use of whichlearners can handle in spatial terms (reading and writing)that which they can already handle in temporal terms(speaking and listening). When we remember that mostbasal readers "deliver" to pupils who are 100% suc-cessful with the program about 250 words and whenwe also remember that research indicates that the aver-age child comes to school having some 6,000 wordsat his command, we can appreciate tf.e validity of pro-grams which reject the "controlled vocabulary" approachrepresented by the basal readers and which insteadadopt an approach which "delivers" to pupils a symbolsystem by the use of which they can write and readthe language they bring to school with them. By thelatter approach, even the most "linguistically handi-capped" child will be able to read many more wordsthan the basal reader will "deliver" to the pupil whois most successful with that approach. Moreover, theapproach here recommended demonstrates the concep-tual unity and validity of bilingual education since it restsupon the requirement that beginning reading be taughtin the language the child has when he comes to school.Thus j-ie recommended approach totally rejects the no-tion that children who come to school speaking andunderstanding a language other than English are "lin-guistically handicapped." Quite the contrary; they areas linguistically richly endowed as are any other broadcategory of children.

The Dissemination Conference shared with its par-ticipants both total school programs and smaller pro-grams within schools which have "delivered" this kindof basic literacy to pupils. An important example wasCommunity School 234, Bronx. This is a school whosepupil population is about 65% Hispanic in background(mostly Puerto Rican) and about 35% Afro-Americanin background. it is located in a designated povertyarea in the Tremont section of the South Bronx. It ope-rates under the same constraints as do other publicschools in poverty areasincluding high class size, lowbudget allocations and relatively inexperienced staff. Onthe other hand, it has a comprehensive, understood,and vigorously accepted philosophy of education. It hasa strong leadership cadre and a dedicated staff which,together, participated in an intensive and on-going train-ing program. Finally, it has an organizational climate,created by all of the participants (including parents!.which fosters learning and growth. They use not merelythe "tool" of ihe words-in-color approach but much moreimportant, they use the educational philosophy which il-luminates all of Dr. Caleb Gattengo's work which sostrongly rests on the concept of building on the powersof children. Consequently, the results obtained have beenlittle short of spectacular. By the date of the Conference'(the school having begun to implement this programabout October 15, just eight months earlier), that preciouspossession called basic literacy as defined above had

been acquired by all but about 80 kindergartners (out ofabout 200), all but about 40 first graders (out of about300), and all but about 10 second graders (out of about300).

rierne 2.The Mathematics Problem has been solved;why not solve it where you are?

The conference used the same basic approach toprove the validity of its assertion that the mathematicsproblem has been solved that it used with respect tothe reading problem. Mathematics is a way of thinkingthat uses symbolic logic and as such calls forth thestudents' ability to use the abstract thought processeswhich he has demonstrated he possesses from his daysin the crib onward. Many of the concepts and techniquesof the mathematics laboratories approach call upon thepowers that children already possess. Included in theDissemination Conference were demonstrations andworkshops simulating mathematics laboratories.

A dramatic example which showed the results of oneof these techniques (the use of algebricks or cuisinairerods) was demonstrated at a plenary session. First gradestudents from Community School 234, Bronx (the schoolwhich is implementing Dr. Caleb Gattegno's philosophyand approach) were presented with a complex math-ematical sentence and asked to complete it without useof paper or pencil. The sentence was similar to thefollowing one:

49 million 64 million + (900 400)

+ (8 x 5) + 1/3 of 30) + 32 =The students not only completed the sentence but

their apparent understanding and facility made somein the audience cry "fix." This reaction made it clearthat many people not only underestimate children's po-wers of reasoning but also underestimate their own po-wers. They did not notice that, at base, the problemabove does not really go beyond what first-grade teach-ers are prone to call "number facts, one to ten." Havingunderstood that point, perhaps teachers will understandmore clearly what the teachers at C.S. 234, under Dr.Gattegno's tutelage, mean when they say that the onlything one can educate in man is his awareness.

In addition to the demonstrations of successful math -

ematics programs (including district and school math-ematics laboratories and a computer managed instruc-tional program), there was shown a multi-media exhibitwhich, in truly poetic terms, called attention to the sheerbeauty of mathematics as it can be seen in the totalenvironment. This exhibit is available for use by anyeducation-related agency.

13

Theme 3.Bilingual Education is effective; why not effectit where you are?

Bilingual education is of such obvious value, it is littleshort of unconscionable that it is taking so long to becomprehensively implemented. Two simple-to-under-stand ideas make its case: a child should begin his formaleducational development in the language he thinks in,speaks in arid conceptualizes in, while he makes thetransition to another language; and facility in more thanone language is one mark of an educated person. Thishas always been true but its value increases as themodern world becomes more interdependent and cross-cultural. The ideal goal would be for every graduate ofthe city's schools to be multi-lingual; at the minimumeach should be bilingual. Indeed, bilingual educationis something we owe our children.

A few, a very few, painfully few, good examples ofbilingual schools and programs were found and pre-sented at the conference. They included:

Community School 25 in District 7Community School 211 in District 12The Bilingual Mini-School at JHS 45, in Dist. 4La Escuela Infantil in District 4District 13's Title VII Bilingual ProgramProject Best (in a few schools in districts 4, 7,

9, 12.)The multi-media bilingual education exhibit, which

was a highlight of the Conference, gave sound and sightto the substantive bilingual programs presented.

Theme 4.Trained People make programs work; why notcreate good programs where you are?

It is a truism that programs are only as good asthe people who carry them out. An essential step inthe successful implementation of any educational pro-gram is the development, training, directing and redi-recting of the participants in the program. The partici-pants referred to include: parents, who provide guidanceand direction from the beginning of life for their children;teachers, who provide in-school instruction; administra-tors, who direct and assist teachers and students; com-munity people, who as volunteers or as paraprofession-als assist in classrooms and elsewhere in the educativeprocess; and students, who assist other students in avariety of ways and settings including tutorial situations.Each of these individuals assumes a role in the overalleducative process and each has a direct effect on chil-dren as he performs that role. These roles must beclearly defined, the interaction among them must befully understood, and the training required to carry themout must be provided.

14

Several programs were highlighted at the Dissemi-nation Conference which demonstrate the fulfillment ofthe need for such human resource development. Train-ing programs for parents and community people werepresented in workshop and seminar sessions offeredby the United Parents Association, the United BronxParents, the Harlem Parents Union, and the "Charette".These activities are referred to in Theme 8 below. Pro-grams which focus on the development of instructionalpersonnel were demonstrated. Brief descriptions follow.

The QuEST program, offered by the United Federationof Teachers, was presented in workshop style de-monstrating the techniques used in QuEST-spon-sored mini-courses. This is an exemplary programwhich has in it some of the best elements of theBritish Teachers Centres.

The Teachers, Inc. held workshops and seminars de-monstrating their approaches to developing skills andtechniques with paraprofessionals and teachers. Itsprograms are offered in a degree-granting cooper-ative agreement with Antioch College.

The Creative Teaching Workshop set up a stimulatingenvironment and carried out activities which simu-lated those which occur in their own workshop fa-cility. In addition, there were demonstrations and par-ticipatory activities giving insight into working in theopen education way. The City College Advisory Ser-vice to Open Corridors, the City College TTT Program(Training Teachers of Teachers) and the CommunityResources Institute all held workshop sessions de-monstrating their approaches for training personnelin open education philosophy and technique.

Other human resource development programs wereincluded in the presentation made by the groups referredto in Theme 5, Alternative Schools, and in Theme 6,Non-School Routes to Education. In each case, stresswas put on the importance of selecting and effectivelypreparing personnel for rol:s in providing rich learningexperiences for children.

Theme 5.There Are Alternative Schools that work; whynot create them where you are?

For a child, the term "alternative school" has littlemeaning since the school he attends is the "alternative"made available to him. Adults should not forget that.They should be aware that what is really important toguarantee in a school is not that it is an "alternativeschool" but that it is an effective "alternative" for thechildren and youth it serves. Any other position is morallywrong, for adults have no moral right to create "good"schools and call them "alternative" schools while leaving

"regular" or "other" schools to do what they will withthe lives and minds of children. Thus, the Learning Go-operative is much less concerned with "alternativeschools" than it is with schools which provide effectivealternatives for children and other participants. Indeed,"options" is by far the better word to describe whatwe have in Mind since the word "alternatives" suggestschoice between two while the word "options" suggestschoice among many.

The Dissemination Conference presented severalschools which offer effective options for children andtheir parents. It was made clear that such effectiveschools are not miraculous occurrences that happenonly in one place, at one time, but that tney developas the outgrowth of planned strategies and approacheswhich can be used by other schools as well.

The schools presented at the Conference varied/greatly indeed, uniqueness was their hallmarkbut

they had some common characteristics. Each schoolhad a unifying philosophy and a coherent educationalstrategy which served as a foundation for all its activities.In each case, the school's staff identified with this phi-losophy and this strategy, and felt themselves to be partof a total effort. Some of the schools were fairly new, andhad been established with a p:-,.-icular philosophy inmind. Others had begun as str.i-ardized institutions,but had developed or defined their philosophy in thecourse of their operations. In either case, however, it wasthe conceptual unify of the school, the sense of purposeleading to sustained forward motion, that made the schoolsuccessful.

Even with this single unifying principle, there was greatvariation among the schools presented at the confer-ence. Some were "sub-schools" operating within a moretraditional school, some were small "spin-offs" or mini-schools still connected with their parent institution. Oneschool, P.S. 3, Manhattan, was a Board of Educationfacility whose educational plan was developed almostentirely by its community, while another, the Children'sCommunity Workshop, originated as an independentpublic school and subsequently was declared a partof District 3. Others were regular New York publicschools which had developed new and effective ed-ucational approaches; they included P.S. 152, Brooklyn,P.S. 92, Bronx, and P.S. 31, Bronx.

Philosophies varied as much as physical and orga-nizational aspects. At C.S. 232 Bronx, where humanisticeducation is the guiding principle, each teacher is en-courageJ to develop his own educational strategy, basedon his individual style and on the needs and interestof his students. C.S. 129-234 Bronx, was designed fromits inception according to the educational philosophyand teaching strategies espoused by Dr. Caleb Gat-tegno. Severa: other, schools use open education as a

school-wide philosophy. Two spin-off schools, the Clin-ton Program and the Joan of Arc Mini-school madeextensive use of New York City's social and culturalinstitutions as part of their regular educational program.A sub-school at P.S. 126 Manhattan, was organizedby a special consultant, George Richmond, using mod-els of the political, economic and social systems in so-ciety to relate curriculum areas to the real world.

The conference presented the basic concept aroundwhich each school was organized and the major strate-gies being used by each school to implement that basicconcept. The alternative schools exhibit was a labyrinth ofpartitions, creating a series of small defined areas wherestatements and pictorial representations related to eachschool were presented. At the center of the labyrinthwas a series of slide projectors, presenting a medleyof scenes from the various schools. This combinationof separate areas and collective presentations trench-antly communicated the essential idea: that there aremany good educational models, and that each schoolmust be able to select, define and implement its ownparticular strategy if it is to function with maximum ef-fectiveness.

Theme 6.Schooling is important, but Non-schoolRoutes to Education are valid too; why notprovide them where you are?

Schools, no matter how effectively they function, neverprovide total educational experiences because there ismuch to learn outside of school. This may be true else-where, but it is especially true in New City, withits abundant social and cultural resources.

The development of non-school routes to educationprovides a way for schools to link themselves with out-side agencies and experiences, thereby incorporatingother forms of education into their ongoing programs.At the Conference, several types of non-school routeswere presented. The abundance of resources availableand limited conference time prescribed selectivity. A de-cision was made to illustrate the general principles byfocusing upon resources in the visual arts.

The non-school routes to education in the visual artsincluded a number of programs. Some of these weredeveloped by school districts, others by art museums,and still others were independent of any major institution.It was significant however, that these programs sharedbasic philosophic premises, despite the diversity of theirorigins. These premises are that art can serve as ameans for providing the basic and essential componentsof a child's education, and that the perceptual and con-ceptual skills which can be acquired through the artscan be applied to all other aspects of the educational

15

process. They further indicate a belief that art is not

an "extra-curricular" activity, but an essential part ofeach child's education. What emerged therefore, wasthe possibility that different children might require dif-ferent approaches or different media to learn effectively,whether these media were visual arts, p2-rforming arts,science, photography or others. It is thus especially im-portant that no child be denied the opportunity to exploreany area of the total spectrum of such educational ex-periences.

Of the programs presented at the Conference, severalhad been developed by major art museums in NewYork City. The Musa m of Modern Art has establisheda community art center in a renovated facility in Harlem,the Children's Art Carnival, which employs the motiva-tional and conceptual techniques developed by VictorD'Amico. Another program, developed by the Guggen-heim Museum, is directed specifically to meeting thetotal educational needs of inner-city children throughart activities.

Two community districts have developed full-scalecultural museums. El Museo del Barrio, in District 4,focuses on Puerto Rican history and art, while the Dist,.ct12 Heritage Museum is devoted to the Afro-Americanand Puerto Rican histories and cultures, the sciences,the arts, and much more. Also presented were programsthat had developed independently, including ARTS, Inc.which works with teachers and their classes, and theChildren's Art Workshop which operates a storefront artcenter during after school hours.

Despite the variety of these programs, all were unifiedin their effective use of out-of-school settings and visualart media to provide effective learning experiences forchildren.

Theme 7.Creative School Space can be built withoutspending 10 years and $10 million; why notdo it where you are?

There are many communities in New York City whichneed more school space, and need it r )w. Constructionof a new school, even after projects are approved, takesfive to ten years, and costs five to ten mi;I:on dollars.One answer to the school space problem therefore, liesin the rapid renovation of "found space." This doesnot mean, of course, that communities should abandontheir existing schools, or abate herr efforts to obtainnew buildings. Excellent education can take place inany building, however old, while new schools are un-doubtedly a benefit to any area of the city. it does mean,however, that there are alternative solutions to the prob-lem of overcrowding, that districts can create new, ex-citing educational facilities in a fraction of the tame it

16

would take to build a new building, and at a fractionof the cost.

Several examples of the creative use of found spacewere focused upon at the Conference. One of the moststriking was the Burnside Manor School in District 10,

Bronx. It is an annex to P.S. 26. Burnside Manor, pre-viously a catering hail for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs,was turned into a school with minimal renovation. Theballroom remained. its crystal chandeliers looking downon an open space classroom, with children sitting onthe red pile carpet, and activity centers tucked in amidthe rococo plasterwork. Students get books from a read-ing center which was previously the bar. Balance beamsand parallel bars in a former dressing room, form partof a "scatter-site" gymnasium. The guidance office islocated in the bride's room, replete with mirrors ar--1chaise longue. The auditorium is the former weddingchapel, with canopy still intact. The building actively en-gages the eye of the viewer, and provides sufficientstructure for educational activities, without impinging tooaggressively upon them.

The Block School, in Brooklyn, is an early childhoodfacility which was developed by staff and communitytogether. It is another extraordinarily beautiful exampleof the genre. Planned with the help of Educational Fa-cilities Laboratory, it is located in a renovated synagoguewhich had been a supermarket earlier. Internal partitionscreated a series of attractive spaces specially designedto fit the top-quality educational program of this ex-emplary school for pre-schoolers.

C.S. 211, Eronx, a bilingual school, was placed inan abandoned mattress factory, with large carpeted areasserving as the prinicipal educational spaces. It was thepioneering model for the genre in New York City. It

continues to be a prime example.C.S. 232, Bronx, an upper grade elementary school,

was an old bowling alley, renovated to provide classroomspace for 800 children. The blank white outer walls ofthe building sport a band of graffiti (which some ob-servers say is a free-style outdoor mural), but, real van-dalism has been almost non-existent at this school:. Thisis partially due to the school's educational excellencebut the principal attributes it to the building itself whichsimply does not look like an "institution type" school.

in addition to schools themselves, a number of non-school educational facilities use found space to excellentadvantage. These include the Children's Art Carnival (lo-cated in a renovated garage in Harlem), the Children'sArt Workshop (two storefronts on the Lower East Side),and El Museo del Barrio (a brownstone in East Harlem),and the District 12 Heritage Museum (the balcony ofan old movie palace).

The District 12 Center represents a combination ofuses for found space facilities. Seriously overcrowded,the district decided to move its office facilities out of

the elementary school where it was located, and intcan office building which was attached to an abandonedvaudeville theater, the Fairmount. Part of lt-le office build-ing was used for District and Community Board offices,while the remainder was transformed into an open spaceschool for third and fourth grade children, with carpetedfloors and accoustically treated ceilings providing au-ditory privacy, and movable partitions serving as sightbreakers and space dividers while providing visual pri-vacy. At the same time the theater portion of the buildingis being planned as a multi-purpose educational center.In the balcony, a heritage museum for children in thedistrict is almost complete. Concrete platforms extendingout from the balcony, form a series of interpenetratingspaces. The ceiling and the walls were repainted, pre-serving the original art nouveau design. The main floorof the theater is to form the rest of the multi-purposecenter providing a series of variable spaces where meet-ings, performances, workshops and staff training ses-sions and rehearsals can take place beneath the greatdome of the theater.

At the Conference, a panel discussion was presentedas part of the third plenary session which explored var-ious alternatives for using "found space" for educationalfacilities. Significantly, it was combined with the panelsession on non-school routes to education, an areawhere "found space" has been used much more ex-tensively. Together, these provided a preliminary ideaof the new forms and new settings which comprise oneof the basic directions described in Design for Change.

Theme 8.Parent and Community Participation can bemore than "cake sales": why not create ef-fective models where you are?

The decentralization of the school system is rootedin tho belief that community involvement is good foreducation, and decentralization was enacted to accom-plish that end. Parent participation is obviously an im-portant part of community participation. Several activeparent organizations made presentations at the June 2-3Dissemination Conference.

The United Parents Association has a long historyof influential involvement with the schools. The consistentwork that U.P.A. has carried out includes pioneeringwork in training and organizing parents to act as equaland effective partners in the education of their children;to carry out a "watch dog function with respect to theschools; to lobby at all levels for increased funding andother support for public education; and to engage inabiding advocacy for the rights of children. U.P.A. hasprovided training for parents both for general awareness

and specific skills. These programs were highlighted atthe Conference.

United Bronx Parents has offered very specific andfunctional training for parents in program and budgetevaluations. More recently, the organization has movedbeyond training to program implementation, establishinga parent directed, professionally accredited, cognitively-based day care center. Experiences related to the parenttraining program were highlighted at the Conference.

The Harlem Parents Union also trains parents to beaware and knowledgeable so that they may organizeand act in support of constructive change. In more re-cent days this organization has gone forward in linkingits training efforts with college education. In cooperationwith the Malcolm-King Community College parents asparents and parents as paraprofessionals are gainingcollege credits while both as parents and as parapro-fessionals enhancing their education and improving theirlife chances in general. This program was highlightedat the Conference.

One group of parents in collaboration with a broadconstiiuency which included teachers, administrators,college and university people, district office personnel,and people from the general community at large en-gaged in an extensive, elaborate, and sophisticated plan-ning process which resulted in the establishment of aschool. The process was called the "Charette" and theschool is P.S. 3 in District 2. This program also washighlighted at the Conference.

Theme 9.Solutions Result From Policy and Action byThe Board of Education, Community SchoolBoards and funding agencies: why not makethose policies and take those actions by whichsolutions may be put into effect and throughwhich confidence in the schools may berestored?

This final theme was addressed at the closing plenarysession of the Dissemination Conference and focusedon a call for action from those with decision-makingpowers. The point being made was that although goodprograms exist and offer solutions, support on the districtlevel, and in some cases from the Central Board, iscrucial to their implementation and ultimate success.

Strong statements of commitment and support weremade by individual teachers, students and other schoolpersonnel but the most significant one (other than theringing declaration of support from students) was de-livered by the Vice-President of the New York CitySchool Boards Association, Inc., who called for theadoption of Design for Change as the guiding documentto effect wy.Fitive change in New York City's publicschools. statement follows:

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A CALL FOR ACTION

DENNIS COLEMAN, VICE PRESIDENTNEW YORK CITY SCHOOL BOARDS

ASSOCIATION, INC.

1 We call for adoption of the Design for Change as a positive and useful framework withinwhich community districts may plan for the restructuring of public education leading tothe creation of educational excellence for children of this city.

2. We call for the adoption of solutions offered at this Conference to the crucial educationalproblems we face. Especially do we call for district action to adopt solutions in reading,mathematics, and bilingual education which promise to prevent school failure for hundredsof thousands of our children.

3. We call for special attention to and implementation of those elements of Design for Changethat give public school children some of the rich educational fare that has too often beenprovided only to the children in private schools. Our children deserve more than remedialprograms. They deserve some of the exciting alternative educational programs shown atthis Conference. Specifically, in this regard, we call upon districts to take advantage ofthe following projects now being offered through the Learning Cooperative:

a. Planning Task Forces for art resources centers, science resources centers, urbanstudies programs, and the out-of-city campsite learning programs.

b. Planning grants for the development of Teacher Centers and other human-resourcesdevelopment centers.

c. Advisors for the Open Education Advisory Program.d. Summer Seminars for Teachers in media education.e. Planning grants for the development of Beacon Light Schools.

4. We call upon school districts to examine the funding of programs that work with a viewtoward putting successful programs on a tax-levy-money base. Commitment to programis shown most clearly in the way funds are allocated. We can no longer put our effectiveprograms on unsteady and unsure funding bases (such as Title I, Urban Aid, Title HI,

Title VI), We must put them on our sure money base and that is the tax-levy base. Specifically,we call upon districts to examine the zero-base (or non-incremental) budget procedureas an effective way to accomplish this end.

5. We call upon community districts to be represented on continuing ad hoc committees whichwill work with the Learning Cooperative staff on programs and projects now under way.These include:

a. Reading and Language development including bilingual education.b. Mathematics.c. Open Education Advisory.d. Staff (and other human resources) development, including teacher centers.e. Beacon Ligh. Schools and other alternative schools.f. Linkage Programs (Alternative non-school routes to education.)

D.C.

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FOUR SURPRISING OUTCOMES

Throughout the year, as staff were discovering "pro-grams that work" and disseminating information aboutthem, four impressions were formed which were stronglyconfirmed during the June 2-3 Dissemination Confer-ence. Anyone who participated on both days could nothave failed to notice four surprising outcomes of thesearch-and-dissemination process.

First, educational success has had a hard time gainingand maintaining funding while educational failure hashad hardly a worry about where next year's budgetarysupport is coming from. Virtually every program foundthat is reversing the failure trend either was in dire fi-nancial straights or was resting on money which is byits very nature temporary and shaky. Example afterexample can be given. A few will suffice.

The Block School in District 18 was used as the Con-ference key note example because in large measureit demonstrated a sound solution in each of the majorconference theme areas, including the creative use of"found space." (Note, it is strongly recommended thatevery educator, parent and other person who caresabout children see the twenty-four minute film on thisschool, available from the school or from EducationalFacilities Laboratories or from the Learning Cooperative.)That school was funded with ESEA Title III money whichends in January of 1973. The District is trying to findways to continue the funding, so far without successand, given the severe budget cuts for 1972-73, the dis-trict is unlikely to be able to continue the school inits present form. The school, therefore, is likely to diealtogether in January or to die a slow death by alterationto the point of almost total disfigurement.

Another example. When staff went out to the districtsto see programs identified by Superintendents as ex-emplary, nearly a third of the programs had beendropped for lack of funds. Virtually all of the othersrested upon ESEA Title I or ESEA Title III or New YorkState Urban Aid funding, all of which sources are annualand non-permanent in nature. Virtually none of the pro-grams so identified rested on the tax-levy base, the onlyconstant source of funding.The same is true of almost all programs demonstratedat the Conference. For example: the staff training anddevelopment program that brought about the spectacularresults for children in reading and mathematics at C.S.234 Bronx was financed by ESEA Title I; El Museodel Barrio and the District 12 Heritage Museum arefunded mostly by State Urban Aid and private foun-dations; the bilingual education programs are fundedlargely by ESEA Title VII; the diagnostic reading clinicsand the mathematics laboratories are usually fundedby ESEA Title I or State Urban Aidand so on andon and on. Tax-levy money is conspicuous by its mas-

sive absence from the support base for "programs thatwork." Given the fact that New York City public edu-cation spends close to two billion dollars in tax-levymoney and receives "funded programs" money thatmeasures in the millions, surely the funding pattern in-dicated above is a surprising one, and one that shouldreceive the time and attention of the educational policy-makers.

The second surprising outcome cannot be substanti-ated as clearly as the first since it rests on no numericallyquantifiable base. It is this: we have lived with edu-cational failure for so long that it has almost becomelegitimate. Stories of educational success, surprisinglyare not always welcome. They are sometimes perceivedas being threatening and are therefore both attackedand rejected.

Who among us who watched and listened were not sur-prised by some of the audience reacti-)n when the firstgrade children from C.S. 234 Bronx solved those com-plicated mathematical problems? Expressions of: "Doyou call that a solution to our problem of teaching math-ematics;" of "They've been coached;" of "They're spe-cially picked children;" of That program doesn't workand we know it because we had it in our school" couldbe heard in the auditorium. Similar responses met thehard evidence that some people have indeed "solvedthe reading problem" and with the very pupil populationsthat others insist cannot succeed in reading. As oneteacher expressed it in the plenary session on Saturday,"The air was so full of hostility you could cut it witha knife." It became clear that to a surprising degree,educational failure has become legitimate for many peo-ple, and that for many people there has developed avested interest in and a psychological dependence onchildren's failure in school.

The third surprising outcome, one which should bringhope to those who care and which should be the foun-dation upon which, together, we work to eliminate theforegoing two findings, is that there are solutions to theproblems of urban education, that they exist now, andthat many of them exist in New York City publicschools.

The final surprising outcome is also difficult to prove.It is that people, professionals and laity alike, are wearyof confrontation over educational issues and want nowto move on toward finding and implementing solutions.While the angry and divisive spirit of 1968 lingers insome quarters, most people are tired of the strugglenot so much because they're satisfied with the way thingsare, but because they've found it to be counterproduc-tivP, especially for the children. If confrontation doesindeed surface again it will not occur because thereis a favorable climate for it in the attitudes of thoseconcerned with the public schools. Thus, it seems tothose of us who have been very much in the field this

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year that now is a good time for policy-makers andpractitioners to engage in cooperative collaborative ac-tivity in .,,upport of advancement on all segments of theeducational front.

Purpose #2:To help develop new models and new alter-natives for learning and thereby provide pa-rents and staff with a wider choice of learningprograms.

In the beginning, when staff were first exploring goodpractices and programs. they found a common needamong principals and directors of programs who weredeveloping new models and new alternatives. That needwas for communication, a connection among like-minded educators, and the need to prevent isolationthat would undermine their chances of success. Theyfelt they could share each other's problems and achieve-ments, and could expand their ideas and avoid un-necessary pitfalls. After visiting a considerable numberof exciting schools that were developing programsformed by a given coherent educational philosophy, andafter hearing the repeated call for a mechanism of com-munication, staff developed the Beacon Light Schoolprinciple set forth in Design for Change. Its purposewas to describe on-going program development and toestablish strategies to strengthen and extend the direc-tion already developed by those individual schools andtheir staffs. The real developmental work was begunand continued in the schools, and the contribution ofthe Learning Cooperative became the establishment ofa network that would permit and elicit more systematic,productive communication among those schools.

So it happened that thirty such schools were identified(by themselves, by their district offices, or by others)on the "first cut" and were linked together to form anetwork of schools that were developing comprehensiveeducational programs. The network includes the schoolsheaded by the principals who are participating in thePrincipals as Leaders program.

Each Beacon Light School is unique. Certain basicprinciples unite them and those principles are describedin Design for Change. Part of the Learning Coop-erative's assistance has been to make small incentivegrants in support of the program each school is workingto develop.

Beacon Light Schools are schools in the process ofbecoming." None would claim to be, at this point intime, the "beacon light" by which other searchingschools may find their way. All, however, are earnestlystriving to become such schools. More power to them!

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Most of the developmental work with reference toschools is naturally being done, as described above.by school people themselves with the Learning Coop-erative performing a facilitating role. In the developmentof programs by which schools may be more consistentlyand more powerfully linked to the educational oppor-tunities outside of schools, however, the Learning Co-operative had to take a more actively developmentalrole. To this end, Learning Cooperative staff have beenworking in two related ways: one is to develop linkagemechanisms in several areas; and the other is to strength-en existing .enters that offer learning resources out-side of school to public school students.

To develop linkage mechanisms five task forces wereplanned, in the areas of art, science, performing arts,urban resources and out-of-city re::,ource:,. These taskforces were not intended to be academic or theoreticalgroups, working in isolation, but rather to be actual pro-gram planners. In eacl- case. they were to work withschool districts, cultural institutions, federal agencies andother participants in the cooperative effort to developthe supporting material for the future creation of linkageprograms by those school districts. This material wouldinclude a survey of the resources available in each ofthe five areas, the commitment of key people in socialand cultural institutions to work with school districts, al-ternative models for the development of linkage pro-grams, and the required budgetary implications of thosemodels.

In three cases, the task forces were also charged withcreating one working program, which could serve asa prototype for the development of related programsthroughout the city The science task force, createdthrough the joint efforts of the Learning Cooperative,the Museums Collaborative arid the National Park Ser-vice, was given the opportunity to use the top floor ofTheodore Roosevelt's birthplace, a national monumentunder the direction of the Park Service. The task forcewas to work with school districts, museums, the ParkService itself and other groups to create this prototypescience center to which schools throughout the citycould send classes. The urban resources planning taskforce was given a similar opportunity with two NationalPark Service facilities in the lower Manhattan areaFederal Hall (the old Sub-Treasury Building) and CastleClinton Using these two facilities as a base, the taskforce will create a similar city-wide model, as a prototypefor future district efforts. Finally, the art resources taskforce was created through the joint efforts of the Co-operative and the Museums Collaborative with the in-tention of working with one interested school district tocreate a prototype district center.

In addition to planning new models of this sort, theLearning Cooperative gave its support to other orga-

nizations which were developing new models. Amongthese are the Children's Art Caravan and the Showboat.The Children's Art Caravan was planned by VictorD'Amico as a mobile facility which could travel throughoutthe city 10 bring students and teachers new visual artexperiences. The Cooperative assisted in planning theprogram and then organized meetings with school dis-tricts and with parent groups to explain the principlesof the Caravan and to obtain commitments from districtsfor its implementation phase. The Museum of ModernArt, which was sponsoring the project. felt that these com-mitments would strengthen its efforts to raise the fundsnecessary to cover capital costs.

The Showboat is the world's first floating children's the-ater, developed through the collaborative efforts cf theCity of New York, City Center and the South Street sea-port Museum, and others. The Learning Cooperative par-ticipated in some of the planning and approved the useof its name as a project supporter. This was evidentlyof some importance in obtaining funds for this project.

The Learning Cooperative also assisted a number ofexisting programs which were already functioning aslinkage programs. Typically, these were the programswhich had been identified as being successful, andwhich were presented to the public at the DisseminationConference. The Cooperative's assistance includedsr-nail grants, of the sort lhat were given to Beacon LightSchools, meetings with community school districts, pro-gram planning discussions, and the sponsoring of fund-ing proposals developed by the various programs.

In every case, these linkage programs are developingnew models for learning and viable alternatives for par-ticipants. They. in connection with the Beacon Lightschools, exemplify the new educational network definedby Design for Change.

Purpose #3:To help create linkages among school dis-tricts, schools, individual teachers and groupsof teachers, institutions of higher learning, andvarious other agencies and programs.

Several linkages or channels of communication havebeen established, and some of them have been alludedto above. The abiding goal in this effort is to linkforward-looking institutions or individuals for specificprogrammatic goats, for cross-pollination of ideas andfor productive sharing of experiences. When this is doneefficiently its value cannot be over-estimated.

Among school districts channels of communication al-ready exist in the Consultative Council of School Boards,regular meetings of the superintendents with the Chan-

cellor and the meetings of the Association of Super-intendents. None of these "regular channels" was usedto the extent originally conceived. These meetings tendto focus on necessary but routine matters rather than onsubstantive educational issues.

As was indicated earlier, the Association of Superin-tendents established a Superintendents' Committee onthe Learning Cooperative which met faithfully, during theyear, provided valuable advice, and carried out liaisonwork with superintendents. Given the fact that thesuperintendents were already overburdened with workrelated 10 their normal duties, we can only view withawe and a sense of gratitude their willingness to serveso faithfully and so well in this capacity.

Among schools and school principals the major chan-nel for communication developed is the Beacon LightSchool Network described above. The morale as wellas the programs in these schools have been supportedby the salubrious effects of sharing not only achieve-ments and ways to accomplish them but also problemsand ways to solve them.

Among teachers and other professionals, both indivi-dually and as representatives of groups, communicationwas established in the ad hoc committees which ad-dressed specific topics. There was one committee foreach of the Dissemination Conference's main topics:reading, math., bilingual education, non-school routesto education, parent and community participation, al-ternative schools and human resource development(under the broad heading of which staff training is a majorcomponent). These diligent committees met for longhours, hammering out philosophic basics, where they arebest demonstrated, and how most forcefully to presentthem. It was intended that these ad hoc committees notdisband after the conference. Many of the members rep-resented only their own ideas and their own work. Butothers represented districts, schoois and associations.Some of the organizations represented are: The Elemen-tary Principals' Association, The Harlem Parents' Union,the United Bronx Parents, The United Parents Associa-tion, The Association of Directors, The Puerto Rican Edu-cators Association, The United Federation of Teachers,The New York Association of Black Educators, and TheCouncil of Supervisors and Administrators.

Among students no far-flung constituency for commu-nication existed, But one seriously concerned groupwhich continued to meet enthusiastically was formed forthe Dissemination Conference. The existence of this adhoc committee of students is deeply germane to theLearning Cooperative mission. The support and con-tribution of students toward effecting positive changemakes up the largest untapped reservoir of energy. Turn-ing students on is a ,prerequisite to their benefiting from

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better learning opportunities, as well as a resource forimproving such opportunities.

As a side effect of the Rockefeller Foundation Grantin support of open education in New York City publicschools, four training agencies were brought into closecooperation with each other as an extension of the co-operative relationships each had already formed withthe schools or "pieces" of schools with which they hadbeen working. These agencies are: The City CollegeTTT Program; The City College Open Corridor AdvisoryProgram; The City-University-sponsored CommunityResources Institute; and The Creative Teaching Work-shop. All four groups are conducting school-based train-ing programs; all four have prototype teachers centersfor off-site training activities; and all four, in meeting reg-ularly with Learning Cooperative Staff, are sharing ex-periences with each other at new levels.

The link among the Learning Cooperative, the BankStreet College of Education and the Chase ManhattanBank for the establishment of the Principals-as-Leadersprogram in which elementary school principals exploreand develop leadership is another example. This pro-gram is unique in several ways, the most important ofwhich is that while the "point of intervention" in the trainingprogram is the principal of the school, the "ultimate tar-get" is the school itself. Thus, a new level of account-ability is involved here. Each participant (including thecollege, the bank, and the Learning Cooperative, as wellas the participating schools and their principals) expectsto be a learner in the process. No one gets a "free ride"on this one

It is obvious that among crucial lines of communicationestablished, those in pursuit of funding are importantThese links are described in detail under charge #5below, indicating which agencies were coupled withwhich foundations and for what purposes. One unan-ticipated but highly beneficial consequence of LearningCooperative associations with funding agencies, quiteapart from the benefits accruing from the grants of money,has been the dynamic interaction at the level of ideas.In many cases this continuous and lively cross-fertilization of ideas was at least as important as thefinancial support given and gained.

Purpose #4:To help construct new forms of staff devel-opment in the belief that the best programsare ultimately as good as their practitioners.

The Learning Cooperative has helped construct newforms of staff development by working in three ways.First, the Learning Cooperative staff have participated

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directly in the development of new forms which illustratethe principles which are appropriate to any compre-hensive approach to instructional personnel developmentand training. The prime example of this level of involve-ment is the Principals-as-Leaders program. The princi-ples illustrated include the following:

A training program should have as its ultimate goalthe changing of institutions as total organisms re-gardless of the "point of intervention" selected:

The person, staff, or institution providing the train-ing must be willing to accept accountability for itswork in terms of that ultimate goal, thus merecertification of personnel is not sufficient;

The training program is the mutual responsibilityof the trainer and trainee, thus roles overlap asthey interact;

There must be maintenance of and continued workwithin a "reality situation" throughout the trainingperiod.

The second level of involvement is that of giving sub-stantive support to good training efforts that are alreadyin existence so that these may be strengthened andtheir benefits extended. Examples of this level of in-volvement include financial and other support for theopen education advisory programs and the funding ofcertain school-based staff development efforts. Supportof the programs at PS 3 Manhattan and PS 152 Brooklynfall within the latter type of support effort.

At a third level of involvement the Learning Cooperativehas brought to the attention of New Yorkers availabletraining opportunities which are not widely known here.The Prospect School (Vermont) opportunity and the con-sulting group on the utilization of open spaces for im-prov,,d !earning and teaching (from California) are exam-ples of this level of involvement.

The Learning Cooperative played a direct develop-mental and implementation role in the program called De-veloping the Role of the Elementary Principal as an Ed-ucational Leader (informally known as the Principals-as-Leaders Program), done under the leadership of theBank Street College of Education and in collaborationwith the Chase Manhattan Bank. This project, discussedbriefly elsewhere in this report, has among its uniquecharacteristics the goal of changing elementarysihools as total organizations by focusing on the prin-cipal as the educational leader. The program is toprove itself in terms of results that can be seen inthe schools of the participating principals, in the chil-dren who attend these schools, and in the sense ofsatisfaction felt by all participants in these schools. Thusthere is a built-in accountability factor. The three spon-soring groups are devoted to this challenge and rec-ognize that training is not just a matter of course-taking

leading to the granting of a piece of paper which "cer-tifies" a participant's ability. The ultimate success willbe demonstrated by the satisfaction of each school'sstaff, students and parents.

The project is designed as an intensive two-year studyprogram requiring participants to engage in research,analysis, field visits, program development and re-designefforts. It does not take the principal "off the job" andthen try to create a "reality component" at the collegeor university. The principal remains as the head of hisschool maintaining a "reality base" to which he mustapply the insights and knowledge gained. Each par-ticipant is required to develop an educational designand action program which is appropriate to his locality,his population and the resources available. The pro-cedures he is to follow involve consultation and col-laboration with all of those persons who are to be af-fected by the outcomes. This would include parents,students, teachers, paraprofessionals, assistant princi-pals, as well as community members.

The basis of selection of participants was personalcommitment and demonstrated desire to provide relevanteducational programs. The participating schools repre-sented a cross-section of our society in terms of geo-graphical location, socio-economic :evel, ethnic pop-ulation, size of school organizations and philosophicalapproaches to the learning process. Following are listedthe participatory principals and schools:

PrincipalRichard A. Anderson

James I. Broughton

Judith Dropkin

Walter Edge

Diana Sosa Fennessey

Aclen B. Lewis

James J. Loughran

Abraham Marcus

James H. Murphy

Helen P. Sanchez

Ruth A. Simpson

Tobias Sumner

SchoolMurray Avenue SchoolLarchmont, New YorkEdgemont SchoolMontclair, New JerseyP.S. 87, District 11BronxC.S. 129. Distri.:t 12BronxEarly Learning Center #2District 12, BronxP.S. 112, District 11BronxHind ley SchoolDarien, ConnecticutP.S. 138, District 17BrooklynMary J. Donohoe SchoolBayonne, New JerseyP.S. 155, District 23BrooklynEarly Learning Center #1District 12, BronxC.S. 232, District 8Bronx

The second major Neff development program in whichthe Learning Coopera ive has a major and on-going in-volvement is The Open Education Advisory Program.This program is designed to train advisors who will serveto assist teachers in their classroom who have chosento work in the open education way. It should be re-membered that there is no one model of open edu-cation and that much of what is involved in this learningprocess depends on the skill of the teacher to guideand direct his students as individuals. Therefore, theadvisor-trainees work constantly in actual classroomswith leachers and children. They also attend seminarsessions with the training advisory leaders who are notedexperts in open education. They include:

Dr. Lillian Weber, City College Advisory Ser-vice to Open CoridorsDr. Vivian Wind ley, CONY. TTT Advisory Pro-gram

Mr. Herb Mack & Ms. Ann Cook, City Uni-versity, Community Resources InstituteMr. Floyd Page, Creative Teaching Workshop

The grant received from the Rockefeller Foundation forthis program has made possible including nine advisor-trainees this year who are working intensively in twelveschools and in turn training other advisors. The advisor-trainees also assist other schools that have requestedtheir services on a part-time basis providing informationand guidance. The built-in multiplier effect will make moreadvisors available to serve in the public schools.schools.

The demand for training in open education is great andcontir es to grow. To have truly effective results requiresdeveloping in each participant abilities in using, planning,organization, learning-setting structuring, teacher en-abling techniques and using information about availableresources and materials. The Advisory groups are alreadyproviding for these needs in the participating schools.However, activities are being planned which will reach alarger audience over the final two and a half years ofthe foundation grant.

In addition to the two major staff development programsdescribed above, The Learning Cooperative staff havealso played a facilitating and supportive role in severalother training programs. The Center for UnderstandingMedia conducted a summer workshop to train teamsof teachers from five schools in the educational useof media. Work on this program will continue duringthe fall and winter in the schools to which the teacherswill return. Staff assisted in the planning of the programand in the selection of the participants. The programwas funded by a grant from the New York CommunityTrust.

The Prospect School in Vermont conducted a five weeksummer workshop for administrators, teachers, and

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community school personnel in open classroom tech-niques. Follow up during the fall and winter, conductedby the Creative Teachers Workshop, is planned. Learn-ing Cooperative staff helped identify and select schoolpersonnel for the program, and provided funds for three-day sessions for district decision-making and admin-istrative personnel who would be called upon to providesupport for the program on a continuous basis.

Public School 152 in Brooklyn, where individualizationof instruction in a humanistic setting is the guiding ed-ucational philosophy, was provided with initial materialsand equipment to establish a school-based learning cen-ter in the British teachers centre mode. What was sup-plied had been developed for and used at the June2-3 Dissemination Conference by the Creative TeachingWorkshop. A Beacon Light School grant was also madeto P.S. 152 which enabled the school to continue astaff development program with the Workshop staff serv-ing as trainers and resource personnel.

The Learning Cooperative made a grant to Julia Rich-man High School for a mini-training program for staff.A member of that staff had come to the June 2-3 Con-ference and, among other things, was tremendously im-pressed by the evident good rapport between andamong staff, students, parents, and community exem-plified by the demonstrating group from C.S. 234 Bronx.Discussion about .how this happened led to a requestfor a three-day training session with Dr. Gattegno fora cross-departmental group from Julia Richman. Withthe supporting request from the principal of the schooland from Superintendent Boffman, the grant was made.

Public School 3 in Manhattan approached LearningCooperative staff with program ideas which made it clearthat a staff development program would be essentialin effecting their school's design. After consultation andplanning assistance, the school submitted a proposalto the Learning Cooperative and was given a grant toextend their planning for a school-based teacher center.

Youth Tutoring Youth, a program designed by the Com-mission on Resources for Youth, was chosen by the Com-mission to be implemented by Community District 9 in1972-73. District 9 had already and on its own carried outsuch a program during the 1971-72 year. The Commis-sion. desirous of developing an exemplary model to bereplicated elsewhere, deemed it wise to build on an on-going program in a setting where commitment to the phi-losophy of the program had already been demonstrated.Hence the selection of District 9. Learning Cooperativestaff, with funding and other direct personal support fromthe Chancellor, were instrumental in assisting these twocooperating groups in preparing for the 1972-73 imple-mentation of the program.

Finally, series of Events were held throughout the yearwhich served as staff development activities on specifictopics. One event, co-sponsored by the Office of Busi-

24

ness and Administration, focused on zero-base or non-incremental program budgeting for school districts.Community Superintendents and their business manag-ers participated and explored techniques for better usingtheir budgetary resources to provide a stronger supportsystem for their educational priorities and programs.

A series of workshops was held for some thirty-fiveheads of schools during which they explored, in depth,promising approaches to the solution of the readingproblem in their schools. In each case, the chief architectof the program under study was present. The ap-proaches presented included: The Cureton Approach,Dr. Caleb Gattegno's Words in Color, Behavorial Re-search Laboratories' Project Read, and the CommunityResources Institute's Open Education Language Devel-opment approach.

A one day Event was held at the Burnside ManorSchool in Community District 10 to which all school dis-tricts were invited. The day was divided into two majorparts; the first half introduced a consulting group from Ca-lifornia that trains school staff to work in open-spaceschools, and the second half was a tour and discussionof the open-space school and program at BurnsideManor. As a result of the joint planning for this event,Community Districts 11 anJ 12 secured the services of theconsulting firm to carry )ut a training program for thestaffs of two new open-space schools in the Bronx. Thestimulation provided by the Burnside Manor school andthat training activity has spurred those who attendedto investigate the possibilities of establishing similarschools in their own areas and to investigate alternativeways of preparing staffs to utilize the many new open-space schools and educational facilities that are aboutto open in various sections of the city.

Purpose #5:To help attract various kinds of financial sup-port in the belief that there are many agencies,institutions and individuals in the city who wantto make a contribution to public education.

The question inevitably arises as to why a public edu-cation system which has nearly a two-billion-dollar tax-based budget seeks foundation and ether private sup-port for its program of educational redesign. There areseveral cogent reasons. First, foundations exist to ac-complish a social purpose which is directly related tothe improvement of the quality of life. 't cannot be deniedthat the quality of public education bears directly onquality of public life. Clearly, the social mission of foun-dations is compatible with the social imperative of qualityeducation. Participation in the educational reform effortoutlined in this report provides one important oppor-tunity for foundations and other participants in the privatesector to fulfill a social purpose.

Second, the nature of and restrictions upon publicfunds make it difficult to use such funds for "thinkingmoney" or "planning money" or "seed money" or "start-up-costs" money. Yet, these are vital types of money. forthey cover functions which make possible the expen-diture of the vast amounts of "operational ,--.3riey," towhich most public funds are applied, in more thoughtful,analytical, mindful, and effective ways.

Furthermore, "private dollars" are more "powerful dol-lars" in that they can pry up "public dollars" and makethem usable in more flexible and less sluggish ways.Every "private dollar' as it is mixed with "public dollars"gains in value by geometric progression. Thus, partic-ipation in the effort herein outlined, makes it possiblefor foundations and others to spend their social-purpose-designated resources in a more powerful way.

The Board of Education, the Bureau of the Budget, andthe Comptroller's officenone of these is truly readyto use "private dollars" in the powerful way indicated.Routine procedures, "rules and regulations," and"guidelines" have not yet caught up with the conceptset forth above. For this reason, the Learning Coop-erative solicited and received many grants but decidedto receive most of these indirectly while we worked withthe affected in-system agencies to revise guidelines tofacilitate a freer, faster, and less complicated flow ofprivate dollars to support the purposes for which theywere solicited. The summary report which follows reflectsthis necessary (for the time being) decision. It also re-flects cooperative efforts in the solicitation of funds. Fi-nally, it reflects the value of having a comprehensiveeducational design and strategy (as set forth in Designfor Change) as a rallying point for support.

Direct Grants1. $50,000 (June, 1971) and $50,000 (June,

1972)Rockefeller Brothers Fund.In general support of the Learning Cooperative.

2. $325,000Rockefeller FoundationTo be expended over a two to three year periodfor the purpose of advancing open education ef-forts in New York City public schools.

3. $30,000New York Community TrustTo support efforts to develop a district prototypefor the utilization of out-of-city resources (espe-cially campsites) for educational purposes.

4. $60,000--National Endowment for the Arts.To support the linkage program being developedwith El Museo del Barrio, the Puerto Rican Historyand Culture Museum in Community School Dis-trict 4. (The Learning Cooperative acted as a con-duit for these funds.)

5. $15,000Rockefeller Brothers Fund(Same purpose as no. 4, above.)

6. $10,000Rockefeller Brothers FundTo support the school-based program of The Arts,Inc.

Indirect Funds1. With Museums Collaborative

1.1 $33,000Fund for the City of New YorkTo support the establishment of prototypes ofdistrict art resources centers.

1.2 $23,000 New York Community Trust$23,000National Park ServiceTo support the establishment of a prototypescience resources center.

1.3 $80,000National Endowment for the Artsand Humanities, the Noble Foundation, theRockefeller Brothers FundTo support school-based work on the part ofvarious community arts organizations.

2. With Bank Street College$250,000Chase Manhattan Bank

To support an executive development programfocusing upon the elementary school principalas an educational leader. The Director of theLearning Cooperative participated in makingthe presentation before the executive commit-tee of the Board of Trustees of the Bank. It

was the first time in the history of the bankthat a non-bank staff member had participatedin such a presentation. (At the same time, shepresented the case for support of the SatelliteAcademy program which was also funded asa result. The exact amount of money involvedin that grant is not reported here since it is

a high-school-office administered program.)

3. With the Center for Understanding Media$20,000New York Community Trust

To train teams of public school teachers inmedia-based educational techniques duringthe summer of 1972.

Grants Made in Partial Response to Learning Co-operative Advocacy

In the cases reported here, the agency involved tookthe initiatives and carried through the work needed toobtain the grant. The Learning Cooperative acted asan advocate and quasi-lobbyist and New York Cityteachers and public school children are direct bene-ficiaries.

1. $500,000 to State Education Department fromU.S. Office of Education.To support a Career Education project in the NewYork City public schools.

2. From State Education Department to CCNY (Dr.Lillian Weber).

25

To establish an Open Education Advisory Center.(about $375.000).

3. From Ford Foundation to various New York Citypublic school programs and to programs directlybenefiting New York City public school teachersand pupils. (about $1,500,000).

In sum, the Learning Cooperative staff worked to getdirect funding from outside sources and indirect funding

for programs that both shape and follow Design forChange. And in addition, staff supported others seekingfunding that would benefit New York City school chil-dren. The main point made by this successful solicitationis that foundations find that Learning Cooperative in-volvement in a project requesting funding to some degree insures that the project is part of a larger strategythat gives some hope of having genuine impact andlong range value.

.116

4!"'"""4"110 BIMJ

"/

26

prospects for the future

Prospects For The Future

This part of the report will be written in the first personsince it comprises the personal assessment of the direc-tor as to the work needed to be done during the second-year of operations.

When I accepted the directorship of the Learning Co-operative I did so on a one-year basis. Indeed, mine wasa "special assignment of a community superintendent ofschools as director," more or less "on loan" from District12. As such, I was not on a leave of absence and I re-

mained the superintendent of record in District 12 duringthe year's assignment. The intention was for me to carryout the following functions during that year:

To establish one Learning Cooperative, havinga revised definition of functions as compared withthe conception put forward for five cooperativesin the 1970-71 budget request,

To work to carry out as many of the Chance' ischarges of September 9 as possible and to Is

great a degree as possible,In doing both of the above, to seek to keep alivethe learning cooperative idea in the hope that someprogress could be made on the educational frontunder decentralization despite the severe budgetcrunch, and in the hope that a more favorableeconomic and politcal climate a year hence mightmake possible a fuller, geographically more wide-spread, and altogether more comprehensive ap-plication of the concept.

And, finally, to test out the general feasibility of theLearning Cooperative idea.

Toward the end of the year, there was a strong pullin the direction of returning to my district, to the

work there which I valued highly, and to the peoplethere whom I admire, respect and love. However,to do so would have meant cutting off the work of theLearning Cooperative in mid-sentence. Yet, to have re-mained as community superintendent of record in thedistrict for a second year would have denied the districtthe stable, continuous, and strong leadership it requiredand deserved. Once again, with the kind and generousconsideration of the District 12 Community SchoolBoard, I decided to resign as community superintendent,effective in September, 1972, to resume my previoustitle and collateral rank of assistant superintendent, andto continue to direct the Learning Cooperative for a sec-ond year.

The first year of operations of the Learning Cooperativewas divided into two parts of roughly half year each.The first "half" extended from the end of October toabout the end of Jan uary. It consisted largely of:

defining the nature of the Cooperative and the roleof the staff;

28

determining where we were (e.g. surveying exemplary programs identified by the districts);

gathering ideas on programs and projects as abroad spectrum of people both inside the systemand outside the system brought them to our at-tention, and hearing, again from a broad rangeof sources, ideas as to where we ought to begoing and how we ought to get there;

determining a direction for our work and identifyinga strategy by which to travel the indicated route.

This "half" of the year's work was consolidated by thewriting of Design for Change.

The second "half" of the year consisted of carrying outactivities which began to implement the program andstrategy suggested by the Design and of sharing withall concerned, through the June 2-3 Dissemination Con-ference, what had been accomplished up to that time.

All together, 145 days had been devoted to the totalenterprise described above, with about 83 of those daysbeing devoted to the developmental work which wasthe prime focus of the February through May period.That is not enough time to test out any idea, hencemy decision to go on for a second year.A Projection for the Second Year's Work

It is my estimation that the second year's work, thistime beginning in September rather than the latter partof October, is also likely to fall into two "halves." Thefirst, probably lasting from September to January, willconsist of consolidating last spring's developmental workby implementing the plans set in motion at that time.For example, we worked last year to develop an OpenEducation Advisory Program. The planning and devel-opmental work led to a foundation proposal which wasfunded in April, 1972. From that time to the end ofthe academic year we worked with the training agenciesand with district personnel to reshape the plans drawnup in the first developmental phase to fit the actual termsand conditions of the grant. In the fall of the new aca-demic year we must attend to a thousand and one detailsso that what appears on the drawing board may cometo life in our schools and at the participating trainingsites. Such mundane but necessary tasks as the fol-lowing must be carried out:

Writing and getting approved a Board of Educationresolution accepting the grant;

Establishing and carrying out fiscal procedures formanaging the grant;

Schedualizing and monitoring the ensuing budget;Working out personnel procedures, tailored to theindividual personnel status of each of the teacherswho is to become an advisor-trainee.

The same kind of time-consuming, detailed, but nec-essary work must be done to implement each of theprograms planned and initially developed last spring.These include:

Development of the Beacon Light School Network(including the management of mini-grantsawarded to such schools).

Development of the Science Resources programto a point where the "task force" planning activityis converted into an operating prototype modelby February, 1973. (This is the one linkage centerproject for which fortuitous circumstances madedetailed pla-ning last spring possible and, there-fore, the prognosis for a fairly early opening ofan operating center is good.)

Developmental work on a prototype district art re-sources center, leading to the writing of a pro-posal which was funded, was accomplished lastspring, but actual work on the project, includingthe selection of a participating district and of staff,must await the fall.

Developmental work on an urban resources link-age project, with lower Manhattan being the siteof the initial program to h -;loped, also willhave to await the fall. A funding commitment forthis was obtained in June and a director wasappointed. However, actual funding and ensuingimplementation will begin in the fall.

Development of the out-of-city resources program,using campsites as teaching-learning settings, theproposal for which has received a funding com-mitment. Developmental work beyond that is notlikely to occur until early- or mid-winter.

Exploration of opportunities for linkages betweenthe schools and performing arts resources. Asmall amount of money, really only enough toengage a coordinator, has been made availablefor this and a coordinator has been selected, butall other developmental work in this area awaitsthe fall.

Development of a system for monitoring programsfunded by other grants made either to the Learn-ing Cooperative directly or through a cooperativerelationship between the Learning Cooperativeand another agency such as the Museums Col-laborative. Most of these grants are to school-or district-based arts or multi-purpose educationalcenters (such as District 4's El Museo del Barrio,District 8's Kelly Street Brownstone, District 12'sHeritage Museum and Educational Center, District19's Art Resources Center), or to community artsgroups for the purpose of extending and enhanc-ing their work with public school children (e.g.,The Children's Art Carnival; Arts, Inc; The UpperManhattan Artists Cooperative; The Children's ArtWorkshop).

A second category of consolidation and completionwork to be done in the first "half" of the year (and, forsome work, extending into the second "half") is the com-

pletion of tasks flowing from the June 2-3 Conference.this work is of two typesboth of which have a dissemina-tion-of-information purpose. The first type is one we'vecalled "information kits" on each of the major conferencethemes for which some good models are in existencenow (e.g., in reading, mathematics, bilingual education.alternative schools and programs, and in alternativenon-school routes to education). The second type is

audio-visual, the work involved consisting largely of edit-ing the extraordinarily large amount of video tape shotat the conference. In both cases, we greatly underes-timated the amount of time, money, and personnel it

would take to complete these two categories of tasks,but complete them we will.

A third category of second-year work will be begunsometime during the iirst "half" of the year but will flowmore heavily into the second "half." The tasks, here,may be thought of as supplying the other componentsneeded to round out the work plan of the Learning Co-operative. They include:

Assisting in the planning and developmental workrequired by which a comprehensive staff devel-opment and training program may be mountedwithin the context of developing all of the humanresources needed to devise, carry out, and main-tain programs of educational change, reform, andimprovement. (Chief Collaborator: The Office ofPersonnel).

Assisting in the planning and developmental workrequired by which an educational information andfeedback system may be devised and imple-mented so that prepared personnel working inwell-designed programs may discover, "in realtime," how things are going so that they maymake timely and accurate mid-course corrections.Another goal to be served is to provide moremeaningful public information about results en-suing from our work, given in terms the publiccan both understand and trust. (Chief Collabo-rators: The Office of Educational Research andthe Office of Information Services).

Assisting in the planning and developmental workrequired by which educators and concerned lay-men may learn better how to handle whateverbudget allocation is ultimately made in such away as to get the greatest educational result fromthe monetary investment, using a zero-base ornon-increment& planning, programming, andbudgeting approach. (Chief Collaborator: The Of-fice of Business and Administration).

Clearly, the educational network envisioned by Designfor Change and now being brought into being in a numberof places in the districts via the Beacon Light SchoolsNetwork and the Linkage Programs requires these threesupport efforts: personnel training, educational informa-

29

tion and feedback, and cost-effectiveness budget man-agement. Equally clearly, the initiatives in these supportareas must be taken by the offices indicated, in col-laboration with the districts. In each case, the LearningCooperative' staff expect play the role of the catalyst,their intended function.

Finally, in preparation for the second annual report,an assessment will be made of the Learning Cooperativeconcept, based upon tree cumulative experience of the

first two years. In this regard, I shall try to work with allothers to solve or ameliorate the problems which havesurfaced with respect to the feasibility of the concept. Inaddition to this and the other second-year tasks outlinedearlier, the Learning Cooperative staff and the cooperat-ing groups which it serves will continue both develop-mental and implementation work in any areas towardwhich our search for new and better ways to serve thechildren and their communities leads us.

30

a concluding word

A Concluding WordLet us remind ourselves of two fundamental truths. First,

the idea of free public education of high quality availableto all, (regardless of race, creed, color. socio-economicstatus, national origin. or ethnic identification) is themajor original idea the United States of America hascontributed to the world. Not the concept of democracy;that idea came from the ancient Greeks. Not the conceptof freedom; that idea is deeply rooted in antiquity. No.it is this extraordinary conception of universally-availablefree public education of high quality that is our county'sunique contribution to ihe world. In that sense, it is thisidea which uniquely defines us as a people. Second,the quality of public education offered is directly relatedto the quality of life available to all of us. Thus, in thesame way that citizen participation and commitment isnecessary to maintain a high qualitative level in othersocial areas which together establish the quality of ourlives (e.g., the physical and ecological environment, thearts, public health and safety, government, social wel-fare), so citizen participation and commitment is a sinequa non for high quality public education.

Given these two truths, how can we, as a people, giveup on public school education? How can we treat it

carelessly, especially when a large part of the rest ofthe world is trying to adopt and implement this conceptof ours? As we lessen our commitment to and supportfor public education, as we fail to see to it that it livesup to its promise, as we neglect it, attack it unremittingly,and allow it to slip into disrepute, serving primarily thepoor, the socially pow,,riless, and the discriminatedagainstas we do all of this, we must recognize thatwe are diminishing ourselves as a people.

New York City has a long and honorable tradition ofproviding the very best in public education, which hasserved to bring into the mainstream of American lifeeach successive wave of immigrants and of in-migrants.As times and the needs of constituents required, NewYork City has made the called-for fundamental changesin the public school system. (Consolidation in 1898 isjust one example.) Decentralization is the latest changein a long history of adjustments needed for bettermeeting the fundamental goals of public education. Inthat context, it must be recognized that whatever are thecurrent malfunctions of decentralization, the basicpremise behind this latest fundamental change in schoolsystem organization is both right and good.

Unfortunately, this rudimentary change in school sys-tem organization has come at a time when the confluenceof other factors complicate a situation which would other-wise be relatively straightforward. These include thefollowing:

Indications of massive educational failure by thechildren of ethnic and social class groups who

32

are at the "bottom of this country's subtle butextant caste and class systems.

A general diminuation of the public's faith in theefficacy of education as an agent for social changeand improvement. (Dissath,faction with -schooling" is very evident in the public school clienteleof whatever socio-economic class, but privateschools and colleges and universities are not

exempt from this disabusernent either.)A general cut-back. at every level (local, state.and federal government on the one hand andprivate sources of support including foundations.on the other) in finances for education generallyand for public education in particular.

An inflationary situation in which, whatever dollarsare made available for education, monetary valuesteadily declines.

As a consequence of the confluence of these and otherfactors, decentralization is often "blamed" for failureswhich, even if so, have no causal source in the de-centralization concept. Still. there is a steady stream ofreportage on educational failure in all categories of themedia, especially with respect to the public schools ina decentralized school system. This steady, continuous.and almost unremitting stream of chronicles of educa-tional failure, with special empha3is on such failure inthe public sector, has had and is having unanticipatedconsequences which are both dangerous and destruc-tive.

Let it be made absolutely clear, before going for-ward with the argumentation under way, that to the extentsuch chronicles of failure have led to new and morecareful analyses, to new and more useful evaluations.to new and more appropriate solutions. they have hada salutary effect, often leading to a necessary and health-ful result. Many people, professional educators and agreat many others included, have used, and are using,such chronicles for the healthy purposes suggested.They are searching for, devising, and carrying outneeded educational reform and renewal. That's good.

There have been, however, other consequences of thiscontinuous and unrelenting stream of tales of educationalfailure which are both dangerous and destructive. Oneconsequence has been to lead some people to giveup on public education. The alternatives being espousedwill, indeed, create elitist institutions on the one handand "schools of last resort" on the other. The destructiveconsequences of such a long-range outcome have al-ready been alluded to above.

Right now, today, two other dangerously destructive,though unanticipated, consequences are ocurring. First,the perception of public education as being pervasivelyfailure-ridden has, in a curious way, made such failurelegitimate. As long as the word" is that the public

schools are failing, there is no reason for any one ofthem to try to succeed. Indeed, when "the word" isthat no one has a solution to public school problems.we legitimate the right of practitioners to state that nosolutions are possible and to behave as if such a state-ment were quite accurate. In short, the failure syndrometends to legitimate failure. Second. and as a naturalcorollary of the first, there has developed on the partof some people a vested interest in school failure. Wholeindustries are being built on the anticipation andexpectation that masses of children will fail at school.It is to the advantage of such industries that large num-bers of children fail. Some professional writers' onlymeans of support is the reporting of school failure. What-ever will the exposé writers do for a living if childrensucceed in school? Even now, it is almost impossibleto interest education journalists in news stories abouteducational success: Finally, and perhaps worst of all,there has developed among many professional educa-tors a psychological dependence on children's failure.When one is getting poor results from the children heserves, he is psychologically nourished by news of otherpeople's failure with similar clients. Indeed, he is proneto become psychologically dependent on that failure toreassure himself that whatever the cause of the failureit cannot be laid at his doorstep. This is true, by theway, not only of some individual professionals, but alsoof some entire educational institutions.

Thus, as a consequence of all of the above, THE MOSTIMPORTANT THING THAT HAS TO BE DONE INORDER TO RE-CREATE EXCELLENCE IN PUBLICEDUCATION TODAY IS TO MAKE EDUCATIONALFAILURE ILLEGITMATE. The best ways to do that-are:to show that some have succeeded in exactly the samekinds of circumstances in which others claim that onlyfailure can prevail; to show that there are indeed so-lutions to the problems of urban public education, thatsome of these exist now, and that many of them existin New York City public schools.

The two points made immediately above define thebasic mission and the chief strategy of The LearningCooperative of the Board of Education of the City of NewYork: the mission is to recreate educational excellenceby making educational failure illegitimate; the strategyis to demonstrate that there are some solutions, thatthey exist now, and that many exist in New York citypublic schools.

Design for Change is a consensus document whichpresents a development of this mission and of the strat-egy by which the mission may be accomplished. It de-fines the educational system we seek as one consistingOf a network of schools or centers of general learningon the one hand and of a network of broadly educational

opportunities which exist in the city outside such schoolsand centers on the other hand. It posits that in orderto function with maximum effectiveness and in orderto have maximum educational impact, these two dy-narn.cally interacting networks which together form theeducational system, require three support systems. Theseare:

1. Adequate human resources

Adequate and appropriately trained and usedhuman resources. There is a need for reassess-ment of the kinds and categories of personnelneeded. For all such kinds and categories thereis a need for comprehensive and continuous 'De-velopment and training programs. It is cle2r thatas we redefine what education is we are alsoredefining the roles of participants in the process.Such redefinition requires that we find ways tohelp participants understand the implications ofsuch role redefinition and to help them acquirethe abilities, techniques, and behaviors neededto perform such roles deftly and with a certaindegree of artistry.

2. Adequate financial resources

Adequate and appropriately used financial re-sources. A decent financial. support base for edu-cation is absolutely essential. Let not the cult-of-efficiency demagogues mislead us about that.Beyond that, there is a need for a budget andfiscal management effort which is directly and vi-sibly related to right-minded educational prioritiesand which insures the greatest possible returnon our investment in education.

3. Information System

An educational information and teedback systemwhich supports continuous evaluation, mid-course correction, and other decision-making ac-tivities.

Such a mission and such a strategy can be mountedand carried out best through cooperative and collabora-tive action by caring and activated individuals andgroups in "the system" and in the public and privatesectors. The individuals and groups just referred to makeup "The Learning Cooperative." The personnel locatedat the Learning Cooperative's headquarters provide staffsupport to the efforts of such individuals and groups.The collaborative efforts of such individuals and groupsdeserve widespread supportpsychological, financial,otherin the interest of reasserting and strengtheninganew the first principles upon which American publiceducation was established.

33

In sum, then, the Learning Cooperative, in definitionalconcept, in mission, and in strategy, represents a realand present hope for today's needs in New York Citypublic education. To realize for the future the full po-tential that is clearly within our grasp, many problems

omirtatowilitraite

34

must be addressed and solved. The promise is worththe cost. Our children, our city, our faith in and ded-ication to fundamental American ideals requirenay,demandthat the promise be fulfilled. Let us not fail!

-

_M=

acknowledgementEm n VOW

tiaegclayaelkoszonoMearg

meTansgratotdzielyll LT(1;7

obr'

a dupe gbogbo enia

nannual report

Douglas Barnard

J.R. Block

Audrey Branch

Lucille Carlin

Carolyn Clark

Anita Dore

Mira Erickson

Vivian Gaman

Eileen Garsmon Tanania

Caleb Gattegno

Leonard Jayson

Theodore Marshall

Joyce Revenson

Ronald Tilbor

Thomas Zuck

Robert B. Davis

Charlotte Frank

Louise Gemake

Blanche Gladstone

George Grossman

Rose Grossman

Michael Import

Steven Schulman

Lucille Stovall

Ad Hoc Committee on Reading

Consultant, Behavioral Research Laboratories

Executive Vice-President, I.T.A. Foundation

Head Consultant, Behavioral ResearchLaboratories

Reading Consultant, District 21

Early Childhood Coordinator,P.S. 29, District 7

Assistant Director, Bureau of English,Board of Education

Director Language School, EducationalSolutions

Director, Reading Skills Center, District 4

Head Consultant, Behavioral Research Laboratories

President, Educational Solutions, Inc.

Supervisor, Distar ProgramDistrict 16

Cureton Consultant to District 9

Assistant to the Director.I.T.A. Foundation

Distar Program, District 16

Project Plan

Ad Hoc Committee on Mathematics

Professor of Mathematics and EducationSyracuse University

Mathematics Coordinator, District 12

Mathematics Coordinator, District 4

Supervisor, Non-Public Scnool Programin Corrective Mathematics, Bureau ofMathematics

Director, Bureau of Mathematics

Visiting Professor, College ofMt. St. Vincent

Mathematics Coordinator, District 23

Mathematics Coordinator, District 18

Director of Non-public School Programsin Corrective Mathematics, Bureauof Mathematics

37

Miguel Suarez Coordinator, Computer Managed InstructionProgram (CMI), District 12

Mary Teshara Mathematics Coordinator, District 7

Frank Wohlfort Assistant Director, Bureau ofMathematics

PresentationC.S 129-234 Team (Dist. 12)

Walter Edge Principal, C.S. 129

Caleb Gattegno President, Educational SolutionsConsultant to C.S. 129-234

Debra Hercules Principal, C.S. 129-234

Eloise Krause President, C.S.B., Dist. 12

Felton Lewis Community Superintendent. Dist. 12

Peter Negroni Principal, C.S. 234

Adrea Reher C.S. 234

Ad Hoc Committee on Bilingual Education

Hernan LaFontaine Principal, P.S. 25, District 7

Awi Ida Orta Director, Bilingual Mini SchoolJ.H.S. 45, District 4

Blanca Ortiz Director, N.Y.C. Bilingual Consortium,Project Best

Carmen Perez (Chairperson) Director, Title VII, BilingualProgram, District 13

Carmen Rivera Principal, C.S. 211, District 12

Luis Rivera Director, Escuela Infantil, District 4

Ann Cook

Sandra Feldman

Olive Franks

Ray Frankel

Herbert Mack

Herbert Magdison

Floyd Page

Julius Warshaw

38

Ad Hoc Committee on Staff Development

Co-Director, Community ResourcesInstitute

Executive Assistant, UnitedFederation of Teachers

Assistant Principal Assigned,Office of Personnel, Board of Education

Chairperson, QuEST CommitteeUnited Federation of Teachers

Co-Director, Community ResourcesInstitute

QuEst Committee, United Federationof Teachers

Director, Creative Teaching Workshop

Chairman of Committee on Innovation,Elementary School Principals AssociationPrincipal, P.S. 114, Brooklyn

Lillian Weber

James Wiley

Vivian Wind ley

Director, City College AdvisoryService to Open Corridors

Director, The Teachers, Inc

Director, Training Teachers ofTeachers Program (TTT), City College

Ad Hoc Committee on Alternative Schools and Programs

Melanie Baron Director, Joan of Arc Mini-School,District 3

Dianne Boasch Lorillard School

Eileen Cave

Florence Cherry

Richard Downey

Walter Edge

Diane Fennessy

Douglas Fleming

Charles Frederick

Carol Harris

Assistant Principal P.S. 21,District 11

Co-Director, Joan of Arc Mini-School,District 3

Director, Clinton Program, District 2

Principal, C.S. 129, District 12

Principal, Early Learning Center #2,District 12

Staff Associate, Operation Broadjump

Staff Associate, Operation Broadjump

Head of School, The Block School,District 18

Marjorie Henderson Title I Coordinator, District 6

Debra Hercules Principal, C.S. 129-234, District 12

Earl Kurtz Principal, C.S. 92, District 12

Judy Macau ly East Harlem Block School

Jill Marshall LEAP School

John Melser Principal, P.S. 3, District 2

Meryl Natelli Assistant Principal, C.S. 234, Dist. 12

Beth Meyerberg Discovery Room for Children

Peter Negroni Principal, C.S. 234, District 12

George Richmond Consultant to P.S. 126, District 2

Carol Russo Principal, P.S. 31, District 7

Herbert Shapiro Principal, P.S. 152, District 22

Ruth Simpson Principal, Early Learning Center #1,District 12

Frederick Watson Director, Childrens CommunityWorkshop School, District 3

39

Ad Hoc Committee on Non-School Routes to Education

Leroy Brathwaite

David Corchado

Victor D'Amico

Priscilla Dunhill

Patricia Fortino

Emily Dennis Harvey

David Hodges

Edward Jefferies

Nancy Kitchel

Philip Lopate

Joan Sandler

Mary Scherbatskoy

Betty Blayton Taylor

Lynn Tiefenbacher

Martha Vega (Chairperson)

Philip Yenawine

Co-Director, Children's Art Workshop

Co-Director, Children's Art Workshop

Museum of Modern Art

Associate Director, Museums Collaborative

Guggenheim Museum

Director,

Director,

Director.

Museums Collaborative

Heritage Museum, District 12

Community Education Center, District 12

Co-Director, ARTS, Inc.

Teachers and Writers Collaborative

Museums Collaborative

Co-Director, ARTS, Inc.

Director, Children's Art Carnival

Co-Director, Children's Art Workshop

Director, El Museo del Barrio

Director of High School ProgramsMetropolitan Museum of Art

Conference Participants on Creative Use of Found Space

Luther Blake

August Gold

Harold Gores

Della LeeMarion Pasnik

Portia Waldon

Janice Weinman

Theodore Wiesenthal

Assistant to State SenatorWaldaba Stewart

Administrator, Office of School Planningand Research, Board of Education

President, Educational FacilitiesLaboratory

Principal, Burnside Manor School, District 10Office of School Planning and Research,Board of Education

Senior Planner, Educational and SocialPlanning, City Planning Commission

Office of School Planning and Research,Board of Education

Community Superintendent, District 10

Ad Hoc Committee an Parent and Community Participation

Victoria Martinez

Mattie Faulk

Lois Bonfiglio

40

United Bronx Parents

Assistant Coordinator, United Bronx Parents

Parent, P.S. 3, District 2

Hannah Brockington,Co-Chairperson

Babette Edwards,Co-Chairperson

Susan Egan

Betty Felton

Patricia Flynn

Willie N. Henry

Selma Covitz

Victoria Martinez

Sr. Grace Troisi,

Marion White

Lenora Engle

Helen Henkin

Louise Barkin

Harlem Parents Union

Harlem Parents Union

Committee on Community Schools

Field Representative,United Parents Association

Parent, P.S. 3, District 2

Harlem Parents Union

Director, United Parents Association

Director, Boston Road Branch.United Bronx Parents

Co-Chairperson

Educational Director,United Parents AssociationChairperson, elementary school,United Parents Association

Committee Coordinator,United Parents Association

Implications of This Conference for Policy and Action

Murry Bergtraum

Ralph Brande

Dennis Coleman

Andrew Donaldson

Harvey Garner

Gary Heckelman

Eloise Krause

Felton Lewis

James Phelan

Sophie Price(represented by Mr. Phelan)

Isaiah Robinson

Harvey Scribner

Russell Sharpe

Theodore Wiesenthal

Member, Community School Board,District 18

Vice-President, Board of Education

Community Superintendent, District 22

Vice-President, New York City SchoolBoards AssociationCommunity School BoardDistrict 8

Community Superintendent, District 9

Community Superintendent, District 18

Student Ad Hoc Committee

President, Community School Board,District 12

Community Superintendent, District 12

President, Community School Board 8

President, N.Y.C. School Boards Assoc.Member, Community School Board 28

President, Board of Education

Chancellor, Board of Education

Student Ad Hoc Committee

Community Superintendent, District 10

41

Randy Bullock

Doris Diaz

Betty Leong

Gary Heckelman

Oswalt Heymann

David Hilton

Ruth Jacobowitz

Gloria Kondi,p

Wilfredo Nin

Mindy Rosenzweig

Wayne Ryan

Russell Sharpe

Andrea Telesford

Ad Hoc Committee of StudentsIn Support of the Learning Cooperative

James Madison High School

Canarsie High School

Seward Park High School

Sheepshead Bay High School

Sheepshead Bay High School

Wingate High School

Canarsie High School

Canarsie High School

Bushwick High School

Erasmus High School

Canarsie High School

Erasmus High School

Wingate High School

* Steering Committee for Continued ActionRussell Sharpe, (now of University of New Haven)

Oswalt Heymann, (now of New York University)

General Advisory Committee on Conference Arrangements

Ruth Abramowitz

Marguerite Bacon

Michelle Beardsley

Edward G. Bernard

Leo Bernardo

Jo-el Blumenthal

Eugene Calderon

Rosario Capotosto

Ruby Couche

Charles Do ley

Jerrold Eisenberg

Robert Fanning

Stephen Fischer

Mary Fisher

42

District 22

Deputy Superintendent, District 8

District 21

Director, Bureau of Audio Visual Instruction

Bureau of For3ign Languages,Board of Education

C.S. 129, District 12

District 4

Cameraman, Bureau of Audio Visual Instruction

District 28

District 12

Educational Recordist,Bureau of Audio Visual Instruction

District 30

Supervisor of Multi Media Production,Bureau of Audio Visual Instruction

District 8

Morns Freedman

Gladys Gist

Rah la Gold

Lillian Goldberg

Maxine Herman

Herman Jacobs

Mildred Jones

Martin Kaess

Gerald

David Krulik

Irving Kurtzberg

Phillip Lewis

Claramae Long

Gwendolyn Martin

Ramona Mitchelson

Florence Monroe

Ellis Mott

Guy Nardo

Murray Nobleman

Rena Peterson

Sol Press

T.J. Seller

Audrey Simon

Cecil Suffern

Jeanne Warrell

David Wilner

Rae Wohl

Florabelle Zaluskin

Assistant Director,Bureau of Audio Visual Instruction

District 29

District 17

District 3

District 5

Supervisor of Muiti Media Production,Bureau of Audio Visual InstructionDistrict 16

Film Editor, Bureau of Audio Visual Instruction

District 19

Bureau of English, Board of Education

C.S. 41, District 2

Project Director, The Training of AudioVisual Technicians, Bureau of AudioVisual Instruction

District 10

District 7

District 6

Asst. Administration Director, WNYE-TV

Coordinator, School-Community Relations,Board of Education

District 13

Cameraman, Bureau of Audio Visual Instruction

District 5

Deputy Superintendent District 10

District 11

District 25

Acting Director of Production Casting,WNYE-TV FM

District 5

District 24

District 9

District 1

43

Center for Understanding Media

Chase Manhattan Bank

Ford FoundF,Ilon

Fund for the City of New York

National Endowment for the Arts

National Park Service(Manhattan Properties)

New York Community Trust

New York Foundation

,131BUTOR S

John Culkin

David Rockefeller

McGeorge Bundy

Gregory Farrell

Nancy Hanks

David Dame

Herbert B. West

John Heyman

New York State Council on Eric Larrabeethe Arts

New York State Education Ewald B. NyquistDepartment

Edward John Noble Foundation June Larkin

Rockefeller Brothers Fund Dana Creel

Rockefeller Foundation John Knowles

44

Benjamin RoterAnthony Terracciano

Harold Howe IIMajorie MartesEdward MeadeRichard LaceyJoshua Smith

Joan Dunlop

Vantile WhitfieldJohn Kerr

Sandy Walter

Barbara GrantsPhilips Payson

Bernard Friedburg

Lucy KostelanetzAllon Schoerner

Vivienne AndersonRobert SeckendorfJohn Surra

Elaine Naramore

William DietelHarold SnedcofCharles Smith

appendix:design

chang

k SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

5.4

The Public Schools of New York CityST FF BULLETIN MAY 15, 1972

DESIGNFOR

CHANGEHow forward-thinking publiceducators and collaborators,

through Learning Cooperative,are changing the shape anddirection of NYC education

City-Wide Dissemination Conference

We're Into SOLUTIONS for Educationin New York City"

Sponsored by the Community School Districts of New York City

June 2.3

Teachers College, Columbia UniversityHours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

ThemesI. THE READING PROBLEM HAS BEEN SOLVED:

Why Not Solve It Where You Are?II. THE MATHEMATICS PROBLEM HAS BEEN SOLVED:

Why Not Solve It Where You Are?BILINGUAL EDUCATION IS EFFECTIVE:

Why Not Effect It Where You Are?IV. TRAINED PEOPLE MAKE PROGRAMS WORK:

Why Not Create Good Programs Where You Are?V. THERE ARE ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS THAT WORK:

Why Not Create Them Where You Are?VI. SCHOOLING IS IMPORTANT BUT NON-SCHOOL ROUTES

TO EDUCATION ARE VALID, TOO:Why Not Provide Them Where You Ave?

VII. CREATIVE SCHOOL SPACE CAN BE BUILT WITHOUTSPENDING 10 YEARS AND $10 MILLION:

Why Not Do It Where You Are?VIII. PARENT AND COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION CAN BE MORE

THAN 'CAKE SALES':Why Not Create Effective Models Where You Are?

IX. SOLUTIONS RESULT FROM POLICY AND ACTION BY THEBOARD OF EDUCATION, COMMUNITY SCHOOL BOARDSAND FUNDING AGENCIES:

Why not make those policies and take those actions bywhich solutions may be put into effect and throughwhich confidence in the schools may be restored?

Vole: Admission cards for community school district per.-unite'. including , arent and community groups, will beissued through district offices. A limited number of cardsfor students of education and interested citizens may beghtained at the Learning Cooperative, 475 Riverside Drive.(at 120th Street I. New York, N. Y. 10027.

7SY PLAN for education redesign is shaped in a crucialaka by the ultimate goal to be attained. In words re-stricted by the inherent imprecision of our language, thegoal of education today in New York City and elsewheremaw be stated as follows:

To enable youth to function effectively in and to con-tribute thoughtfully and creatively to present aridfuture society with a satisfactory degree of success,with a commitment to human and humane values,and with the realization of personal satisfaction andcontentment.

Implicit in this statement of purpose is the recognitionof the pervasiveness of change in our time. We live in anage of discontinuities, one in which the one thing of whichwe may he absolutely certain is uncertainty. Consequently,one of the most important abilities modern man mustcultivate is the ability to handle change and uncertaintywhile maintaining some degree of personal stability, con-tentment i .d even serenity. Also implicit in this statementof purpose is the humanistic foundation of education.Together. these two elements define the mission of con-temporary and future education. It is to these ends thatwe set about the task of redesigning public education inNew York City for the 70's and beyond.

SCHOOL SYSTEM REDEFINED

The institution we now call "school" clearly cannotachieve the fundamental goal by itself. Tha goal can heachieved only by the joint and collective action of all thelife giving and life. °nriching social institutionsthe fain-II). governmental institutions, religious and social wel-fare organizations, cultural, business and commercialenterprises. Consequently, a basic requirement of a newdesign is that it must describe not a "school system," butan "educational system." The latter conception suggeststhat whatever it is that we define as education can beachieved only through a network of interacting socialsystems and institutions of which the "school" is one part.Thus network is a key concept of the new model we arebuilding.

Second. our design posits that education is a process,not merely an acquisitionwhether that acquisition be ofknowledges and skills or of course credits and diplomas.It is the process by which a person learns and developsthe requisite knos ledges, understandings and skills forlife in contemporary and future society.- Consequently, itis riot hound by the strictures of a particular locus, suchas a school; nor by a particular block of time, such as thenine-to-three period of the day or the September-through-June part of the year nor by a particular segment of atotal life span, such as encompasses ages five to twenty-one. Thus. process is another key concept of our newmodel.

Third. our design rests upon the conviction that choice,alternative, optionwhichever word carries the strongestmeaningis an essential ingredient if the individual is touse maximally the range of opportunities available tohim by the newly conceived educational system. Eachparticipant must have maximum choicechoice as tolearning objective, choice as to learning environment,choice as to learning style.

Thus, the new educational system we design rests upona redefinition of education in which process operates

11 SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT STAFF BULLETIN

The Learning Cooperative: How We Can Make It WorkThe Learning Cooperative was born

out of a profound belief in school de-centralization as a vehich. for changeand improvement in the quality andresults of public education in NewYork City. Conceived by ChancellorScribner, the Learning Cooperative'sgerminal idea is that through coopera-tive and collaborative effort, thosewho have pieces of solutions to theproblem of urban education can putthose pieces together, pool theirknowledge and talents, and "get it alltogether" for the ultimate good of ourchildren and youth, especially thoseserved by community school districts.

Organizationally, then, the Cooper-ative is an arm of the Office of Chan-cellor. Physically, it is located apartfrom central headquarters. Psychologi-cally, it is identified with "the field."Functionally, it serves to assist the co-operating groups to recreate excel-lence in the city's public schools.

It is carrying out its mission by (1)acting as "marriage broker" betweenand among individuals and groupswho, when linked together, can achievepositively (projects involving the jointeffort of school people, foundations,

businesses, museums, etc., currently arein progress); (2) assisting in the devel-opment of alternative ed-cational mod-els (various componen?: described inthis Special Supplement are beingbrought into being pow)i (3) gatheringand disseminating education informa-tion, not so much for public relationspurposes as for purposes of movingpeople to adopt solutions which othershave found to work, and (4) obtainingaddition& financial support from bothprivate and government sources inorder to obtain "thinking money,""planning money" and "gearing-up-new-systems money" (more than $2,-000,000 already has been obtained).The idea, you see, really works!

Design for Change represents thekind of education that is being broughtinto being by a small but growinggroup of educational reformers work-ing with the Cooperative. It is not afinished document, for many of itsideas are in the formative or develop-mental stages. Nevertheless, it is theframework within which Cooperativeprograms and projects are being de-signed and implemented.

Thus, despite the almost universally

discouraging news about New YorkCity education reported by the newsmedia, despite severely eroded publictrust in public education, despite thedire predictions of the prophets ofdoom, there is emerging strong supportfor the ideas contained in Design forChange and in the collaborative effortto bring those ideas to life throughthe catalytic mechanism of the Learn-ing Cooperative.

You can help the Cooperative do itswork, for you are one of the potentialcollaborators. Some of the things youcan do are read, discuss and send usreactions to Design for Change; be ascout for successful educational prac-tices and tell us about them so thatwe car, tell others (especially do weneed film stories about successfulschools and programs); come to ourDissemination Conference on June 2-3;and, finally, do all in your powerwherever you are to help the decen-tralization idea deliver to our chil-dren and youth what we owe them.

EDYTHE J. GAINES,Community SuperintendentDirector

through a network mediated by individual choice amonga broad range of opportunities.

EDUCATION REDEFINED

The new design looks to restructure the public educa-tion system in new and profound ways. Its purpose-is notmerely to alter some of the content of education, normerely to modify curriculum, nor merely to develop newdemonstration projects, nor merely to saturate a limitednumber of classrooms or schools with human and fiscalresources. Instead its express intent is to redefine whateducation is, and thereby to redefine the contexts and en-vironments in which education takes place and redefinethe roles of all participants (students, staff, parents, com-munity) in the educative process. Underlying all is theassumption that the overriding responsibility of a publiceducation system is to be accountable to the public bysatisfy inn the needs of its student-clients, and the legitimatedemands of its parent-consumers.

The kind of education we seek assumes that: (1) whatis learned is more important than what is taught; (2)students can help each other learn and in doing so helpthemselves; 13) students learn not only in school butelsewhere and that what is learned elsewhere is worth"counting" in school: 14) a'student's ability to learn isconditioned as much by the way a school is runby theschool's atmospherics and organizational climate--as byeducational programs offered; (5) learning is best whenit occurs as a result of one's own initiative and when itgenerates a desire for further learning; (6) the skills and

attitudes of teachers, supervisors, administrators and otheradults are crucial determinants of the quality of educa-tional programs; (7) a good learning environment pro-vides opportunity for growth and self-actualization for allparticipants, including adults. Above all, the education weseek should be heuristic rather than prescriptive and itshould make available to all participants the broadestpossible spectrum of choicechoice as to learning ob-jective. learning environment, and learning style.

All of these premises are fundamental to the new edu-cational design. They are basic to each of the proposals weshall make subsequently. They constitute the thread whichweaves the individual elements of the plan into a compre-hensive fabric.

THE NEW DESIGN REPRESENTED

Given the stress on process rather than on structures ororganizational patterns in the preceding description, it isdifficult to describe representationally the new educationalsystem without appearing to deny or contradict our basicpremises. With a recognition of that risk, herewith is adescription of the new design.

The new educational system is a network of interrelatedand interacting component parts of which the core schoolis a key part. The core school is one in which a pupil isenrolled and accounted for, where he spends a significantamount of time, where he is assisted with "brokering" theother parts of the educational network, and where he isprovided with certain foundational learning (e.g., basicliteracy). We see three types of core schoOls: transformed

7C.

r*,

WELFARE

.111

MAY 15, 1972 SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

THE

'OLD'

SCHOOL

GOVERN.MENT

FOUND-ATIONS

HEALTH

BUSINESS

LALLERIES

SCIENCE

THE

'NEW'

SCHOOL

INDUS-TRY

MUSE-UM S

existingschools; new schools which have been designedalong the lines of the new concepts herein described, and"satellite" schools which are located in non-school-build-ing settings. All are to be "alternative schools" since allare expected, in our conception of the new educationalsystem, to:

recognize that no school can provide all of the educa-tive experiences needed to develop the whole man, andtherefore all will see themselves as uniquely different mem-bers of a free-choice educational network;

recognize that there is no ot,e best route to education there are only effective and ineffective routes, andtherefore all will work to find their own most effectiveroute;

--recognize that certain environments are better forcertain 'types of learning than are others, and. therefore

all provide a variety of learning environments within theschool:

recognize that what works in one school. or whatworks for one child. will not necessarily work in anotherschool or for another child. and therefore all will becharacterized by individualized approaches.

Each Of these Sehools. then. is expected to he. in its ownlay, a "beacon light" school. Each is expected to selectthe mold in which it is to he cast. and students are to heable to select the class. the sub-school. the school theydesire to attend.

The next component of our network consists of "linkagecenters." These may be under the jurisdiction either of theBoard of Education or of community schocd boards orthey may he jointly sponsored by a school agency andanother agency. However. the centers are not a part of anygiven school. Their primary function is to be the point ofmeaningful and creative contact between the schools andother institutions and learning opportunities available inour cil. One tpe of linkage center would provide apoint of contact between the "schools" and the educa-tiOnal, cultural, and scientific institutions and organiza-I ions which have educationltroadly conceivedas amajor part of their mission. Institutions of higher learn-ing, foundations, science organizations and institutions,museums. the theatrethe galleries, the music and danceorganizations. parks such as zoos and botanical gardens.and certain national shrines are examples of the kind ofinstitutions we have in mind. Another type of linkagecomer would provide a point of amulet between the"school" and agencies which may be broadly defined asgovernmental. social service, and business organizations.While such agencies do not have education as theirprimary function, education has as one of its primaryrespnnsibilities the task of relating school and society.Through the relationships we plan through linkages withthese agencies, we expect not only to enhance educationalopportunity and clniice for students, but:,aTio to enhancethe caPability of these agencies to carry outctheir, socialroles. For example, not only would students go infq..sOiorcitizens .centers to serve and thereby to learn, but alsosenior. citizens would come into early learning centers toserve, thus helping school and society to re-create thestrengths and advantages-inherent in the concept of theextended family.

It follows, then, that the next component of our net-work consists of the agencies .alluded to immediatelyabove and the expanded opportunities for learning andgrowth they can provide.

The next component part of our network includes thoseplaces and processes which are to be used as vehicles fordeveloping. training, directing and redirecting the partici-pants in our educational system so that each can functioneffectively in roles which are newly defined. It is atruism to say that programs are only as good as thepeople who carry them out. Vic must find ways to helppeople redefine their roles, understand the implicationsfor such redefinition and gain the abilities, techniques andbehaviors needed to play such rrleS deftly and. hopefully,with a certain amount of artistry.

The "teacher center" ideain the British modeen-compasses some of what we have in mind, for clearly newmodes of staff renewal, development and training arerequired to make our new conception of education work.But then, parents, students and members of the com-munityas vital participants in the processalso haverole development and training needs. We want to providefor these, not only separately, but also, at least upon

.

1:

g

IV SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT STAFF BULLETIN

no

ADMINISTRATIVE HEADQUARTERSOF THE LEARNING COOPERATIVE

475 Riverside Drive, New York, N. Y. 10027Suite 425 Telephone (212) 666-0300

LEGENDA. Large-group conference area.

B. Informal small-group conference area.C. Self-contained offices for visitors or temporary

personnel.D. Reading lounge.

E. Administrative offices for permanent personnel.F. Presentation room.

G. Reception area.H. Work room.

I. Multi-media screening room.J. Storage area.

K. Display area.Note: The headquarters also will serve as a human resources develop..ment center and information exchange based on the "teacher center"concept. In addition to Suite 425, the Cooperative has access to otherconference and presentation facilities throughout the building, all ofwhich are available to cooperator groups.

occasion, jointly with teachers, administrators and para-professionals.

In short, what wee are talking about are centers in whichcan be developed the.human resources needed to make ournewly conceptualized educational system work.

The final component of our network is an educationalinformation and feedback system. Only with such a com-ponent can we tell whether or not our system is working,whether or not it is achieving its putative goals, andwhether or not its integrity is being maintained. To theseends, we want to devise a system by which we can getboth a continuous and a periodic reading on the programswe are mounting so that we can make adjustments alongthe line in time to make a real difference.

The construct we have in mind is illustrated by accom-panying charts of "old" and "new" schools. These chartsseek to conceptualize the new definition of "school" aspart of a total educational network.

This then is the new educational system we are in theprocess of designing. The direction of change we desire isclear and is suggested by contrasts such as these:

Existing Redesigned

System acts on the individual.

System progressively narrowspersonal options.

System defines education interms of approved curriculum.

System generally limits educa-tion to that which transpiresin the classroom.

System allows little choice anddecision-making to students.

System measures success viacompetitive achievement (stu-dent vs. student). "1,

et

Individual uses the system asa resource.

System progressively expandspersonal options.

System defines education interms of unlimited numbers ofeducational opportunities.

System deliberately utilizesthe educational resources ofthe surrounding community.

System provides multiplechoices and genuine experi-ence in decision-making to thestudent. .

System measures success bycomparing student's achieve.meat against his personalgoals and prior abilities.

System emphasizes contenteducation.

of Sys:ern emphasizes educationas a process.

System treats students as individuals.

System allows students andparents maximum reasonablechoice of 'diverse educationalopportunities.

Parents deeply involved inschool affairs, including poli-cy.making.

All participants are freed, andcan use the total educativeprocess for selfactualizationand growth.

System treats students asgroups.

System prescribes educationalprograms and assigns studentsto them.

Parents play narrowly.definedrole in school affairs.

Professionals and other work-ers feel as much trapped inthe system as do students andparents.

STRATEGY FOR CHANGE

Change is never comfortable and therefore is rarelywelcomed. Quite the contrary. Usually it is resisted eitherovertly or covertly. Consequently, change will not occurunless it is deliberately planned for. We plan to includein each program or proposal a specific mechanism whosefunction it is to set ins motion a specific set of strategiesby which the changes we are aiming for are likely to bebrought about.

These strategies are to be firmly rooted in change-process theories. Such theories tell us that the changemechanism or change agent must demonstrate that theproposed innovation is characterized by: (1) relative ad-vantage (it is superior to existing methodologies) ; (2)limited complexity ( it is relatively easy to understandand use) ; (3) compatibility (it is within the value sys-tem held by the potential adopter) ; (4) divisibility (itcan be tested successfully on a limited or trial basis) ;(5) communicability (it :s fairly easy to transmit fromone potential adopter tr, another).

Each of our proposals has these characteristics. There-fore, relative ease of adoption can be expected, and effec-tive change should result. That is the revolution we seek!