ERIC Number: ED225265
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1982-Mar-20
Pages: 15
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Comprehensive School Planning: Bringing Order to School Change in the 1980's.
Wiles, Jon; Bondi, Joseph
American public education is in trouble but educators have no long-term plan of action, are not thinking comprehensively, and are ignoring lessons of the past. A review of events since Sputnik (1957) reveals several lessons. From 1957 to 1963 national curriculum programs and isolated school experiments were introduced but did not take hold. In the 1963-73 period, the chase for federal categorical grants led to fragmentation and the loss of curriculum supervisors. From 1973 to 1978 retrenchment and new management methods caused loss of curriculum specialists and further curriculum drift. Most recently (1978-82), continuing retrenchment and political and financial crises have produced a dull and valueless curriculum and no curriculum leadership. Leaders now are concentrating on short-term, not long-term, solutions. Curriculum leaders, moreover, have forgotten the central role of democratic values in the schools' purpose, forgotten how to lead, and forgotten curriculum methodology. Three steps need to be taken. First, schools' purposes--what they are for and whom they serve--must be clarified. Second, educators must make long-term commitments to change and to planning for program implementation. Finally, school organization must be decentralized and curriculum developers returned to the building level. (Author/RW)
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers; Opinion Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (Anaheim, CA, March 20-23, 1982). Not available in paper copy due to marginal legibility of original document.