The Ford Training and Placement Program (FTPP) is a collaborative effort of the University of Chicago, the Chicago Public Schools, and the communities which the schools serve. The model assumes that (a) each school is a unique system characterized by institutional role sets and personalities with individual needs and (b) universities cannot prepare teachers for any school without the active participation of the professionals in the field and members of the community. The implications of these assumptions are that school staffs should be trained as a group before entering the school and that this training must be a collaborative effort on the part of the university, the public schools, and the community. FTPP worked with 13 cadres in 13 different school communities; developed, evaluated, and corrected five different district summer training programs; trained 314 teachers who were degree students; and provided in-service training on an on-going basis for approximately 2,500 educators in the Chicago Public Schools. The program has produced curriculum materials, audiovisual materials, literature describing the project, research reports and articles in professional journals, and program replications in the United States and abroad. The project will produce a monograph detailing the experiment and has produced a cadre of about 50 staff members who will assist other institutions to train professionals to deal with urban educational problems. (HMD)