A New School for the Cities

This document is the final draft of a preliminary design for a new kind of urban school. It is published in the expectation that the school it describes can and will be built and operated, in the near future. The New School is designed to be a replicatable model for the reform of urban education. The design has its origins in the conviction that such reform is desperately needed, and the linking of that convinction to the opportunity for planning that has become possible as a result of growing state and federal interest in the support of large-scale innovative efforts. The New School has the goal of teaching self-reliance and personal adaptability. Basic skills, intellectual growth, and self-reliance are considered parts of one educational fabric, and the school's programs are intended to be interdimensionally reinforcing in each of these areas. The design of our school is "slanted" toward the education of the urban poor. A fairly sizable school is contemplated--one designed for 2,600 students. Essentially, it was felt highly desirable to combine many educational innovations under one roof, so that maximum benefits could be gained from the process of mutual reinforcement. For the most part, design features are based on an extension of available education research result or successful programs whose principal features are well understood. (Author/JM)