A New School for the Cities

A design for a new kind of Ur Sch, a New Sch, is presented. It is designed to be a replicatable model for the reform of Ur educ. Another goal of the design of the New Sch is the teaching of self-reliance & personal adaptability, & it is slanted toward the educ of the Ur poor. There are 2 good reasons for this approach: first, the Ur poor are least well served by the present system of educ, & their needs are greater; 2nd, a design that emphasizes the needs of the Ur poor will address the greatest range of educ'al problems & include the broadest possible spectrum of design features. The New Sch is designed for 2,600 students, because it was felt highly desirable to combine many educ'al innovations under one roof, so that maximum benefits could be gained from the process of mutual reinforcement. The following program features of the New Sch are discussed: a structured & open-ended curriculum; the pre-established criterion specifying the degree of comprehension that constitutes mastery of the unit's material; fine-grain student monitoring, the breaking down of courses of study into self-contained units of varying length; individual student rooms; a student job program; within limits, the control of each student's career decisions; improved professional rewards; diff'iated professional tasks; system adaptability; the functional unification of the Sch, preSch through 12th grade; extend Sch operations-the Sch will be open 12 months, 15 hours per day; & community participation. The size & distribution of the student pop is governed by the following factors: (1) There should be approximately 200 students per grade, kindergarten through 12th grade, so that there is a suitably large student pop from which to draw job applicants; (2) a diff'iated staff of approximately 80; (3) functional unification to provide the younger students with an expanded range of physical facilities; (4) a physical plant that does not impose unrealistic site demands; (5) it should provide a primary community (the parents of students) approximately equal to the size of the student body. The New Sch should be heterogeneous with respect to ethnic background, SES, & ability. The following guidelines should be followed to ensure this outcome: (A) Admission to the Sch should be wholly voluntary. (B) No student should summarily be denied admission to the Sch. (C) The principle of student body heterogeneity is sufficiently important to warrant consideration of policies designed to ensure that outcom