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AUTHOR Dupuis, Mary M., Ed.; And OthersTITLE A Research and Development Agenda for the National
Institute of Education.INSTITUTION National Inst. of Education, Washington, D. C.REPORT NO NIE-P103BUREAU NO BR-1-7059PUB DATE Jul 72GRANT OEG -0 -71 -3636 (515)NOTE 95p.
EDRS PRICE MF-$0.65 HC-$3.29DESCRIPTORS Budgeting; *Cognitive Development; *Educational
Objectives; Educational Practice; *EducationalResearch; Emotional Development; *Federal Government;Legislation; Management; Physical Development;*Social Development
IDENTIFIERS *National Institute of Education; NIE
ABSTRACTThis is one of several papers written to provide a
rationale for programs of the new National Institute of Education(NIE). The basic elements of the rationale for each proposed NIEprogram and the sequence in which they will be discussed are: (1)
educational goals to be achieved, (2) variables that can bemanipulated to reach the goals, (3) current practice and status ofR&D on the variables, (4) new R&D programs that might lead to goalachievement, and (5) management and budget recommendations. Theresearch and development programs derived from this rationale fallinto four areas defined by NIE legislation: (1) basic research toincrease the fund of knowledge about education, (2) improvement ofcurrent educational practice, (3) activities to build the R&Dcapability of the country, (4) programs to solve major educationalproblems. The selection of Learner Goals, Enabling Goals, and SystemsGoals is based upon the opinions and work of many people and a widerange of literature sources. Learner goals have three areas:social-emotional development, cognitive development, and physicaldevelopment. Enabling goals include effective selection and trainingof persons who work in education and effective dissemination of R&Dresults. System goals include productivity, access, andparticipation. (CK)
U
Report No. P103
A Research and Development Agenda
for the National Institute of Education
July 1972
National Institute of EducationPlanning Unit
This series is pre pared under Project No. 1.7059, Grant No.OEG0.71-3636(515), for the U. S. Office of Education's National Institute ofEducation Planning Unit, Suite 1148, 425 13th Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.,Dr. Harry Silberman, Director.
This planning document was sponsored bythe NIE Planning Unit. Views or conclusionscontained in this study should not beinterpreted as representing the official policyof the NIE Planning Unit, Office ofEducation, United States Department ofHealth, Ehcation and Welfare.
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Report No. P103
A RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AGENDA FORTHE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION
July, 1972
Beverly Kooi, Chairman
Bruce CraigMary Harahan
Pat NooneWilliam Rabinowitz
Judy SegalHarry Silberman
John Tursi
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATIONPlanning Unit
3
Edited by Mary M. Dupuis, Ph.D.; Harold E. Mitzel, Ph.D., Project Director,Grant No. OEG-0.71-3636(515), College of Education, The Pennsylvania StateUniversity.
Consultants to this Report
Marvin Alkin Robert Reeback
Dorothy Christianson Lauren Resnick
Vincent Flemmings Larry Singell
Harold L. Hodgkinson Howard Sullivan
P. Kenneth Komoski Marc Tucker
Stanley Lisser Tim McCarthy, Editor
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Consultants to this Report ii
List of Tables
List of Figures vi
I.
II.
Overview of the Analysis
Goal Analysis, Detailed Discussion 8
A. Learner Goals 8
I. SocialEmotional Development 8
2. Cognitive Development 10
3. Physical Development 13
B. Enabling Goals 15
1. Dissemination for R&D Efforts 16
2. Personnel Roles in Education 20
C. System Goals 22
I. Productivity 22
2. Access 24
3. Participation 28
D. Criteria and Selection of New Programs for the NIE Agenda 30
III. Detailed Program Descriptions 35
A. Goal Specific Projects 36
B. Researcher Training 36
C. Specialty Ai ea Programs 37
I. Instructional Personnel 37
2, Curricular Programs 37
3. Theory and Knowledge for Organizational Change 38
iii
4. Planning, Management, and Evaluation Technologies 38
D. Comprehensive Programs 39
1. Experimental Schools 39
2. Career Education 44
3. Home-Based Early Education 54
4. Learner-Controlled Education 59
5. Unbundling of Higher Education 65
6. Community Education Agencies 66
IV. Summary of Budgets and Management Suggestions, 1973 73
Bibliography 81
iv
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Disciplinary and Special Interest Meetings 2
Table 2: Contracts 3
Table 3: Budgets by NIE Office 5
Table 4: Tentative Budget for Career Education R&D 53
Table 5: Unsolicited Research Contract Management 75
Table 6: Urt.;olicited Development Contract Management 77
Table 7: Solicited Research Contract Management 79
Table 8: Solicited Development Contract Management 80
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Scheme for Goals and Activities4
Figure 2: A Dissemination Model17
Figure 3: Relevance of Programs to Goals32
Figure 4: Relevance of Programs to Target Audiences33
Figure 5: Relevance of Programs to Educational Resources 34
9vi
I. OVERVIEW OF THE ANALYSIS
This is one of several papers written to provide arationale for programs of the new National Institute ofEducation. During the one year existence of the NIEPlanning Unit, the staff has met with several hundredpeople and made more than a dozen contracts to obtainanalyses and detailed descriptions for suggested R&Dprograms. Tables I and 2 list a series of two-daymeetings that were held with various disciplinary andspecial interest groups and a series of contracts that ledto program planning documents.
The basic elements of the rationale for eachproposed ,NIE program and the sequence in which theywill be discussed are:
I. Educational goals to be achieved;2. Variables that can be manipulated to reach the
goals;3. Current practice and status of R&D on the
variables;4. New R&D programs that might lead to goal
achievement;5. Management and budget recommendations.
The research and development programs derivedfrom this rationale fall into four areas defined by NIElegislation: basic research to increase our fund ofknowledge about education; improvement of currenteducational practice; activities to build the R&Dcapability of the country; and programs to solve majoreducational problems.
Because NIE will inherit many worthwhile ongoingR&D programs from the Office of Education, they areincorporated in this paper's goal analysis and resultingagenda. These continuing programs represent almostS100 million of NIE's $125 million fiscal 1973 budget.
Figure I and Table 3 summarize the analysispresented in this paper. They list the goals, the old andnew programs designed to achieve them, theirorganizational location within an interim N!E structure,and an estimated budget allocation for fiscal 1972 andfiscal 1973.
The selection of Learner Goals, Enabling Goals, and
Systems Goals is based upon the opinions and work ofmany people and a wide range of literature sources.
Learner goals were divided into three areas: (1)Social-emotional development, which includes learningto sustain onself socially and emotionally throughself-acceptance, successful social interaction, acceptanceof responsibility, and adaptation to new situations; (2)Cognitive development, reached through acquisition ofbasic academic skills and the ability to use those skills tofurther one's own education; and (3) Physicaldevelopment, which includes selecting a nutritious diet,avoiding hazards, attending to symptoms of illness, andgetting proper exercise;
Implicit in the discussion of each learner goal andits related programs is the notion that people learnthrough doing: i.e., it is necessary to provide conditionsMtich encourage students to engage in the desired goalbehavior directly rather than talk about it or experienceit vicariously.
Enabling goals include (1) Effective selection andtraining of persons who work in education, both intraditional roles and in roles defined by N1E's new R&Dprograms; and (2) Effective dissemination of R&Dresults through informing the field about new knowledgeand programs, demonstrating improvements in practice,and building demand for (and ways to implement)alternatives that are significantly different from thecurrent educational system. Enabling goals are thosewhich, for the most part, support the R&D system andare only indirectly instrumental in improving theeducational system.
System goals like learner goals, have three areas: (1)Productivity, which includes the use of information andtechnology to make educational activities effective andefficient; (2) Access, which involves the equitableprovision of educational services to all groups who needthem; and (3) Participation, which is intended to provideways for citizens to understand, obtain, and sometimesprovide for themselves, the educational services theywant and need. Although learner goals can possibly beachieved without the system goals, the educationalsystem would probably not be acceptable without them.
Table I
Disciplinary and Special Interest Meetings
Topics Chairmen
Psychology George Miller (Princeton University)
Sociology Burton Clark (Yale University)
Educational Technology John Truxal (Polytechnical Institute of Brooklyn)
Anthropology John Whiting (Harvard University)
Classroom Craftsmen William McConnell (Webster College)
Representative of the NationalEducation Association William Morrison (President NEA)
Curriculum Research andDevelopment Wade Robinson (Central Midwestern Regional Educational Laboratory)
Educational Publishers Robert Follett (Follett Publishing Co.)
Deans of Schools ofEducation Ted Cyphert (University of Virginia)
Reading Harry Levin (Cornell University)
Measurement and Evaluation Samuel Messick (Educational Testing Service)
Table 2
Contracts
Report: Community Participation in EducationAuthor: Polly Greenberg
Report: A Culturally-Based Education System for the DisadvantagedAuthor: Joan C. Baratz
Report: Open-Informal Education: Recommendations for Research and DevelopmentAuthor: Lillian G. Katz
Report: A Program Development Document to Improve the Quality of Education for the DisadvantagedAuthors: A Group at the University of Illinois, headed by Prof. Frederick A. Rodgers
Report: Program Proposals for Improving the Quality of Educational ExperiencesAuthors: A Group Drawn from Several Universities, headed by Prof. Robert Davis of Syracuse University
Report: Research Priorities for R&D Projects in the Economics of EducationAuthors: A Group at the University of California (Berkeley), headed by Prof. Charles S. Benson
Report: The Problem of Obtaining and Using Resources in Education. Some Proposed Programs for Purposive ChangeAuthors: A Group at the University of Colorado, headed by Profs. Larry D. Singell, Nicholas W. Schrock, and Wesley T.
Jordan
Report: Educational Outcomes, Processes, and Decisions: Frontiers of Economic Research and Development for the1970's
Authors: A Group Drawn from Several Universities, headed by Prof. Mary Jean Bowman of the University of Chicago
Report: Alternative Strategies and Program Initiatives for NIEAuthors: 0. W. Markley, Dorothy Mckinney, and Dan L. Rink of the Stanford Research Institute
Report: An N.I.E. Strategy PaperAuthor: Amitai Etzioni
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Table 3
BUDGETS BY NIE OFFICE
(in millions)
Fiscal 1972 Fiscal 1973
Bureau of R&D Resources (Total) $ 15.0 $ 20.5
Extramural Projects 12.0 12.0
Research Training 3.0 5.0
Developing Institutions 2.0
Intramural Research* (3.0)
Program Management 1.5
Bureau of Educational Systems (Total) 39.0 54.0
Specialty Areas:
1. Instructional Personnel 3.0 2.0
2. Curricular Programs 10.0 9.0
3. Organizational Change 3.0 3.0
4. Planning, Management,and Evaluation 8.0 7.0
Comprehensive Programs
Experimental Schools 15.0 30.0
Intramural Research* ( 1.0)
Program Management 2.5
Bureau of Directed Programs (Total) 30.0 45.5
Comprehensive Programs
Career Education 20.5 25.0
HomeBased Early Education 5.0 5.5
Learner-Controlled Education 4.5 7.0
Unbundling Higher Education 2.5
Community Education Agencies 2.5
Intramural Research* (3.5)
Program Management 3.5
TOTAL 84.0 120.0
* Allowable funds for intramural research for each office; included as part ofprogram funds.
.s14
Several classes of variables can be manipulated toachieve these educational goals: substance of theeducational experience; selection of target audience;personnel selection; the educational setting; time andspace distribution; allocation of monetary resources andincentives; changes in societal sanctions, laws, and rules;and changes in organizational structure and informationflow, The characteristics of each goal and how well it isnow being achieved suggest which combinations ofvariables are most likely to bring about the solution.Consider two examples that will be discussed in moredetail later:
First, most social development happens before thechild reaches school or after he graduates, and is
influenced by a wider variety of people than schoolteachers. The investment of current R&D resources onsocial development is disproportionately low in relationto its importance. Most educational research on socialdevelopment has occurred in the artificial trainingenvironment of schools. Funds for R&D on socialdevelopment should probably be increased and placedwhere such development actually occursin the home,community, and at work.
Second, education has invested in technology in theform of films, projectors, recorders, and the like.However, these have been disjointed "add-ons" to thecurrent teacher-led instruction and have not increasededucational productivity. As an alternative, the basicorganization of instruction could be changed to focus onthe student as the productive element rather than theteacher. Technology could then be used to allow theindividual student access to different educationalexperiences, perhaps resulting in better use of studenttime and educational dollars.
Although these examples suggest operatingprograms that would interrelate many educational goalsand contributing variables, each of the goal areas mustbe conceptualized separately to derive such programproposals. A detailed discussion of goals and how theylead to program suggestions is presented in thisdocument following the overview.
In Figure I, the horizontal bars represent both oldand new programs and program areas; the verticalcolumns indicate the goals covered by each program.Some current programs such as Experimental Schoolsand Career Education involve all the goals, but mostcurrent activities seem to fall into goal specific projects,or to cut across either learner goals or system goals. Inorder to be called a comprehensive program, they must
encompass the enabling goals, in addition to learner and
system goals.
The small empty boxes in the first row below thegoal titles represent basic research projects that arerelated to one goal or another. This research will beprimarily an extramural unsolicited program. While theresearch will not be directed, it may be classified by goalarea so that a staff with the right balance of expertisecan be acquired by NIE to help coordinate the projectsand serve as resource people on problem solvingactivities of the agency. When specific research activitiesare needed to complement large development projects orfill the information needs of the agency, an intramuralproject will be initiated. This will avoid having
extramural funds tapped for directed projects in basicresearch.
The program for researcher training represented bythe short bar is the familiar area that now exists in theNational Center for Educational Research and
Development (NCERD), though it will have some addedfeatures in NIE. For example, a small grant program issuggested with payment not only for students andnovice researchers, but also for experimental researchersin the field who interact with the grantee and to whomthe students may serve as apprentices.
Another recommendation is that large R&D effortshave some on-the-job training (OJT) positions attachedto them, on the assumption that if a group is goodenough to receive several million dollars in programmoney, a novice could gain valuable experience byworking with them. A plan for how OJT might beprovided in the project would be a required part of thenew proposals.
Moving down the diagram, the specialty areaprograms are, for the most part, those Regional Lab andR&D Center programs that have been grouped togetherfor the 1972 spring evaluation. The evaluation is beingconducted at NCERD and is designed to give budgetguidance to NIE management. Each specialty area is aloosely related cluster of programs placed under thegoals they seem most concerned with. Two otherclusters in the spring evaluation relate to early childhoodeducation and career education, and will fall withinother programs and projects on the agenda.
Finally, the comprehensive programs that cutacross goals are shown at the bottom of the chart. Thefirst two programs originated in the Office of Educationand are probably already familiar to the reader. The lastfour are being suggested by this analysis as new
6 15
programs. Deriving the programs from a goal analysis hasbeen complicated and will be discussed later. However,in this overview, the "flavor" of each of the newprograms can be suggested in just a sentence or two.
Program 3, the Home-Based Early Educationprogram, is based on recent evidence that indicates thegreatest R&D payoff may come from developing ways tohelp mothers help their own children. It will probablycontain at least three elements; first, a component toprovide places where expectant and new mothers cancome for help and child care instruction; second, acomponent to develop milestone measures of social andphysical development and simple procedures to applythem; and third, a component to develop in-homeday-care programs employing neighborhoodmother-substitutes to care for preschool neighborhoodchildren and counsel other mothers in the care of theirchildren.
Program 4, Learner-Controlled Education, stemsfrom an analysis of the open schools movement and willinvolve design, development, and tryout of severalmodels that seem likely to help students use basicacademic and problem-solving skills to direct andcontinue their own education. It will be technologicallyoriented, with concern for objectives the student mustaccomplish, ways to provide individual access toeducational alternatives, and ways to build the learner'scontrol of his own motivation.
Program 5, Unbundling Higher Education, meanswhat one might expect from the original use of"unbundling" in the computer industry. This programwould identify several functions of higher education thatare now "bundled" together and only obtainable as asingle package, like information transfer, credentialing,socialization, exposure to work models, etc. An
unbundling program will experiment with providingoptions for students to obtain particular functions fromdifferent agencies rather than having to accept thecomplete college package from an institution of higherlearning.
Program 6, the Community Education Agency, isintended to develop new mechanisms for the communityto govern and participate in providing its owneducational services. For example, the agency mightdevelop a mechanism for community residents toprovide a variety of neighborhood services, such astutoring children who have difficulty in basic subjects or
directing cross-age recreation and aesthetic programs.The agency could also allow forcommunity-improvement projects that give studentsrealistic educational encounters with the community'ssocial power systems.
Suggested NIE organizational placements are listedalong the right side of Figure I. Program placement wasbased upon whether the program was primarily designedto: I) solve major educational problems throughdirected and programmatic mission-oriented R&D; 2)improve practices within the current educational system;or 3) add to our knowledge, resources, andunderstanding of the foundations of the educationalprocess. These functions seem to imply differences inplanning and management style best accommodated bydifferent bureaus. Needless to say, staff members will bestrongly encouraged to work in more than one Bureauand it is expected there will be some rotation of peopleamong bureaus.
As the purpose of most new comprehensiveprograms is to solve major problems, they are placed inthe Programs Bureau. Ffforts here will involve carefulproblem analysis, internal planning, and large scaledevelopment activities. As a result, the management ofthis office will be quite directive and will require ahigher ratio of management personnel to program fundsthan other bureaus.
Most activities continuing from the Office ofEducation have been devoted to improving practicewithin the current educational system, and weretherefore placed in an Educational Systems Bureau.Typical examples are the Experimental Schools Program,and many of the Regional Laboratory and R&D Centerprograms. These programs usually involve finding thebest educational components of existing programs,making modest improvements, combining and trying outcomponents, and communicating the improvements topractitioners. These efforts require less directiveplanning and management, more investment in R&Dproposals from the field, and more practitionerinvolvement. They require specification of R&Dparameters, but program planning and managementrequirements can largely be met externally. The ratio ofagency personnel to program funds is less than that indirected programs, but more than that of basic research.
Basic research and researcher training involvesmaller research projects than those in prnolem solving
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and practice improvement. More precise methodology,more specialized talent and more freedom for the expertresearcher in the field are needed. NIE must attend onlyto the balance of topics, quality of proposlis,completion of efforts, and dissemination of results.Because of these characteristics, Basic Research andResearcher Training were placed within an EducationalResources or Foundations Bureau having a managementstyle that involves the least agency direction and thesmallest ratio of internal personnel to program funds.
A. Learner Goals
I. Social and Emotional Development
The fiscal 1972 programs within OE have beenclassified for transfer to the new operating programbureaus within NIE. Their budgets are summarized bybureau in Table 3, with estimates included for funds thathave not yet been spent. The suggested budgets for fiscal1973 are also included. A listing of specific ongoingprojects in each organizational unit is available. Anadditional $5 million of the budget provides foradministrative services to make a total 1973 NIE budgetof $125 million.
II. GOAL ANALYSIS
For satisfactory personal development, theindividual must sustain himself socially and emotionally.The aspects of social and emotional development thatare considered here are: a) self-acceptance; b) relating toothers; c) learning to take responsibility; and d) adaptingto new situations. Social and emotional developmentbegin early, as soon as the child needs attention fromothers for food and comfort. Later the young child mustlearn to make and keep friends and to persist in tasks. Ashe grows older he must learn to do his share in teamsituations, to make new emotional and family ties, tosupport himself financially, and to meet society'sregulations. Thus, the need to learn new social skills andto sustain oneself emotionally extends even into old age.Though social and emotional development cannot bedivorced from any part of a person's existence, it is
probably more influenced by the home and communitythan by school experiences.
The most critical developmental tasks appear at thebeginning of life and at times when the individual facesmajor physical and social changessuch as earlychildhood, the late teen years, and in late adult life. Yet,in only one of these critical periods are citizensguaranteed the right to education: the late teenageperiod. Even then, educational programs are tied to theschools and do not provide for social learning in themore natural settings of home, community, and job. Thegreatest payoff for education in this goal area is
probably in the early childhood years when basic
personality patterns are set and little educational effortis undertaken there. With an increasing life span and anaccelerating rate of change in society, the social andemotional needs of older people should also be of muchmore concern. NIE should probably concentrate onprograms for social and emotional development ofpre-school children and adults.
Though there is a massive literature on social andemotional development, the area is not well defined andmeasures are not adequate. NIE should devote someattention to developing measures of social and emotionalgrowth. Despite the pauci'y of useful measures, there isgrowing agreement on some factors that contribute tothese kinds of development.
For example, developing attachments to othersseems to be the infant's most critical social developmenttask. Findings of the Harvard Preschool Project indicatethat differences in children's ability to get attention andhelp from adults (one index of attachment) and tointeract on a verbal level appear as early as 18 months.These differences seem related to the mother's beingavailable and giving a few moments of help when neededas well as how much she encourages the child to initiateactivities.
a. Self-acceptance. Children seekconfirmation of their existence and value from thepeople around them. The development ofself-confidence probably depends upon the availabilityof supportive persons, not only in early childhood, butwhenever critical changes occur in one's life. Enteringschool is one such critical change. Children typically
A
begin school at the same age and stay in school for thesame amount of time each day, regardless of theirreadiness for the separation from home. Movement tothe institution can be very abrupt, and when the child'shome and school cultures diverge, he risks rejection(whether real or perceived). Children who are loud orrough, respond more to physical cues than verbal cues,dress and wash carelessly, withdraw from adults, etc., aregenerally different from most of their middle classteachers. The teacher, not recognizing these behaviors asstrengths the child may need in a roughneighborhoodsurvival techniques, as it wereoftenrejects the child. She speaks more often to children whoare polite, shows discomfort at physical contact withpoor children, rarely visits their homes, and sets loweracademic and social expectations for them. At the verytime when the child is in need of supportive persons tolearn new social and emotional responses in a newsetting, these people are lacking, and his self-acceptancemay suffer. A vicious cycle then results when lowself-acceptance contributes to low achievement, which inturn lowers self-acceptance even further.
b. Relating to others. Middle childhood'smain task of establishing peer relationships dependsupon learning skills like sharing, settling arguments,taking turns, letting others lead, being sympathetic, etc.The child probably learns these skills best fromaccepting adults who practice these behaviors. In
addition, the child must have opportunities to practicethese behaviors in settings like those he will meet later inlife. It is difficult for schools to give more thanincidental attention to these skills because a great deal ofschool work is individual work and is done alone; indoing it, relationships with others must be suppressed.Classroom routines require much waiting time on thepart of childrenusually with enforced silence. It mightbe much more helpful to shorten the school day and usethis waiting time to expose children to people from theirown neighborhoods in situations where social interactionis the central focus of activity.
c. Responsibility. Such behaviors as
finishing tasks one has promised to do, or beingpunctual, are related to a desire to achieve and a sense ofresponsibility. They are the mixture of compliance andindependence that contributes to adult success.Opportunities for most children to meet situations thatrequire dependability, and to see others assumeresponsibility, usually occur only in a haphazard
manner. The school, with its almost constant placementof the teacher in a superior role to the student, maybuild compliance, but may also hinder independence. Asensible formula for building responsibility andachievement, but one that is not systematicallyfollowed, is to give children ample opportunity toassume responsibility in situations at which they cansucceed. Them are many tasks that children could doand be rewarded for around schools, nursery schools,libraries, hospitals, and churches, around stores,barbershops, offices, and other small businesses. Successin these tasks would foster a sense of achievement andresponsibility, but almost no widescale programs of thistype exist at present.
d. Adaptability. Part of personaldevelopment is learning to adapt to new situations.People must make new family ties, adapt to societalproblems such as crowding and mobility, meet cyclicalchanges in life like moving from marriage to widowhood,work to retirement, or changing careers. A number ofaccepted psychological principles support the practice ofhaving the student perform in a wide variety of realisticsettings as effective training for adaptability. Forexample:
Learners are more likely to try things they havepracticed than those they have only talked about.
Practicing in a variety of situations promotesgreater generalization to new settings.
Helping a learner meet new situations successfullyand gradually withdrawing that help as he becomesmore competent leads to independent and creativeaction in other new situations.
Observing others as they take actions that seem towork often leads to imitating those actions in asimilar situation.
Schools provide only a narrow range of situationsin which these principles can be applied to learningsocial adaptiveness. Community resources could be, butare seldom systematically tapped to provide youngpeople with a wide variety of work experiences,community service opportunities, demands to interpretand follow rules, etc. Teachers are usually transmittersof knowledge rather than working artists, laborers, orprofessionals who serve as models. As a result, adultsfrequently graduate from school, only to realize that
9 18
th.
they had been "marking time" in a situation that wasnarrow and unrealistic and that academic skills wereunrelated to life outside of school.
Even the brief discussion above suggests a numberof programs that NIE might undertake, as well as somethat probably should not be pursued. For example,extensive work on social and emotional development inthe school context probably wouldn't be profitable. Theschool day, in fact, should probably be shortened so thatdifferent settings and people could be used to teachsocial skills. Some positive suggestions for activities thatmight be developed are:
1) Increase the likelihood that infantsand preschool children receive consistent andcontinuous supportive care by providingfundamental instruction for key neighborhoodparents, especially in the day-care setting. In thissame context, or in connection with regular healthcheckups, establish the role of advisor-evaluator ofyoung children's emotional and social growth.
2) Develop a program to use measuresof social and emotional growth to prescribe: entryinto formal schooling, lengths of school days forindividuals, and kinds of classroom experiences.The goal of this program would be continued socialand cognitive growth. The very socially immaturechild might benefit more from extra time spentpracticing actual responsibility out of the classroomrather than extra time spent in it. Shortenedacademic programs would relate closely toneighborhood programs that concentrate onhelping youngsters to take responsibility for everytask they can handle, like helping in libraries andlunchrooms and tutoring other youngsters.
3) Develop a program to shorten theyears of compulsory education for youngsters, butprovide entitlement to education services for aspecified number of years usable at any time of life.In order to manage provision of services,
community agencies could help people of all agesget education for new jobs, health, hobbies, homeupkeep, etc. These agencies would also serve as themanagement depot that helps to get students intothe community for more realistic learningexperiences.
Each of these suggestions will be developed in greaterdetail as part of one or more comprehensive programs
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suggested for NIE. However, there are also a number ofresearch projects that should be undertaken in supportof these development efforts such as:
1) Make anthropological studies ofneighborhoods and schoolswhich of theircharacteristics determine social behaviors, wherevalue conflicts are, and what variables might bemanipulated to reduce conflict and improve desiredbehaviors without destroying cultural values;
2) Do comparative studies of the effectof a broad range of work experiences and exposureto work models on later job success and jobsatisfaction.
2. Cognitive Development
The cognitive development goal is to provide thebasic intellectual tools necessary to maximize individualpotential in society. To function in our society, everyperson must at least learn reading, writing, andarithmetic for such tasks as reading newspapers,application forms, and schedules, and budgeting timeand money. People should also have enough academicskill to guide their own later education and to allowthem to share the symbolic artistry and experience ofothers.
The target audience for learning basic literacy andmathematics is heavily weighted toward the childhoodyears. 99 out of 100 children aged 7.13 are enrolled inschools for the primary purpose of learning basicacademic skills. Elementary enrollment in this countryrose to nearly 37,000,000 in 1969, with 80% of thesechildren in public schools, but by 1970 began to fall inmany areas (NCES, 1970, p. 2). Despite universal schoolattendance, inability to read is a major educationalproblem for one out of seven elementary school
children, for more than one out of five pupils from poorfamilies, and for one out of four eleven-year-olds (WhiteHouse Conference on Children, 1970). Though mostteaching of basic skills is directed toward youngsters,they are not the only target audience. 2.4% of Americanadults are considered illiterate and 11.3% of 1967draftees failed mental induction tests (NCES, 1970, p.13). Though both youngsters and to a lesser degree,adults, are target audiences for teaching basic skills, wewould do an injustice if we only taught the rudiments ofliteracy and mathematics. People must be introduced tothe sources of information, skill building, and enjoymentof other people's efforts that come through using
. 19
intellectual skills. Students must learn to be their ownteachers; that is, they need to know where to go forinformation, how to use libraries, how to evaluate theinformation they obtain, and how to recognize theirown information needs and share knowledge withothers. The heaviest educational need for this academiclearning beyond the basic skills occurs in later childhoodthrough early adult years. However, it continues to somedegree throughout the adult years, and perhaps increaseswhen retirement brings the need for new ways to spendtime.
The nature of the task and the target audiencessuggest that NIE needs to consider at least three kinds ofR&D activities:
A program to improve beginning reading.
A program to help children learn to useacademic skills for their own furthereducation and for enjoyment of theintellectual efforts of others.
A basic literacy program for adults.
a. Basic Skills for Children. We do notknow how learning takes place, only some of theconditions that seem to facilitate or impede it. Forexample, achievement seems more related to familybackground and peer group status than to systematicschool inputs. The most critical failure of our schools, infact, lies in the number of children from poor andminority group families who do no not learn to read.These children begin below the norm in academicachievement, and achievement differences between themand their advantaged counterparts increase the longerthey stay in school (Mosteller and Moynihan, 1972, p.14).
Federal government attempts to solve this problemof low achievement in basic skills have taken two mainforms. One is to provide supplementary orcompensatory funds through the Elementary andSecondary Education Act for school districts in povertyareas, with the district deciding how that money mightbest be spent to improve achievement. This solution, byand large, did not produce consistent or lastingimprovement. The second kind of effort was an R&Dsolution research on the reading process anddevelopment of new reading curricula based uponresearch evidence about successful reading instruction.
11
Examples of these efforts are basic research sponsoredby the National Center for Educational Research andDevelopment, and curriculum development efforts likethat of the Southwest Regional Laboratory. Much of theOffice of Education R&D funds were invested in suchprograms, and after six years, some of the programs arejust now being completed and readied forimplementation. Such curricula should provide a soundbasis for instructional sequences.
Though curriculum development efforts areworthwhile, many other variables that do not relate tothe sequencing of instruction per se seem to be ofoverwhelming importance. Recent evidence that Jensen(1969), lierrnstein (1971), and Shockley (1971) havepresented suggests the importance of genetic differencesin learning styles between lower and middle classchildren. Much other documentation. however, showsthat these children, and children of the poor generally,can and do learn effectively, both in and out of school.Many researchers who study child-rearing practices, forexample, have concluded that poor children learnself-discipline and independence earlier than middle classchildren (Moraus and Lowrie, 1967, pp. 19-41). Thoughit is the exception, in cities where reading achievementscores are published by school and race, there areinvariably schools with a high percentage of minority
. students where the children have high average scores(Young, 1971, p. 3). Also, various programs ofindividual tutoring have shown that virtually every childcan be taught to read, given enough concentratedattention on that one task (Ellson, et al, 1968).
Some identifiable differences in the task thatmiddle class and poor children face when they enterschool might explain the failure of poor children. Allchildren are typically introduced to the new and strangeinstitution of school at a given age, when they are almostsimultaneously separated from familiar settings, requiredto adapt socially, and introduced to academic skills. Butthe change is not so great for middle class children as forpoor children. The difference between parents' andteachers' language, reading habits, expectations for thechildren, expressions of temper, rules for talking andsilence, etc., are greater for poor children. This makestheir total load of learning much greater and alsointroduces the pressure of borne-school conflict into thislearning (Moraus and Lowrie, 1967, pp. 19-41). If someway can be found to reduce this task load for poorchildren during the initial learning period, they mighthave more success. There are several possibilities. The
1 20
Harvard Preschool Prnject has identified some maternalbehaviors that seem to facilitate children's cognitivegrowth and ability to manipulate the environment. Suchsimple behaviors as the parents' availability for momentsof quick problem-solving help, or frequently talking andlistening to the child, are missing in homes of many poorchildren (LaCrosse, et al, 1969). Middle class behaviorsthe child will face in school could be introduced to himand his parents within the family's own neighborhoodsetting; this is being attempted now in Project HomeStart of the Office of Child Development. Reading couldalso be introduced in a more familiar, non-institutionalsetting. Finally, in typical first-grade classrooms childrenspend only one-third to one-half of their time in directinstruction. The academic school day could be shortenedand focused on direct instruction. At present, the otherhalf of the school day often involves nonsupervisedpractice activities, such as doing written exercises inworkbooks, drawing, etc. The shortened academic daywould allow direct tutoring in a neighborhood day carecenter or having neighborhood adults come into schoolto participate with students in recreation, social, andtutoring activities.
b. Promoting Independence in Learning.Current classroom instruction typically involves aboutthirty children with one teacher who schedules activitiesby groups, tries to get each group as far through atextbook as possible, prescribes a great deal of drill andpractice, has few measures of progress, and uses thesemeasures mainly to judge children rather than guideinstruction. Day after day, children face an authoritysituation where they play a subordinate learning rolewith most activities directed by an adult who is theteacher. Philip Jackson, in his book Life in Classrooms(1968), carefully documents this typical learningenvironment.
Researchers and developers who see problems withthis typical mode of instruction have moved in severalmajor directions. One is to structure the learning taskinto small steps with careful measurement to insure thelearner's mastery of each step as he moves individuallythrough the materials. The student depends primarily onprogram structure for direction rather than on theauthority of the teacher. The most extensive effort tofollow this strategy is Individually PrescribedInstruction, developed under USOE support, thoughother programs with computer monitoring of progressalso exist,
12
A second direction of change has been to buildlearning situations with less obvious structure. The mostextensive of these movements has been the British InfantSchools' open education programs. These programs havebeen enthusiastically supported by some Americaneducators, and several American variations of the Britishprograms have been developed. Evaluation of thisapproach is difficult, especially in versions that valuefreedom for the child more than planning of experience.However, the general strategy of allowing the child morechoice among activities and encouraging and guidingindependent problem-solving is consistent with theconcept of facilitating learner independence.
A third popular effort to change the typicalclassroom setting has been through tutoring programs.Many of these have been very successful. In some cases,when the emphasis has been more on precise mothodsand achievement, the programs have trained andemployed community persons to do the tutoring(Ellson, et al, 1968). In other programs, the emphasishas been more upon a helping relationship amongstudents, with the tutors being peers or older children.Two outstanding examples are the Tutorial CommunityProject in Los Angeles and the Hawaii English Program.
A series of other techniques are being applied tomodify the authority structure of the classroom and topromote (among other values) learner independence.Among these are encounter group techniques, sensitivitytraining, and reality therapy. William Glasser, in Schoolswithout Failure (1969), presents a good example of oneof the recently developed strategies. None really focuseson cognitive skills as such, but attempts to build anacceptance of these approaches of self and others as anecessary condition to free the student to learn.
All these approaches, including the typicalclassroom, use technology to some extent. In most cases,however, the technology has been an "add-on" that doesnot give the learner any more or less control of hislearning environment. In all other aspects of his life he islearning to control and use technology to get what hewants. That is, he operates appliances, television,cameras, cars, food machines, Xerox machines, tools,etc. School is one of the very few places wheretechnology is applied to him rather than by him. Each ofthe above approaches for developing learnerindependence should be explored thoroughly,considering the added resource that student access to
technology should provide to facilitate learnerindependence.
c. Post-Secondary Education in Basic Skills.Statistics on adults in basic education are very
incomplete. Though only 500,000 peopleabout 10% ofthe citizens who are illiterateare in USOE's program todevelop and demonstrate adult basic education (NCES,1971), there are many other sources for training. Amongthem are schools, employers, unions, all levels ofgovernment, community improvement organizations,and educational training and consulting companies(Kent, et al, 1971, p. 31). Nearly 13,000,000 adults arein adult education of all kinds, including basiceducation.
There is general agreement on two problems thatface adult basic education. One is that adults who lackbasic literacy skills are usually too embarrassed to revealtheir shortcomings and too convinced of their continuedfailure to seek help. Therefore, target audiences must besought out, reassured, and convinced of the value ofsuch programs. The second problem is that isolation ofinstruction in basic skills, especially for adults, willprobably doom that instruction to failure. An exampleof both problems is the Job Corps, where students wereremoved from their home and future job setting forinstruction. The program suffered from difficulties inrecruiting, high cost per pupil, high turnover, and lowgains in basic skills.
Adult instruction in basic skills might be especiallyamenable to experimentation. Place, instructors, and useof technology could be varied, since acquisition ofacademic skills is not necessarily dependent on theformal school environment, and the subjects do notrequire custodial care, as children might. The locationfor learning might be home or factory; instructors mightbe from the community such as fellowworkers orprofessionals from other fields, and media might betelevision or comic books. NIE should test programswhere the scheduling is convenient, the setting is
informal, and content is related to job advancement,emotional needs, and daily problem-solving to see ifparticipation and success increase.
In addition to completing current programs like theExperimental Schools Program and the work of variousRegional Labs and R&D centers, design anddevelopment efforts can be undertaken in any of thethree general areas mentioned abovebasic academic
13
skills for children, education for learner independence.and basic adult education. For example. any of thefollowing efforts could be undertaken:
1) Develop programs which providehome and community based learning, making timeavailable by scheduling later ages for school startsand shortened school days so the community canhave the time to assume part of the instruction.Provide places where training is available forparents and other community adults and teenagersso they can learn to help children with reading andother basic skills.
2) Develop models of academic skillbuilding which teach students to be their ownteachers, i.e. where to go for instruction, how touse libraries, how to construct things, how to becritical of information sources and how torecognize their own needs and share informationwith others. A plan for dissemination and provisionfor incentives must be included here.
3) Develop a television series forliteracy training, with monetary incentives forparticipation and feedback to participants regardingsuccess.
In addition to development efforts, a number ofresearch projects would be useful. For example, in thearea of basic skills:
1) Longitudinal studies, beginning in
early childhood, of characteristics of successful andunsuccessful learners, with an emphasis on variablesthat can be manipulated. Adults who do not reador who learned to read as an adult should beincluded in the sample.
2) Evaluation, cataloguing, anddescribing of curriculum programs andtechnological devices that are especially effective inpromoting learner independence.
3. Physical Development
Though physical development is in part geneticallydetermined, habits of rest, exercise, and nutrition alsohave an influence. To thrive physically, people mustlearn to select a nourishing diet, avoid hazards, be clean,attend to symptoms of illness, and get proper rest and
22
exercise. Building these health habits depends upon theindividual's own awareness of health needs and his accessto resources that help him meet those needs. Childrenlearn appropriate health habits through observing theirparents practice these habits and through having suchitems as combs, toothbrushes, etc., available in theirhomes. Educational programs can also help childrenbecome aware of health needs and.in many instances canprovide nutrition and opportunities for exercise.
a. Societal influences on physicaldevelopment. The 1968 Hunger, U.S.A. report,confirmed by HEW statistics, classes the diet in 36% ofAmerican households with low income levels as "poor."Though we cannot experiment with the effects of poornutrition on children's intellectual growth, such studieswith animals indicate a correlation between nutritionaldeficiency and intellectual functioning. For example,animals who undergo malnutrition early in life show lessgeneral exploratory behavior than do animals who areproperly fed from birth. Such data, along with evidencethat the human brain undergoes a rapid period of growthbetween one and three years of age, has attachedimportant educational implications to studies in this area(The Association for Childhood Education International,1969). Though mote research is needed to establish thecausal effects of nutrition on intellectual functioning, wecannot afford to ignore the education of parentsandthrough them, their childrenin the selection ofproperly balanced diets. R&D programs should beparticularly aimed at low income families where suchnutritional deficiencies are greatest.
While cultural, social, and regional differences inwork and exercise habits have been identified, howindividuals learn to regulate their own cycles of workand rest, activity and relaxation, is not known. Thereare, however, some national traditions of physicalactivity (and inactivity) that might be key points forbasic change to improve exercise and recreation habits.For example, some medical examinations frequentlyidentify children who have not developed physicallyaccording to age norm, but this information is seldomused to plan the child's education. Despite the fact thatthe extent of individual differences in amount, rate, andtiming of growth makes chronological age anunsatisfactory index of physical maturity (Martin andStandler, 1966, pp. 455-463), our children all beginschool at the same age and typically continue inlock-step fashion through school with theirchronological age-mates. Especially critical periods of
development are the early childhood years andadolescence. Grouping all children together at these agesmay force inappropriate activities on many.
Another school influence on physical activitycomes more directly from the curriculum. A large partof the opportunity for regular physical exercise inschools involves participation in competitive sports.Such participation is usually limited by sex-stereotyping,social-class exclusiveness, and physical ability. Thissituation results m a small number of athletes getting alot of exercise while the rest of the student body servesas passive observers. NIB might explore the effects ofrigid age-grading and emphasis on competitive sports onthe development of exercise and recreation habits. Oneplace to begin is to study the effects of calendarconstraints on school eligibility and enrollment, sincethese affect even the smallest child's activities and mayset the pattern for later exercise habits. Physicalmaturation rather than age might serve as a bettercriterion of eligibility for physical activities.
Health hazards such as drug abuse, accidents,pollution and crime have also become a serious concernof public education. Many health hazards can be reducedthrough personal alertness to danger signals andawareness of the results of careless action. However,there is a thin line between practicality and neuroticismin such areas as maintaining security, being clean, andavoiding pollutants. One can work too hard, lock toomany doors, avoid too many foods, etc. While peoplefrom low income families are high risks for healthhazards, some middle class individuals have probablymaximized caution at the expense of a relaxed approachto life.
b. Education for satisfactory physicaldevelopment. Though national campaigns like "Smokeythe Bear," drug abuse advertising, and appeals topreserve the ecology can change behavior, the mosteffective health precautions and habits are probablyacquired through observation or practice under positiveincentives rather than exhortation. Unfortunately, manyparents are not appropriate models of health habits.Schools provide teacher models, but often they are tooalien to the neighborhood culture for students toidentify with them, and no incentives reinforceimitation. Probably the most effective solution is toidentify people in the community to serve as models forchildren to imitate, and to enlist their aid. Teenagers orcommunity adults are an under-used resource. Where
2314*
health education takes place is also important. Placeswhere children receive care, like day care centers, andwhere people receive medical help, like doctor's officesand clinics, could provide opportunities for buildinghealth habits, especially if they are accepted by andemploy people from the community.
Because health education means changingidentifiable be havior rather than accumulatingknowledge for delayed use, the control points for actionand the specific target audiences are more easilyidentified than is the case with other learner goals. Forexample, in the case of nutrition, the points where foodis purchased, aid the places where people eat probablyprovide the most direct access to diet control andtherefore may be the most effective points foreducational intervention. Consider some examples. Manyschools, preschools, and day care centers provide food(most often lunch or a midmorning snack) for childrenand adults, sometimes with Federal assistance. Althoughchildren are in these places at breakfast time and thefacilities are available, breakfast usually isn't offered.
In developing health exercise habits, it might bebeneficial to locate recreation facilities strategically, orplace needed services geographically so that morewalking is required. For example, experiments inproviding gym or swimming facilities in downtown areasadjacent to low cost and diet-oriented cafeterias, orrequiring all parking to be on the perimeter of thecommercial area, might yield measurably improvedhealth in a city's working population.
The most effective way to curb health hazardsmight well be to identify the high risk populations forspecific hazards and concentrate most education, service,and incentive investments on them, e.g., a focus onteenagers and overseas military personnel in drug abuse;on young women in birth control; or on young childrenin accident prevention.
This kind of analysis suggests several developmentalefforts that NIE might undertake:
I) Experiment with physical educationprograms using indigeneous community activitiesand employing members of the community asdirectors; also experiment with new locations forcross-age recreation in community centers, vacantlots, lunch-hour gathering spots, or churchfunctions.
2) Develop and assess the effectivenessof advertising campaigns to foster better nutrition;evaluate effects of using neighborhood people todemon strate improved food selection andpreparation practices; develop procedures to insurethat the more effective practices become self-sustaining.
3) Establish and evaluate the effects ofspecialized roles like director of community drugabuse prevention centers, etc., that would addressproblems of high risk individuals. Such programs,of course, require interagency cooperation.
4) Provide small-group, in-homepreschool programs led by community people whoare good health models; use these sites as vehicbsfor longitudinal studies of the effects on learning ofproviding breakfast as well as lunch for preschoolchildren.
A number of research projects related to educationfor physical development might also be undertaken byNIE:
1) Survey the literature on therelationship of nutrition to learning, exercise tophysical development, and physical development tolearning.
2) Identify recreational activities thatvarious cultural and ethnic groups enjoy and thetimes and places where recreation and exercisecould occur naturally in neighborhoods and atwork.
B. Enabling Goals
The educational goals discussed thus far have beenfocused upon improving the development of theindividual learner and the operation of the educationalsystem. Under each of these two broad headings, severalspecific goals have been defined. The success of NIE willproperly be judged on the basis of its contribution to therealization of these specific goals.
To make progress toward these goals will demandNIE involvement in a wide variety of activities. Theseactivities will express the Institute's determination toimplement its basic goals through effective action. Thus,the more fundamental learner and system goals of NIE
require the specification of enabling goals that will makethe achievement of these learner and system goals moreprobable. Two general enabling goals may be defined:dissemination and personnel selection and training.
Dissemination involves a variety of plannedactivities designed to promote widespreadunderstanding, acceptance, and diffusion of educationalproducts and processes developed with NIE supportthroughout the educational system. Personnel selectionand training involves attracting and preparing individualsto fill a broad range of educational roles as needed in anevolving educational system. Each of these enablinggoals will be discussed in turn below.
1. Dissemination for R&D Efforts
a. Dissemination as a Goal. The ultimatepay off for educational R&D is demonstrableimprovement in the educational system. Unlike thepursuit of pure science, R&D in education cannotreasonably be defended as a "good" or "desirable"activity in its own right. Instead it must be viewed as asocial investment. If there is little or no return on thisinvestment, society may rightfully question the decisionto allocate valuable resources to the activity.
In the last twenty years, largely due to effortssupported at the Federal level, educational R&D hasexpanded at a very rapid rate in the United States. Therelationship between educational R&D on the one handand educational practice on the other is imperfectlyunderstood, and Federal support for educational R&Dhas not been guided by any explicit, coherent theorylinking the two. By and large, it has been assumed thateducational R&D would ultimately improve educationalpractice through a "trickle down" process; i.e., the bestideas discovered in basic research would automaticallysuggest developmental efforts which in turn would befollowed by product testing in the field and leadingeventually to ever wider adoptions in educationalsettings. It is not generally acknowledged that R&D ineducation has had a disappointingly small impact oneducational practice. Though specific examples of asignificant influence here or there can be cited, theday-to-day operation of the educational system seems tohave been minimally influenced by the output ofeducational R&D.
16
It has been clear since the National Institute ofEducation was first proposed that the success of itsefforts would depend upon more than the developmentof a program of educational R&D. NIE is expected tohave a major impact on educational practice. It must bein the forefront of educational innovation. If NIE is todischarge this responsibility effectively, new methods oftranslating R&D results into educational practice mustbe developed and put to work. The goals of NIE,whether defined as changes in the learner or in theeducational system, cannot be reached without thedevelopment of effective strategies for dissemination.
b. Elements of a Dissemination Plan forNIE. Developing a dissemination plan for NIE involves aconsideration of at least three questions:
1) What activities are involved indissemination?
Are all dissemination activities essentially similar oris it useful to distinguish different activities on thebasis of what is to be disseminated (e.g.,knowledge, a product, new legislation) or who isthe target audience (e.g., researchers, teachers,students, parents)?
2) How should dissemination becarried out?
Is it helpful to differentiate dissemination strategiesand tactics on the basis, for example, of what is tobe implemented or who is to be reached?
3) Who should have responsibility formanaging dissemination activities?
Although it is obviously appropriate to assignresponsibility for dissemination jointly to NIE andOE, how can plans be developed to protect thelegitimate interests of each agency while at thesame time exploiting each agency's uniquecapabilities?
A first approximation to answers for these threequestions is presented in Figure 2, which distinguishesthree types of dissemination activities:
1) Information storage and retrieval;2) Demonstration of effective
Wha
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3.In
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A D
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Figu
re 2
educational practices; and3) Building demand for major
educational innovation.
c. Building Demand for Major EducationalInnovations. One aspect of dissemination is to storeinformation about educational R&D and to organize thisinformation so that it is readily retrievable by those whoneed and want it. The informational needs of the R&Dcommunity are accommodated largely by the familiarprofessional and scholarly communication channels ofwhich journals, newsletters, monographs and books aremajor aspects. As the volume of R&D information hasincreased, however, these channels have been
supplemented by more elaborate computer-basedsystems. While such systems perform a vital
dissemination function, they tend to be more inclusiveand less selective than is warranted given the quality ofmuch so-called educational R&D.
A second aspect of dissemination is thedemonstration of promising educational materials,products, and practices. This function is largely directedat educational practitioners (teachers, counselors, schooladministrators, etc.). It involves not only providinginformation about educational developments, althoughthis is certainly included, but also displaying ordemonstrating these developments in a tangible mannerso that a practitioner can judge their appropriateness forthe local context in which he works.
The third aspect of dissemination involves buildingacceptance of, and a demand for, specific innovativeeducational programs. The importance of this aspect ofdissemination is based on the assumption that one of theconsequences of a sound educational research anddevelopment program will be potentially significantreforms of the educational system. After such majordiscoveries have been made, it will be necessary topursue a strategy for encouraging widespread adoption.This, of c our se will involve informing anddemonstrating activities, but it will also entail moreactive efforts to persuade educational practitioners thatthe reform is desirable or necessary. In addition, it willinvolve assistance in the installation and continuousmaintenance of the innovation in order to insure itssuccessful adoption.
The three activities may be considered to have ahierarchical relationship to one another. Informing is
clearly a minimally required activity. Demonstrating, onthe other hand, is more complex and must inevitablyinclude the sharing of information. Finally, buildingacceptance is a still more complex process in whichinforming and demonstrating are included.
The three activities can also be distinguished withrespect to how "neutral" or "objective" they aspire tobe. Informing is obviously an essentially neutral activityin which accuracy and completeness are major concerns.A system for informing must store and make available asmuch relevant information as possible on any given topicof interest to the educational community. R&D reportswhich meet minimum levels of acceptable methodologyshould be incorporated in the system. Demonstrating is asomewhat less neutral activity. From among the manyproducts and processes that can claim effectiveness inmeeting an educational need, some will be selected fordemonstration and display. Others, inevitably, will notbe so favored. Implicitly then, a judgment has beenmade that some products or processes are probably moreeffective than others, and it is those products andprocesses that should be demonstrated. Thus, althoughdemonstration is viewed as only an aid to thepractitioner, making it easier for him to make aninformed choice, the prior judgment of what will bedemonstrated necessarily constrains the practitioner'sfreedom to choose. Finally, building acceptance is theleast neutral of the three dissemination activities.Probably only a few educational programs will produceR&D results which can justify major efforts to achievewide-scale adoption. Although such innovations can havea potentially powerful and positive impact on theeducational system, it would be naive to assume thatthey will be adopted through information anddemonstration activities alone. It will be necessary toformulate specific strategies for gaining the requiredacceptance, and the strategies will almost surely have tobe developed to suit particular program characteristics.Building acceptance for a specific approach to careereducation may involve procedures that are very differentfrom those involved in building acceptance forhome-based education of pre-school children.
The third column of Figure 2 presents tentativeanswers to the question of what agencies should beresponsible for managing dissemination activities. It isquite clear that this is a question of major significance.Both NIE and OE have strong commitments todissemination and each agency will undoubtedly have animportant role to play. An exact specification of therelationship between the two agencies is impossible at
18. 27
T
this point. The answers in the third column of Figure 2are designed primarily to suggest that cooperativearrangements, mutually acceptable to both NIE and OE,will undoubtedly have to be established.
d. Making dissemination work. In carryingout its responsibility for insuring appropriatedissemination of its R&D products, NIE will need totake the lead in several key areas.
1) Needs assessment. Before it embarkson a developmental program NIE would beresponsible for analyzing educational needs andmarketing possibilities. As part of the planning foreach proposed program, the Institute wouldconduct a needs assessment study designed toadvise policy makers and to suggest the mostadvantageous means of disseminating the outcomewhen it becomes available. In that way thegroundwork for dissemination will be establishedwell in advance and R&D outcomes are more likelyto reflect realistic educational needs.
2) Planning dissemination strategies. Incarrying out its responsibility of implementingR&D outcomes, it is particularly critical that NIEhave maximum flexibility to design itsdissemination strategies on a case-by-case basis. Nosingle strategy will suffice for the full range ofNIE-supported research and development activities.Techniques must vary according to the product,target audience and available resources. Somedevelopments can be implemented directly byteachers while others will require school board oradministrative support. Still other developmentswill depend on the actions of state or Federallegislatures, and others on individual parents orprivate employers. Obviously differentdissemination strategies will be needed to workwith different audiences and for different products.
In planning dissemination strategies,the Institute will have to draw on the expertise ofdifferent dissemination specialists as needed. Thesepeople could come from NIE itself, OE's programstaff, other Federal agencies, universities, privateindustry, state and local public agencies, and so on.Some of these people will be involved in R&Dprograms, moving on later to help implement andmonitor the dissemination effort. In some cases, afew people could be intimately associated with theproduct over an extended period of several years;
)thers would make specific contributions over ashorter period of time. Through this technique NIEcan maintain optimal flexibility and continuity inits dissemination efforts.
NJE planning staff would beresponsible for developing dissemination plans in asmuch detail as possible, during the early stages ofprogram development. This would entail extensivecontact with potential outside dissemination agents(other Federal agencies, publishers, professionalassociations, etc.). Since OE resources will becritical to many of NIE's dissemination plans, NWwill need to be in day-to-day working contact withOE personnel during both planning andimplementation of dissemination efforts.
3) Implementing disseminationstrategies. When NIE has formulated appropriatedissemination strategies for a product, it wouldidentify appropriate resourcesfinancial,institutional, and humanto carry out thenecessary tasks. The Institute might draw on thecapabilities of other Federal agencies such as OE,NSF, NIH and 0E0; commercial publishing andmarketing systems; trade and professionalassociations; scholarly journals; state agency staff,etc. In some instances, NIE might secure financialcommitments from other agencies andorganizations to help support a disseminationeffort, since spreading improved educationalpractices is a mission shared by numerous agencies.In other cases, NIE might use its own funds tocontract for dissemination services, often with theproduct's developers.
As dissemination programs go intooperation, NIE would retain responsibility formonitoring and evaluating dissemination projectsbeing carried out by inter-agency agreement,contract, grant, etc., on its own behalf. NIE mightdetail staff to work on the dissemination effort toinsure successful installation. In any case, NIE staffwould be expected to work closely with whateverorganizations might be involved in house or bycontract.
4) Basic research on dissemination.The effort to carry out dissemination effectivelylabors under many severe handicaps. One of themost troublesome of these handicaps is the relativepaucity of reliable knowledge about educational
change processes. NIE will therefore conductresearch on communication, decision-making andinnovation in education. Each program supportedby . NIE will be an experiment in ways tosuccessfully implement alternatives in education.Studies designed to clarify the ways in which newideas and practices are disseminated through theeducational system will also be undertaken.Although plans for specific projects have not beendeveloped, the following are examples of whatmight be supported:
Research on obstacles to change. NIEand other agencies will be unable to providemeaningful and relevant assistance either onspecific innovations or on the improvement ofpractice in general without an understanding ofwhy education resists change and how innovationsachieve actual widespread adoption.
Invention of alternative procedures forcreating an incentive structure in education thatwill insure a sustained demand for improvementand renewal. Studies are needed that can generateand test alternative models that motivate schoolsand communities to actively pursue betterstructures and systems for providing educationalservices. Perhaps economic studies of the effect ofcompetition in the market place on receptivity toinnovation has something to offer on this problem.
Methods of assessing innovations andtheir intended and unintended consequences.Methods for assessing the consequences ofimplementing new alternatives must be developed.Such tools, once developed, can be used to monitorthe effects of outstanding examples of educationpractices that are introduced in new settings.
2. Personnel Roles in Education
The educational system is vast and extremelycomplex. Millions of individuals serve in this system in abewildering variety of roles; moreover, the functionsthey perform are dynamic rather than static. Theteaching role today, for example, is different from thatof 25 years ago (although some would say otherwise)and will almost surely be different 25 years from now.To meet the learner and system goals of NIE, it will benecessary to understand how individuals are recruitedinto the educational system, how they are trained for
the particular responsibilities to which they are assigned,and how these processes can be managed moreeffectively. Since NIE will be expected to have a majorimpact on educational practice, it will support programsfor selecting and training personnel who can functioneffectively in an educational system that may differmarkedly from the system as we know it today.
Personnel selection and training must be regardedas a major enabling goal for NIE. The ability of theInstitute to reach learner and system goals will becritically influenced by the number and quality of thepersonnel involved in the educational enterprise.Educational personnel will be needed who have someinterest in and aptitude for the tasks they are expectedto perform. AWareness of and commitment to the broadlearner and system goals of NIE will be of greatimportance.
NIE's responsibility with regard to personnelselection and training must be carefully delineated.Every year tens of thousands of young teachers areprepared in colleges and universities throughout the U.S. Much smaller though still impressive numbers ofschool administrators, guidance counselors, andeducational researchers are similarly prepared. It seemsquite clear that NIE cannot and should not undertake tosupport the vast majority of the programs in which theseindividuals are prepared. The limited resources of NIE,as well as its R&D mission, preclude support forconventional programs to staff the educational system.The resources that N1E can invest in personnel selectionand training will necessarily be focused on innovativeprograms whose goals coincide with those of theInstitute.
a. Choice Points in Planning an NIEProgram to Enhance Education Personnel Development.Plans for NIE programs in education personneldevelopment will require attention to several matters,each of which will be discussed below.
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1) Role Responsibility in theEducational System. Personnel plans will have totake into account the varied roles individuals playwithin the total educational system. Among theseroles are determining education policy, managinginstruction, providing specialized services, andconducting research and development. This list ishardly exhaustive, and as the educational systemchanges, at least partly through NIE-sponsored
efforts, new roles may emerge while old rolesdecline in importance or are significantly modified.
2) Personnel Tasks. At least two majorpersonnel tasks can be clearly recognizedselectionand training. In the recent past, due largely to ageneral shortage of educational personnel, traininghas typically been given more attention thanselection. As the shortage of personnel eases, andwith an increased emphasis on competency-basedmeasures rather than formal academic degrees asthe basis for certification, selection may beexpected to take on far greater importance.
3) Present or Future Orientation. Asnoted above, the educational system is dynamicrather than static. It is therefore possible toconsider the development of personnel for thesystem as it now exists and functions or as it isexpected to function in the future. Since the majorgoal of NIE is to stimulate and guide educationalchange through the creative application of researchand development, the development of personnel foran emerging educational system must inevitablytake precedence over the personnel needs of thesystem as it now operates.
4) Agencies Involved in PersonnelDevelopment. A number of different agencies havetraditionally had some responsibility in thedevelopment of educational personnel, includingcolleges and universities; schools; laboratories,centers, and institutes; local, State, and Federalgovernment agencies; commercial and industrialorganizations; and community groups. At present,personnel development is largely the responsibilityof colleges and universities, with only modestinvolvement from the other agencies listed above.Personnel plans developed by NIE will call for abroader base of participation including theencouragement of consortium arrangements.
b. Possible NIE Pollices for Support ofR&D on Education Personnel Selection and Training.Plans for NIE's support of personnel selection andtraining cannot now be formulated in detail. It is
possible, however, to state some general policies that canguide the development of these plans. Among thesepolicies are the following:
1) NIE will be concerned with theselection as well as the training of educational
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personnel. Efforts will be encouraged to broadenthe base of participation in the educational systemby recruiting individuals who are now effectivelyexcluded.
2) NIE will encourage efforts to "openup" the certification of educational personnelthrough the development of alternative paths tocredentialing. Performance-based measures ofeffectiveness in carrying out defined educationalresponsibilities will be central to this effort.
3) Support decisions will emphasizethe needs of the emerging educational system forNIE's goals to be realized effectively. Conventionaland routine programs designed to prepareindividuals for existing roles and responsibilities inthe system will not be supported.
4) Support for relevant personnelselection and training activities will be built intoNIE's major program areas. Additionalsupportnot specifically related to major programareaswill also be available, but only if thepersonnel activity offers an innovative alternativeto conventional practice.
5) NIE will encourage a variety ofpersonnel-related activities, including researchdesigned to clarify emerging personnel needs in achanging educational environment and to yieldpractical procedures for selecting individuals to fillmajor educational responsibilities. Also to beincluded are innovative programs of personnelselection and training focused on the emergingneeds of the educational system, and projects forselecting and training personnel to undertakeresponsibilities associated with the major programefforts sponsored by the Institute.
c. Personnel Development for EducationalR&D. In the past, R&D personnel in education havebeen drawn largely from the ranks of psychologists. Tworelated consequences have followed:
1) Educational R&D has had atendency to focus on primarily psychologicalvariables and explanatory principles with only alimited attention to variables, insights, andmethodologies derived from other disciplines (e.g.,anthropology, sociology, economics, politicalscience, etc.);
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2) Educational R&D has beendominated by theory-oriented, narrowly focusedinvestigations that meet limited methodologicalcriteria at the expense of more applied, and lessnarrowly rigorous, efforts. The "R" in R&D hasproven more attractive to investigators than the"D"
In the future, R&D personnel in education willhave to deal with a broader range of phenomena; theyshould therefore be drawn from a broader range ofdisciplines. Applied studies, drawn from real-worldeducational problems, with definite implications foreducational policy, will become more and moreprominent. For NIE this will mean:
1) More vigorous efforts to recruitanthropologists, sociologists, economists, andpolitical scientists into educational R&D work;
2) More support for programs toprepare educational R&D personnel in whichanthropology, sociology, economics, and politicalscience play a major role;
3) More emphasis in graduate trainingprograms on the applied, developmental, andengineering aspects of educational R&D. Brightyoung people from a wide range of disciplinesshould be induced to apprentice themselves to themost able education problem-solvers in thecountry.
The manpower needs for educational R&D todayare comparable to those for clinical psychologists shortlyafter World War II. These needs, however, will not bemet merely by preparing more psychologists or moresocial scientists from other disciplines. A new type ofresearcher, one who can split his time betweentask-oriented and discipline-oriented efforts, is required.Training programs will have to identify and prepareindividuals who are as interested in the application oftheory as in the theory itself. Just as economists moveeasily back and forth between their universities andWashington, educational researchers of the future willhave to feel at home in the university, the schools, thecommunity, the private sector, and NIE. They will haveto establish working relationships with each of theseagencies, similar to their relationships with the libraryand the computation center.
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The training of research and development personnelin the area of educational technology is another problemto be considered. The constant growth of technologymeans that those individuals being trained today cannotmerely be taught the techniques and methods of thepresent. They must be trained rather for the technologyof the future, where computers and other new mediawill be the rule rather than the exception. Closed-circuittelevision, for example, should be exploited to itscapacity, since it is a potentially useful tool not only inthe classroom but in teacher training as well.
Another manpower problem is especially striking inlight of the NIE's mission to foster equality ofeducational opportunity. Programs aimed at upgradingthe quality of education for minority groups will not besuccessful without the cooperation of the ethnic groupsthemselves. However, many blacks question therelevance of educational R&D as a career. Those who dofind their way into this field are often labeled "UncleToms." Widespread ethnic support of the programs ofthe NIE should therefore be cultivated.
C. System Goals
1. Productivity
The goal of productivity in education is to makemore effective use of its expanding level of publicresources. To reach this goal it is necessary to (a) havemeasures of school effectiveness, (b) develop newtechnology, and (c) obtain information about theeducational sector.
a. Measures of Educational Effectiveness.Despite the enormous amount of research into thenature and process of education, little is known abouthow students learn and how instruction relates to thisprocess of learning. This absence of a theory of learningand instruction makes research on the relationship ofvarious inputs to education, such as school facilities,curriculum, qualification and allocation of teachers, etc.,to educational outcomes, such as personal, social, andcognitive goals, critical. To increase productivity, wemust not only define such relationships, but select asinputs those variables which can be manipulated in orderto most effectively accomplish the desired outcomes.Burkhead (1967), Hanushek (1968), Katzman (1970),Bowles and Levin (1968), and Guthrie, et a! (1970),have provided an initial step in this direction. One of the
widely recognized shortcomings of these studies,however, is the lack of appropriate or adequate measuresfor both the inputs and outputs of education. Someform of measurement in terms of both quantity andimpact is a prerequisite to the formulation of programsthat foster effective education.
Project Talent and the National Assessment ofEducational Progress (NAEP) have both attempted tomeasure the effectiveness of education; however, theconclusions which have been drawn by both studies stilldo not identify what variable might be altered toincrease that effectiveness. More longitudinal studies ofstudent learning are needed to relate the observableoutcome of the educational process to npecific items in aperson's educational history, including family andcommunity influences. A new study, the LongitudinalStudy of Educational Effects (LSEE), has been initiatedby USOE to develop a broad range of measurable criteriafor school effects beyond retention rates and scores onstandardized achievements tests. The results of suchstudies provide the basis for more efficient allocation ofresources to achieve more effective education. Highpriority areas for NIE research and development include:
1) Multidisciplinary research onlearning by biochemists, psychologists,neurophysiologists, etc,;
2) Accurate measures of the outcomesof the educational process with particular emphasison criterion-referenced testing and observationaltechniques of measurement; particular emphasisshould be given to the development of outcomemeasures in the areas of social and emotionaldevelopment in contrast to the usual emphasis oncognitive development;
3) Longitudinal studies which identifythose educational conditions that are effective inproducing given outcomes, when factors such ascommunity patterns, ethnic groups, peer groups,etc., are taken into account.
b. Educational Technology. A large part ofthe increased standard of living in American society isdue to technological change. For example, throughdevelopment of new production techniques, a smalleramount of labor and money yields far morecommodities than was possible a few decades ago.Educational productivity has not increased in a like
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amount, in part because teaching is a process ofinteraction and technological substitutes are not easy todevelop. Nevertheless there has been some progress inapplying technology to education. For example:
I) Indirectly, the impact of technologyin other sectors, such as agriculture, industry, andentertainment, ha; affected education via theincreased sophistication of students when theyenter school, the specialization of adult activities,and the standardization of values through massmedia communication;
2) The application of such items astelevision, projectors, tape recorders, etc., has hadsome effect on instructional content, mode ofpresentation, storage and retrieval procedures, andclassification of material;
3) Recent at tempts to engineereducational situations to achieve desired results area higher level application of technology, involvingnew educational models that restructure the use ofmaterials, facilities, equipment, and incentives andmake more efficient use of student and teachertime and facilities.
These examples of three different levels oftechnological influence have generalizable implicationsfor education. First, the rate of change and level oftechnological development creates the context in whichthe educational system must operate. As such,technology places demands on the educational system toprovide for specific types of training and adaptability.Second, technology may provide devices that are usefulfor making educational resources more effective. Third,and probably most important, technology has set thestage for a shift in thinking about educationalproductivity; i.e., the use of technology to put thestudent in charge of his own educationteaching him toformulate problems for himself, to seek and useinformation, to be in command of the technology, toevaluate his own work, etc. This necessitates a change ofreference from the teacher as the productive element tothe student as the productive element.
Technology and all of its ramifications offeropportunities to make education more productive. Theremedy, however, is not simply computer-assistedinstruction, or team teaching, or instructional television.These innovations must be integrated with more
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traditional resources in order to make a difference. TheCommission on Instructional Technology (1970) hasdescribed the importance of sound development workon technology with plenty of evaluative feedback fromfield testing to enable cycles of revisions andimprovements to be made. "Sesame Street" and the"Electric Company" are probably the best large scaleefforts in this direction, illustrating the value ofprogrammatic development using formativeevaluation-revision cycles to improve the effectiveness ofinstruction.
To build on past efforts to improve the use oftechnology in education, NIE should undertake a
number of new activities. In development, the majorconcerns should be:
1) To develop instructional programswhich put the student in command of educationaltechnology, so that he can use devices to select hisown educational experiences, determine how longhe will participate, move from one resource toanother to solve problems, assess his own progress,and reschedule activities when he needs to learnmore;
2) To develop model applications oftechnology which permit adequate time andprovide effective incentives for parents, students,and community resource people in education;
3) To develop efficient administrativestructures; in particular, administrative andfinancial systems must be developed which fosterefficient state and local school administration;
4) To develop mechanisms wherebypeople outside the school sector, in government,industry, business, and other fields may cooperatewith educators and assist in the production andmodification of educational services; shared use ofexisting institutional resources outside schools andcolleges may provide a promising path towardincreasing education productivity.
Related research activities include: identification ofincentives necessary to encourage adoption of new andeffective educational programs; research on efficientutilization of time (previous analysis of schooleffectiveness overlooks student and teacher time as a
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constraint to the learning process); and research on usingpeer tutors to increase productivity in education.
c. The Information Problem in Education.Without appropriate information, public desires foreducational services are unknown to educators and thepublic has little basis for exercising its educationaloptions. Information is necessary for intelligent societalparticipation in school decision-making, but the realissue is to determine what information is needed andhow it can be most usefully disseminated. Hanushek andLevin (1968) have discussed this problem, whileColeman and Karweit (1970) have analyzed multi-levelinformation systems. Some of the findings of theiranalysis may be subjected to experimentation in a LosAngeles school district. In addition, Jencks (1970) hasdiscussed the information which would be required by avoucher system. Despite this work, a comprehensiveinformation system has yet to be devised.
Possible NIE activities that could significantly fillthe information gap include:
1) Developing a formal theoreticalframework for the education industry that woulddefine a relevant system for the efficient collection,evaluation, and dissemination of informationnecessary for effective decision-making;
2) Developing key social and economicindicators that permit evaluating the quantitativeand qualitative developments in education.
2. Access
Education can provide the basis for a productive,meaningful work life, creative use of leisure time, andthe skills important in social and communitydevelopment. On the other hand, limited access toeducation can become personalized in poverty,unemployment, crime or in many other forms of wastedhuman potential. The access goal implies an allocation ofresources which equalizes the access to educationalservices. It seeks to provide a greater number of learningexperiences for those whom the school and collegesystem does not currently serve.
This section discusses the following aspects ofproviding equal access to education: (a) uefinition ofeducational needs, including the specification of targetgroups to be served; (b) development of expenditure and
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taxation schemes which equitably provide for services tomeet these needs and make them widely available; and(c) creation of an incentive system which facilitates asustained provision for equality of access.
a. Educational Need. It is commonlyaccepted that some students require more help thanothers to get the most from their education. Themeasurement of relative need, therefore, is a relevantissue for allocating resources to improve access. Suchmeasures should be objective, unambiguous, and just.There are two broad approaches to measuringneeddirect measures of actual pupil performance or theuse of social predictors, such as family income.
Direct measures, such as achievement tests inreading, mathematics, social science, etc., could be usedoperationally to determine need. However, there arebasic criticisms of these measures as a guide to studentperformance and to resource allocation. Some of themajor problems (as cited by McKinsey & Co., 1970)include:
1) "The tests currently available do not dealwith some of the most important aspectsof pupil developmenti.e., ability to dealwith people and sense of personalworth."
2) "Providing extra resources on the basis ofachievement tests might actually result in' re w a r ding' unsuccessful educationalprograms or ineffective teaching."
3) "Allocations might 'seesaw' undesirably;needy districts would receive extra funds;then test scores would improve, and theywould lose the funds; the scores woulddecline; and so on."
The serious nature of these problems has led someresearchers to propose the use of social, economic, andenvironmental factors as a basis for defining studentneed. For example, family income, parents' educationlevel, pupil mobility, ethnic group, etc., are sometimesused to develop an index of educational disadvantage.This index provides an operational estimate of additionaleducational resources necessary for equalizing outcomes.Compelling evidence supports the necessity for this typeof allocation scheme, if any real equalization is to occur.For example, the now famous Coleman Report (1966)
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documented the critical roles of social and economicstatus as a determinant of educational outcomes. Morerecently, Garms (1971), in a study which employed 30variables to measure socioeconomic status, documentedthe relationship between low socio-economic status(SES) and low achievement. He found that, using 30SES variables, it is possible to predict about 65% of thevariation among schools in the percentage of childrenbelow minimum competence in reading.
While this approach overcomes the major problemsof the "outcomes" approach discussed above, there areother objections to such measuresthe accuracy andvalidity of some of the current' research is stillquestioned; indirect measures do not reflectperformance; the information required (e.g., familyincome by district) is not readily available; and such datais also subject to manipulation that might distortachievement of desired results. Also, we have no reasonto believe that giving more educational dollars to thedisadvantaged student will markedly reduce theachievement gap.
The Presidents' Commission on School Finance(1972) has investigated the process of developing aneducational need index. This places a special emphasison the development of relative weights for the allocationof resources. The National Educational Finance Project(NEFP) assigned relative values to a variety ofeducational needs; although these values cannot beconsidered precise, they do offer a start for suchdevelopment. Groups for which an above average needhas been identified are: preschool children; the mentallyand physically handicapped; adolescent drop-outs andpush-outs; adults desiring career education; theinstitutionalized; and older people. Although NIEcannot develop programs for all of these groups, sampleor pilot programs suitable to some groups should bewithin the Institute's capability. The first effort for anysub-group should be to survey current programs andneeds.
It is evident that further effort must be made toformulate operational allocation schemes based oneducational need. R&D efforts for NIE in this areashould include the following:
1) Determining the value ofsocio-economic status variables in predictingeducational success;
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2) Developing programs to capitalizeupon under-used community resources (e.g., schoolbuildings at off-hours, days and seasons; industrialcourse offerings; voluntary instructors; retiredexperts in various fields, etc.) to provide needededucational services;
3) Developing mechanisms to increaseaccess to institutions of higher learning; full-costingmay be a significant step in that direction;
4) Developing a means to inform stateand local authorities and other Federal agencies onthe costs and benefits of new educational services,e.g., education for the elderly would be of interestto the Administration on Aging, and the NIE woulddesign its research to provide policy-relevant datato the AOA.
b. Revenue and Taxation Schemes for theProvision of Equal Access. Access to educationalopportunities and the financing of education must beexamined together for several reasons. First, the currentsystem of finance results in widespread inequity. Thisoccurs because the methods for raising and spendingmoney for education guarantee that children who areborn to wealthy parents will ordinarily receive a bettereducation in the public schools than children born toparents in a lower social or economic class. Second, evenif substantially more funds were made available toeducation, unless the system of raising and spendingmoney were to change, the same relative inequalities ofeducational opportunity and access would persist. Third,the provision of education and training for some of thecurrently unserved target groups described aboverequires additional tax revenue.
Numerous studies have recently documented theserious nature of the disparities in both expenditures andtax burden between school districts within and betweenstates. The Senate Committee on Equal EducationalOpportunity (U. S. Senate, 1972) and the NEFP havecarefully documented inequities in the use of localproperty taxes as a prime source of funds for education,and recommend a basic restructuring of financing andexpenditure patterns. Several recent studies havedeveloped a considerable amount of data documentingexisting inequalities (including the basic inadequacies ofcurrent state equalization plans) and proposed a widerange of plans and formulas for alleviating or potentially
eliminating them. (See Coons, Clune and Sugarman,1970; Guthrie, et al, 1969; NEFP, 1971; the President'sCommission on School Finance, 1972; and the NewYork State Commission on the Quality, Cost, andFinancing of Elementary and Secondary Education,1972.) The plans present a range of alternatives whichbasically include:
1) Full state assumption of educationcosts, with revenue generated from a state-wide(sales, value-added, income, or property) tax;
2) Power-equalizing state aida systemby which disparities in locally raised revenues arecompensated for (in total or in part) on the basis oflocal tax base and local tax effort;
3) Redrawing school districtboundaries to equalize property valuation;
4) Revenue distribution systems thatequalize expenditure on absolute terms or in
proportion to some definition of educational need;the most widely discussed plan of this type is the"education voucher."
These alternatives have taken on increasingimportance and have been subjected to considerabledebate as state courts in California, Minnesota, andTexas have invalidated state school finance laws. Inaddition, state legislatures (e.g., Minnesota) have eitherproposed or are considering legislative action to alterschool finance systems. Public opinion is also mountingin favor of change, although the most politicallyacceptable directions for change are still unclear.
Both the researchers who document the existinginequalities and those who propose alternative plansagree that meaningful change must consider thefollowing:
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1) The higher cost of educationassociated with (a) pupils with learningdisadvantages, (b) regions or school districts withhigher living costs, (c) areas with heavier thanaverage fiscal responsibility (e.g., "municipaloverburden");
2) Taxing schemes that draw theirrevenues from tax plans characterized by
progressive rather than proportional rates; even theproperty tax could be restructured as as progressivetax;
3) The development of a tax andrevenue scheme designed to deal with the specialproblems of large cities of the nation; the SelectCommittee on Equal Opportunity (1972) hasshown that inner cities may actually suffer fromseveral new financing schemes under consideration.
Although each of these areas of fundamentalreform must begin and be centralized at the state andlocal level, recent studies, such as New York's FleishmanCommission Report, have proposed that the FederalGovernment assume a much larger role in providingeducational funds, sometimes up to 30 percent of totaleducational expenditures. This complication ofgovernmental levels suggests that an interagency effort,even for research and development, will be necessary toachieve equitable financial schemes. NIE can makepotentially important contributions through thefollowing kinds of R&D efforts, carried out alone or inrelation to other agencies.
1) Define the most well-developedformulas for equalization and work closely with thestates in developing the formula variation mostsuited to their circumstances. This includes aninvestigation of ways to facilitate change at thestate and local levelconsidered in detail in thefollowing section on incentives.
2) Develop systems for state and localaccountability.'Education officials should accountto the public for their decisions and the resultsobtained. This includes statewide evaluationsystems to measure the effectiveness of educationalprograms and comprehensive dissemination of thatinformation to the public.
3) Evaluate the effects of revenuesharing as a vehicle for dealing with the specialproblems of educational finance (e.g., inner cityschools). Considering the financial problems ofstates and local districts, federal revenue sharing,both special and general, may be necessary to allowstates to fund quality education adequately forthose groups in need of services.
c. Incentives. One broad impediment to theprovision of equal educational opportunity is the lack ofincentives to individuals and state and local governmentsto promote change in the status-quo. The present systemraises a considerable amount of money, is entangled withvested interests, and has become so bureaucratic that itis difficult to alter. NIE has the responsibility to fostersuch change by providing information on the means ofachieving public acceptance of proposed programs. Animportant factor to be considered here may be financialincentives.
A large body of research deals with how publicopinion is changed, how attitudes and values shift overtime, and how people respond to various sanctions (suchas legislative decisions). However, there has been littleeffort to develop an environment which creates publicawareness and willingness to do things differently once agoal has been changed. The current fiscal situation notonly poses a problem to be solved, but also provides avehicle to study such public behavior change. A primeexample of the difficulties in this area is thesegregation-integration conflict in American society. Ithas been nearly twenty years since the United StatesSupreme Court, in Brown v. The Board of Education ofTopeka, struck down the doctrine of "separate butequal" and held unanimously that enforced racialsegregation of schools was inherently unequal. Yet,desegregation is an agonizing process which hasproceeded in an extremely slow fashion. There is, then,an explicit need for the development of mechanismswhich encourage acceptance of new societal goals.
Such mechanisms imply a heavy emphasis onfinancial incentives to adopt new developments; possiblefunding sources include emergency school assistance,revenue sharing, grants, etc. NIE can play an importantrole in the incentive areaeven though the major sourceof long-term funds is the Federal Government, of whichNIE is only a small part. Priority concerns shouldinclude the following:
1) A survey of sociological research onpublic behavioral change to identify legalinfluences, incentives, information campaigns, etc.,that can be manipulated to facilitate publicacceptance of just but unpopular policy changes;
2) After a program has been chosen,selection of a few states or districts for in-depth
case study (Selection could be based on howprototypic a state is, its willingness to accept NIEstaff study, its apparent readiness for change, orany combination of these factors.); implementationof the program in these experimental sites,providing financial and planning aid in conjunctionwith continual evaluation efforts;
3) Development of mechanisms toin form state and local authorities aboutgeneralizable elements of reform programs; thisincludes feasibility in real settings, legal andadministrative changes needed to implement theprograms, incentives which foster implementation,and degrees of change that are publicly acceptable.
3. Participation*
The purpose of citizen participation is to makeeducation more effective and reduce alienation by 1)providing educational options that are responsive to theunique needs of each community, and 2) developing newmechanisms for decision making.
A number of studies have demonstrated thatparticipation increases educational effectiveness andreduces alienation. For example, Flanders (1951) andFaer (1949) indicate that student-centered, democratic,participatory classrooms are characterized by less
hostility toward teachers, less conflict among thestudents, and even greater actual learning. A study byFlizak (1967) indicates that a teacher's interaction withhis students may be a function of his ability toparticipate in school decision-making. Cloward andJones (1963) note that parental involvement in schoolaffairs has a positive correlation with their evaluation ofthe importance of education, as well as with theirattitudes toward the school as an institution; whileSchiff (1963) has shown that parent participation andcooperation in school affairs lead to greater pupilachievement, better school attendance and study habits,and fewer disciplinary problems.
Chilman (1966) states that the parental patternsmost characteristic of the very poor are anticipation offailure and distrust of middle-class institutions, such asschools. Also, Clark (1964) has documented thatchildren growing up in the inner-city sense, at an early
* This section was prepared at the Center for UrbanEducation.
age, their parents' feeling of powerlessness and somesoon come to assume that they also have little controlover their fate. Finally, Seasholes (1965), in an analysisof the political socialization of Blacks, states that whenparents exercise control or power in the school andcommunity, they convey this sense of control to theirchildren; and that these children no longer viewthemselves as powerless and lacking in self-worth. Thesefindings, as well as the findings of other studies, supportthe thesis that when parents have a part in thedecision-making processes of education, their childrenare likely to do better in school.
In spite of the evidence attesting to the significanceof lay participation for the school's effectiveness, only afew educators are willing to have citizens participate.The majority of schoolmen have been content not tomove, seeking to protect the status quo by adhering totraditional citizen participation via such innocuousgroups as PA's or PTA's (Moffit, 1967). That is, they arefearful of meaningful citizen participation, seeing it as athreat to their power in the schools.
Furthermore, while school administratorsdeveloped bureaucratic decision-making structures,teachers, finding themselves remote from the formalcenters of power, have succeeded in developing militantteacher organizations, patterned on a union model(Guthrie, 1971). Union contracts are increasingly,through the bargaining process, specifying salaries, fringebenefits, and working conditions. In many instances (forexample, the UFT contract with the New York CityCentral Board of Education), the contract prescribesrather narrowly the tasks a teacher can be required toperform, and the reasons and circumstances under whicha teacher may be transferred or dismissed. The result isthat the teacher is insulated from effective scrutiny andevaluation.
Because of these shortcomings in currentmechanisms for participation, any program designed topromote citizen decision-making power should consideravailability of choice in educational services andmechanisms for citizens to participate and schools toallow it. Each of these topics is discussed below.
a. Availability of Optional EducationalPrograms. The question of what to teach and how toteach in American public schools has always generatedconflict among groups and individuals, both professionaland non-professional. Despite the sharp divergenciesamong all of the groups which affect the present
28
decision-making process in the schools, there are limitedobservable differences in the educational programs in thepublic schools through the 19,000+ school districts inthe fifty states.
Parents who have the financial means have beenable to select a school which emphasizes the values andobjectives they consider most important for theirchildren by enrolling their children in private schools. Inrecent years, the private school sector has expanded withthe development of "free schools" and the increase inenrollment in the established private and parochialschools. Low income people are as concerned about theeducation of their children as middle income people andalso view education as the instrumental means for theeconomic mobility of their children. However, basicallyfor financial reasons they have been unable to makechoices for their children and have been required toaccept the single available model in the public schools.
There is little empirical evidence to demonstratethe superiority of specific educational models and thereis also disagreement among parents as to the values andobjectives that schools should emphasize. Therefore, thepublic schools should become more pluralisticthat is,there should be a variety of educational models in eachschool district to offer parents a choice andaccommodate the varying educational goals andexpectations of parents and students.
Alternative schools on an individual school basis ora K-12 experimental design are being established, butthey are being created from the top down. In a
top -down process, professional educators and/oruniversity-based scholars from various disciplines designalternative school models and seek cooperating districtsin which such models may be established. Parentparticipation is solicited in parental choice as to whetheror not their children will attend the "experimental"school, but the key decisions about philosophy, goalsand objectives for the educational model have alreadybeen made by the designers. Essentially, parents have achoice between the two educational models, but theyhave not had the opportunity to participate in the actualdesign and creation of the alternative. Clearly there is agap between practice and achieving the goal of citizenchoice of educational alternatives. NIE should undertakethe following activities to fill that gap.
1) Development. Support thecommunity planning and development of new
educational programs in keeping with citizen goals.From these available options, each family couldthen be free to make choices in keeping with itsvalues and goals for its children. Possible optionsmight be the traditional, graded model thatemphasizes cognitive skills; the nontraditional andnongraded (e.g., the British primary schools);models that stress the vocational approach (learningby doing); the community school (the Flintmodel); the multi-cultural school (San Francisco);the schools without walls model (Philadelphia) andso forthor working with the school-personnel,citizens could develop their own models.
2) Research. One of the maincriticisms leveled at the educational profession isthat educators are "mediocre." The critics claimthat the more capable people go into medicine, law,government, and other such fields, but that thosewith only average talents enter teaching. Researchshould be initiated to determine whether this is factor fiction. Another topic that deserves attention isthe feasibility of eliminating the influence ofwealth variation on education while at the sametime locating within the family the responsibilityand the freedom to choose among educationaloptions.
b. Mechanisms for Citizen Participation.Current mechanisms for citizen participation are oftenineffective. The school board has major responsibilityboth to promote participation and seek the advice ofcitizens so that they are informed about achievement,school programs, their needs and weaknesses. However,Rice suggests such action may lessen the board members'chances for reelection. He also points out that theadvisors who are on the superintendent's staff (as istraditional) may be obligated to make thesuperintendent and the whole school look good(Nation's Schools, 1967). Levine (1966), in pointing outthe problems of promoting citizen participation at thelocal school level, emphasized that it is natural for aprincipal to seek the good opinion of those for whom heworks since promotion and stability of position dependon favorable evaluation. Dyer (1958) and Frey (1970)point out that the principal is the key person who willdetermine whether progress in functional participation ispromoted or arrested. This means that if the"do-nothing" approach to citizen participation is to beovercome, the will of the community must be effectivein providing local participation in the support and
29 38
control of their schools. However, the community mustbe informed in order to exercise this will constructively;and since the professional is not fulfilling hisresponsibility to inform the public about the educationalneeds of their children and schools, some other meansmust be found to inform the citizen.
Several unique experiments, like voucher systemsand performance contracting, are underway to improvemechanisms for decision-making. ME should evaluatethese and try other approaches like the one describedbelow.
1) Development. A politically neutralcommunity education agency, where the needs,aspirations, and rights of community residents andschool personnel can be articulated, transformedinto programs, and implemented in the educationalsystem might provide the mechanism forcommunity c.mtrol over education. The vestedinterest of most current educational structures andmany other community organizations would bemediated by such an agency.
The agency could serve as:
a) an information center, servingboth community residents and schoolpersonnel;
b) an agency to explore placingpower in the hands of each family toselect education it desires for its children;
c) a coordinating center linkingthe school with various agencies andresources of the community and placingstudents there for education;
d) a means of developing schoolgoverning committees and citizens'advisory councils.
e) an adult education center, toprovide activities not otherwise available;
0citizens
a vehicle through whichcan learn to tackle other
community problems, such as betterlighting, zoning control, policeprotection, drug addiction, etc.
30
2) Research. We need to know aboutthe kinds of information possessed by citizensregarding their local schools and also the kinds ofinformation they would like to have about theirschools. Apart from a few opinion polls, little workhas been done in this area.
The degree of sensitivity of citizens toward schoolproblems is another area in which research shouldbe undertaken. This is important since theirsensitivity will influence their willingness tocooperate to find solutions to such problems.
Research is also needed to determine the mosteffective mode of conveying information to citizensregarding their schools. Some schools have usedhome visitors, for example, who are members ofthe community employed as aides by the school.However, many parents view this as evidence of theteachers' unwillingness to 'become directly involvedwith them because the teachers view them as beingof lower status.
Finally, efforts should be made to determinewhether parents really want to exercise the right tochoose from among various educational options. Itis possible that parents would be satisfied withwhatever the schools do, as long as their childrenare learning.
D. Criteria and Selection of New Programs for the NIEAgenda
The criteria for selection of new programs to beincluded in the R&D agenda for N1E were 1) significanceof the program to one or more goals and balance ofprograms across goals; 2) appropriateness for the agency;3) allowance in the total agenda for most people whoneed educational services and for use of a broad range ofresources for education; and 4) inclusion of programs inbasic research, practice improvement, building R&Dcapability, and solving problems.
Cost estimates and constraints to implementationwere also considered, but will be developed in moredetail as the feasibility of programs is studied.
1. Significance to goals.
The discussion of learner, enabling, and systemgoals each led to suggestions for major research and
. 39
development efforts. Often, similar suggestions appearedunder more than one goal, and combinations ofsuggestions fell neatly into clusters that could beincorporated into one comprehensive program to addresssome major problem. Finally, once those clusters wereidentified and labeled, some of the activities thatoriginated within USOE and are continuing in NIE couldbe classified within the comprehensive program.
One cluster of activities seemed to fall into theearly education area, with particular emphasis on homecare rather than institutional care. The education was topromote, social-emotional and physical development,supplementing the school in the cognitive area. Someform of this suggestion appeared in all learner goal areas.Supporting suggestions came from the access andparticipation goal discussions, in the form of programsto involve community people in education. Thisprogrammatic area was labeled Home-Based EarlyEducation. A number of the Regional Laboratory andCenter activities, such as the Appalachia EducationalLaboratory's effort to use vans to bring parent educationto remote communities, fit this programmatic area. Inaddition, the Office of Child Development has activitiesin this area that should allow cooperative effort betweenthe two agencies.
A second cluster of suggestions related torestructuring instruction, especially academic skills. Thepurpose was not only to make that instruction moreeffective, but to put choice of educational experiences,control of media, time for presentation, and level ofeffort in the hands of the learner himself. The cognitivedevelopment discussion proposed this effort as a way tobuild academic skills more effectively. In theproductivity goal it appeared as an effort to makeeducation more efficient. Finally, it-was suggested as anecessary concomitant of self-confidence in thesocial-emotional area, and as a way to facilitate access toeducation after the period of formal schooling is
complete. The program was labeled Learner-ControlledInstruction. Though most current curriculum activitiesare not aimed at learner control per se, some aredesigned to promote individualization and thus mightprovide a starting point in this program. Such activitiesare classified in this programmatic area, along with newprogram starts.
A third programmatic cluster centered around thebreakup of educational monopolies. This was mentionedin several goal contextsto provide access for poor
people to higher education, to make education moresensitive to community needs, to tap wider resources byallowing community participation, to reduce studentalienation, and to make education more efficient byoffering single services to students rather than wholepackages. Since the area seemed large enough toincorporate two programs, and the most natural breakwas at the point of entry into higher education, the twoprograms are called Unbundling Higher Education, andCommunity Education Agencies. Unbundling HigherEducation involves identifying functions provided byuniversities and colleges and providing them in modularform, sometimes using new resources to furnish them.The program for community education agencies was alsoimplied in several goal areas. However, the clearest callfor a developmental project come in the participationarea.
Figure ? presents a list of the comprehensiveprograms, both old and new, and goals for which theyare most significant. Every program must include acomponent for selecting and/or training requiredpersonnel and for dissemination, so these are not on thegoal list. Though the assignment to goals is obviouslysubjective, the figure does show that each program isrelated to several goals and there is a balance ofprograms across all goals.
2. Appropriateness to the Agency.
Some program suggestions seemed moreappropriate for another agency or for joint-agencyprojects. Many of the R&D suggestions in physicaldevelopment and in personnel selection and training fellinto this category and thus were not recommended aspart of the 1973 agenda. Other programs, like theHome-Based Early Education Program, are veryappropriate, but should be coordinated closely withefforts of other agencies. The NIE Planning Unit isalready working with a coordinating agency in this area,the Interagency Panel for Early Childhood Education.
3. Allowance for all target audiences and a broadrange of resources.
After suggestions were consolidated to make upcomprehensive programs, these were checked against alist of target audiences and possible resources to assurecoverage. The results are shown in Figures 4 and 5.Again, the classifications are subjective, but the balanceof coverage seems clear.
31. 40
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4. Balance of research, practice improvement,R&D improvement, and problem solving.
Most continuing programs, such as theExperimental Schools and the work of the RegionalLabs and Centers were heavily concentrated in practiceimprovement. This load of already-committed budgetsmakes the NIE 1973 R&D agenda unbalanced. We triedto overcome this in several ways. First, most newprogram suggestions accepted for the agenda werecomprehensive, problem-solving efforts, or were in thearea of goal-specific research rather than in the practiceimprovement area where the budgets were alreadyheavy. Examples of the new goal-specific researchsuggestions are: information collection for R&D needsassessment, studies of school finance, and research onpossible changes in credentialing educational personnel.
Second, new efforts to be suggested in the area ofResearcher Training will involve tying some researchertraining apprenticeships to the comprehensive programsand increasing the training function of the small grantsprogram. Finally, many dissemination efforts, as well asmost R&D on selection and training of educationalpersonnel, will also be made an integral part ofcomprehensive programs, to add emphasis toproblem-solving efforts.
This allocation of programs and budgets withinunits will make a reasonable balance in the NIE agenda:about $20 million in Resources and Researcher Training,about $55 million in practice improvement and about$45 million in problem solving.
III. DETAILED PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS
The following program descriptions integrateongoing and new activities into one R&D agenda forNIE. The agenda is tentative, since this analysis is onlyone source of new program suggestions and continuingprograms must undergo an evaluation during the springof 1972 before they are accepted into NIE.
Because almost 80% of the 1973 budget wasalready committed to ongoing programs, separatestrategies for old and new programs were required togenerate the agenda. Both strategies began with theLearner Goals, Enabling Goals, and System Goals thatwere derived from the opinions of many people.However, existing programs could not be derived fromgoal analysis; they could only be identified and classifiedby goal, with tentative budget allowances. Newprograms, in contrast, were derived from the goaldiscussions and accepted as suggestions when: 1) theymet the criteria of significance, appropriateness, balance,feasibility, and budget described earlier, and 2) they didnot duplicate some continuing program.
Programs are classified in the descriptions below bythe R&D function they fulfill, rather than by theexisting vs. new categories. That is, the proposed basicresearch program to add to the knowledge base on
35
education, and the researcher training efforts to improvethe country's R&D capability, are described first. Theprograms to improve educational practice within thecurrent system are described next, followed by theprograms to solve major problems.
Since both new and old programs are integrated inthe agenda, it might help to identify where the existingprograms are. (Figure 1 will clarify the following list.)Most existing activities are in research, researchertraining, and improving practice. Some relate primarilyto one goal, so they were placed within goal specificprojects. Others, particularly from Regional Laboratoriesand Centers, seem to fall either within the learner goalsor the system goals, yet do not cut across both areas.These are clustered appropriately and classified asspecialty areas. Also among the continuing activities aretwo comprehensive programs that cut across all goals:the Experimental Schools, designed to improve
educational practice, and the Career Education Models,designed to solve the problem of students graduatingwithout attitudes and skills needed for careers. Finally,once suggestions for new comprehensive programs wereidentified, it was apparent that several continuingactivities fit within the new areas.
. 44
The activities that relate to fewer goals and involvecontinuing programs are described only briefly, sincethey represent fewer N1E options in agenda design. Thecontinuing comprehensive programs are described inmore detail because of their complexity and importanceto major problem-solving, and because their level ofdevelopment allows a detailed discussion. By and large,the new comprehensive programs are not yet developedin enough detail to present a lengthy discussion. The onethat is currently best developed, the Home-Based EarlyEducation Program, is described in some detail. Othersare described in a few paragraphs each, and outlines foreach program are included for reference. When thePlanning Unit is advised that any program warrants moredetailed planning, work will continue, and progressreports will be presented before the end of the fiscalyear.
A. Goal-specific Projects
The proposed goal-specific projects include anunsolicited basic research program, a small, directedintramural research program to accomplish theInstitute's internally-identified research needs, and a fewapplied R&D projects in specific goal areas.
The current USOE unsolicited research program isheavily loaded in the cognitive development area; thusNIE is likely to change the balance of projectssomewhat. The goal analysis in Chapter 11 of this paperindicated a stronger effort, particularly for thesocial-emotional goal and for the area of access. Openingthese areas will require the involvement of researchersfrom other disciplines. Though the balance might bedifferent, examples of current projects are still likely toby typical. Several of these are:
1. Cognitive Development: Relationship betweenperceptual development and acquisition of readingability of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades.
2. Physical Development: Research related to thelearning of children identified as having experiencedmalnutrition and heavy metal poisoning.
3. Social Development: Success-avoidantmotivation and behavior; its developmental correlatesand situational determinants.
4. Productivity: A study of the economic andsocial impact of differences in the quantity and finalityof educational achievement.
5. Access: Biographical data as predictors ofcollege grades of blacks and whites.
Two or three research suggestions appeared underseveral goals enough times in the total analysis towarrant their being proposed as directed research efforts.One of these projects involved a continuing survey of thepublic's attitudes toward education, demands forservices, and willingness to provide resources. An initialstatement on how that program might be developed isavailable. A second frequently suggested program
involved the anthropological study of neighborhoods toidentify factors that influence learning and learningmotivation. A third frequently suggested program was inthe area of access: an exploration of how N1E mig!'tfacilitate acceptance of some program for fiscal equity.These types of studies would be logical for theintramural research program.
Finally, a number of applied R&D efforts areincluded in goal-specific projects. The Center for UrbanEducation's program to train citizens to participate inschool advisory and decision-making functions, which isincluded under the participation goal, is an example ofsuch a goal-specific project.
During fiscal 1972, approximately $12 million wasspent on all categories of goal-specific research, and thesame level is recommended for fiscal 1973. It is
proposed that the small grants program, classified asgoal-specific research in fiscal 1972, be placed within theResearcher Training Program during 1973. The funds forunsolicited basic research would actually be increased bythat transfer, since an increase in the ResearcherTraining funds is anticipated to cover the additionalprogram there.
B. Researcher Training
The primary purpose of the Researcher TrainingProgram is to encourage and support quality training ofeducational researchers and research-related personnel.The program was originated to meet a need generated bythe approximately thirty-fold increase in CooperativeResearch funds over the past decade and the dramaticshift in emphasis from conventional research studies tolarge scale development, diffusion, and evaluationefforts. NIE will no doubt broaden the program toinclude techniques for research in problem-solving andto add support for education-related research training inother disciplines.
Specific objectives within the current ResearcherTraining Program include identifying the types oftraining most critically needed by educational R&Dpersonnel, developing and testing materials to trainthem, and providing support for such operationaltraining programs. The identification of personnel needsis being funded by the National Center for EducationalStatistics (NCES), but directed by USOE's NationalCenter for Educational Research and Development(NCERD). NIE, in assuming leadership, would want tocontinue this cooperative arrangement if possible. Thematerials development programs are being conducted,for the most part, through consortia efforts that will beexamined closely during the coming fiscal year. As a partof this research agenda for NIE, the Planning Unit staffrecommends that the personnel training effort beredirected to include apprenticeships on large R&Dproblem-solving efforts and internships within theInstitute itself.
Finally, it is recommended that the small grantsprogram be removed from the basic research area andincluded as a part of researcher training. About onehundred experienced researchers in various disciplinesshould be recruited from around the country to serve,with a small honorarium, as advisors for the students andnovice researchers who receive grants. This should be aprestigious group, almost a club, who not only have thegrantees as apprentices, but meet on occasion to hearresults of the best grants, to advise NIE on researchertraining, and to suggest promising candidates forinternships and fellowships within the Institute itself.
Fiscal 1972 funding for Researcher Training was$3.2 million and, with the additional efforts, theproposed 1973 budget is $5.0 million.
C. Specialty Area Programs
1. Instructional Personnel
The purpose of this area is to increase theeffectiveness of instructional personnel by conductingappropriate research, design, development, and testing ofalternative training procedures. On-going programs inthis area include much of the R&D activities at theTexas Research and Development Center for TeacherEducation and the Stanford Center for Research andDevelopment in Teaching. Stanford's research activitiesinclude R&D in heuristic teaching, bilingual competence
I37
for teachers, teaching in low income areas, andmotivation under different instructional procedures. TheTexas researchers are concerned with training teachers togear instruction to personal needs of students. Othercontractors are involved in R&D projects for adultliteracy teachers, community college teachers, andtraining for teacher accountability.
As these projects are completed or phased out, it isrecommended that this specialty area be discontinued,with later research projects :ing located in thegoal-specific research area of personnel selection andtraining, and new development activities being placedwithin comprehensive programs. Fiscal 1972 funding forthis area is approximately $3.0 million andrecommended funding for fiscal 1973 is $2.0 million.
2. Curricular Programs
Activities within this area are directed towaid thedevelopment and implementation of new curriculumsystems, dealing with individualized instruction andinstructional installation and management. The curriculaserve preschool through adult target audiences, with thegreatest concentration on elementary school children.The largest body of on-going work is supported throughthe Laboratory and Center programs. In addition, thereare a few smaller curriculum development projectssupported through the applied research program.
Examples of current curriculum developmentprograms include:
a. The development of a comprehensiveschool mathematics program for students in grades 1-6based upon instructional analysis by mathematicsspecialists and individualized according to the students'needs and abilities. (CEMREL)
b. The development of a program toprovide a general education in aesthetics for K-12students incorporating the exploration of light, sound,motion, time, space, the elements of the arts and theenvironment, and the creative experiences of people inthe arts. (CEMREL)
c. Development of a compreheniive systemfor improving school practice, which includesinstructional systems, training systems, installationsystems, accountability systems, and modificationsystems. (SWRL)
. 46
d. Development of curriculum andinstructional strategies for improving learning conditionsin rural schools. (NWREL)
e. Development of a set of tested productswhich will enhance language and socio-culturaldevelopment of Spanish-speaking children in grades 1-3.(SWCEL)
As these projects are completed or phased out, it isrecommended that the heavy emphasis of funding forcurricular programs be shifted for better balance toother goal areas and into development effortsspecifically related to comprehensive programs. As a stepin this direction, several of the efforts now classified ascurricular are being suggested for management within acomprehensive program area called Learner ControlledInstruction. Fiscal 1972 funding for Curricular programsis $10 million; fiscal 1973 projections are $9 million.
3. Theory and Knowledge for OrganizationalChange
Programs and projects within this area are directedtoward the ultimate design of new organizationalstructures and processes and serve as the basis for thetraining of teachers and administrators in such change.Studies are concerned with elements of classroomorganization, teacher behavior and schooladministration. Research related to students andorganizational change includes grouping, reward systems,cooperation and competition, decision-making andgovernance, and characteristics of peer groups. Researchrelated to teaching and organizational change includesdifferentiated staffing patterns and various teachingstrategies.
On-going programs in the area are primarilysupported through the Regional Laboratories and R&Dcenters. The programs include:
a. Studies of how school organizationaffects teachers and learners (Stanford);
b. Studies of new institutional forms ofhigher education (Berkeley);
c. Studies of decision-making structures forschool districts and their influence on schools (Oregon);
38
d. Research and Development on academicgames and studies of the social organization of schools(Johns Hopkins).
Fiscal 1972 funding for theory and knowledge fororganizational change is $3 million. Projections for fiscal1973 are $3 million.
4. Planning, Management, and EvaluationTechnologies
All programs within this cluster are designed toincrease the capabilities of schools in planning,management, and evaluation, and to train administratorsin the use of a systems approach in these areas. Planninginvolves selection, analysis, and presentation of dataneeded for educational decisions and action; evaluationprovides feedback to instructional managers andplanners about the effectiveness of educational activities;and management involves the selection of goals andprograms, the implementation of programs, and therevision of programs as necessary to meet goals.
On-going programs in this area include theeducational cooperatives pioneered by the AppalachiaEducational Laboratory, studies at the UCLA Center forthe Study of Evaluation, programs on educationalmanagement at WICHE's National Center for HigherEducation Management Systems (NCHEMS), theAdministering for Change Program at the PhiladelphiaLaboratory, and much of the work at the Oregon Centerfor the Advanced Study of Educational Administration.In addition, the Far West Laboratory is developing aseries of management training units of particular use toadministrators and the Northwest Laboratory is alreadyunder way on the development of data managementsystems.
The purpose of most of these current programs isto develop tools and procedures that have general utility.As these efforts are completed, the released funds shouldbe used for R&D in the same areas of planning,management, and evaluation, but geared to the specificneeds of comprehensive programs. By that time, thecomprehensive programs will be ready for this level ofR&D effort, and in many cases the same agencies will bethe performers. Budgeting and management, however,will be done through a directed program task force.Fiscal 1972 funding for this area is approximately $8
47
million, and the proposed fiscal 1973 funding is $7million.
D. Comprehensive Programs
I. Experimental Schools*
Although a number of sources of funds areavailable to conduct educational R&D and to developpilot or model projects, there are almost no funds tosupport the extensions of research needed to build thebridges between basic research and common educationalpractice, or between the clinical testing of aneducational theory and its natural application in areal-world setting. In recognition of this lag betweencompletion of research and development and anywidespread operationalizing of its ideas and procedures,a limited number of large-scale comprehensiveexperiments, emphasizing new patterns of financialsupport, staffing, training, organization, and communityparticipation are being funded through the ExperimentalSchools Program.
The Experimental Schools Program, introduced inMarch 1970 by President Nixon in his Message onEducational Reform, is designed to test the hypothesisthat widespread adoption of effective educationalinnovations can be facilitated through schoolexperimentation emphasizing comprehensive reform andthe development of alternative educational practices.The Experimental Schools Program has several specialfeatures which will be described below.
a. Comprehensiveness. An ExperimentalSchool project must be Comprehensive** in that itincludes at least the following:
I) Project goals specified in terms of
* This section was prepared by William Rabinowitzusing materials from a tentative program prepared by theExperimental Schools Program, USOE.
** The term "comprehensive" has acquired a specificconnotation among educators referring to the breadth ofthe curriculum, e.g., the Comprehensive High School.The term is used here in its broader and less technicalsense meaning "accounting for or comprehending all orvirtually all pertinent considerations;" for example,including at a minimum all the significant elements of aformal educational program.
the type and purpose of learning experience to beprovided;
2) A plan for broad participation inthe design, implementation and operation of theproject, including a viable relationship with thecommunity;
3) A coherent, integrated, mutuallyreinforcing set of "operational variables" including,but not limited to: the nature and substance of thecurriculum; the nature, role and organization ofstaff and necessary staff training; the use of timeand space, including possible variations in thelength of the school day, school year, or number ofyears required of participants in the project; anadmi nistrative and organizational structureconsistent with and supportive of the program; anevaluation design and a strategy for its
implementation.
An Experimental School project must include acomprenensive educational program for 2,000 to 5,000children in kindergarten through 12th grade. The lowerlimit (2,0 0 0) represents the minimum number ofstudents necessary in a comprehensive K-I2 program foreffective evaluation, and the approximate upper limit(5,000) represents the maximum size of a project whichcan be considered, given the projected appropriations forthe Experimental Schools program.
Those eligible to participate in the ExperimentalSchools Program, authorized by the CooperativeResearch Act (Public Law 83-531, ac amended, andregulations issued pursuant to it), are public (includingState and local education agencies) or private, profit ornonprofit agencies, institutions, or organizations, as wellas colleges or universities. Applications are encouragedfrom the widest possible variety of agencies, institutions,or organizations, including those which would be createdspecifically for the purpose of operating anExperimental School Project. Those organizations whichare not currently operating schools may find itadvantageous to form a cooperative relationship withestablished educational agencies. In the case of anorganization which has submitted an exceptionallypromising program design, but which has not yet beenable to secure support for basic per-pupil expenditures(see the section on Incremental support), a planninggrant may be awarded to permit the more thoroughdevelopment of the program design and to provide timefor securing the necessary operating costs.
b. Planning, Development, and Operations.The Experimental Schools Program recognizes thatplanning, development, and operation of a project areoverlapping activities. The terms as used here refer tostages of Federal support rather than stages of projectdevelopment. Preparation of formal proposals oftenresults in an inequitable competitive situation amongapplicants with different resources. The ExperimentalSchools Program, therefore, initially requests letters ofinterest. Upon receipt of such letters, a selectioncommittee designates those few who should receiveplanning grants to permit more thorough planning oftheir total program design. The planning period is
usually approximately 60 to 120 days. A finalcompetition based on complete detailed proposals fromthose applicants receiving planning grants occurssubsequently. Those applicants selected to operateExperimental School projects receive support for fiveyears of operation. Operational grants normally aremade for 30 months with a continuation grant providingsupport for the final 30 months awarded following aprogram review. The program of each ExperimentalSchool project must be implemented in the first year ofoperation rather than in stages over the five years.
c. Incremental Support. In terms of the fiveyears of operation of each Experimental School project,financial support is limited to incremental costsassociated with the implementation of the program, suchas the development of staff necessary for the operationof the program, the development of materials, minorremodeling, and evaluation and documentation of theproject. The Experimental Schools Program cannotsupport the basic per-pupil expenditure which providesfor the operational costs of the project, and it cannotsupport major construction. Each applicant organizationmust indicate its commitment to provide operating costsfor the full five years of operation of the ExperimentalSchool project. The eventual cost of operating anExperimental School project after the anticipateddevelopment work is completed must be kept within thelimits of available resources so that the program could becontinued after the five years of Federal support haveended.
d. Experimental School Site. There are nogeographic restrictions on the location of the targetpopulation. Students in a single Experimental Schoolproject may be located in a number of buildings, cities,counties, school districts, or states. Rural school
districts, with student populations of less than 2,000, areencouraged to form clusters. Such clusters mightattempt to provide solutions to a common, or set ofcommon, significant educational problems. There is norequirement that each agency or organization in thecluster must have an identical program, as long as theproject provides a continuous K-12 program for thetarget population.
e. Target Population. The ExperimentalSchools Program assigns a high priority to projects whichfocus primarily on students who are not experiencingeducational success and who come from families of lowincome. Two points merit clarification:
1) The term "families of low income"is not restricted to the Office of EconomicOpportunity or Title I (ESEA) definitions ofpoverty level. The Experimental Schools Programconsiders any reasonable definition of low incomefor the geographical area(s) in which the proposedproject is to be located. However, the definitionmust be specified and a rationale provided.
2) The phrase "focus primarily on
students who are not experiencing educationalsuccess and who come from families of lowincome" does not mean that projects must belimited exclusively to such students.
f. Evaluation and Documentation.Evaluation and documentation is a major focus of eachExperimental Schools project. Personnel at each specificproject are responsible for documentation, for the kindof formative evaluation needed to modify and improvethe project, and for an assessment of the outcomes ofthe project in terms of its particular goals and objectives.Evaluation on a second levelsummative in natureisalso specific to each project, but it is the responsibilityof an evaluation contractor who is not part of theproject staff. A third level of evaluation includes anomnibus evaluator whose activities take in all projectsand whose concerns include replicability of practices andprograms, assessment of the second level evaluationactivities, and the success of the Experimental SchoolsProgram as a whole.
Given the small size of the Experimental SchoolsProgram and the high level of interest in the design andimplementation o f significant, comprehensive,
40 49
alternative educational programs, it is reasonable toassume that a number of agencies, organizations,institutions, or school systems will develop the means toimplement experiments without assistance from theExperimental Schools Program. In order to support andencourage these comprehensive experiments, theProgram will consider requests from such applicants forparticipation in the evaluation and documentation oftheir projects.
g. History of the Experimental SchoolsProgram. When S. P. Mar land, Jr., was appointed U.S.Commissioner of Education on December 17, 1970, heannounced that rapid implementation of theExperimental Schools Program was one of his highestpriorities. On December 28, 1970, some 20,000 copiesof the first announcement regarding this new programwere distributed nationwide.
The announcement set forth the general policiesestablished specifically for governing the first projects,and it solicited letters of interest from all agenciesinterested and able to combine into a single,comprehensive, kindergarten- through - grade -12 project awide variety of promising practices for 2,000 to 5,000predominantly low-income family children.
By February 1, 1971, nearly 500 letters of interesthad been sent to the Experimental Schools office. Anindependent selection committee recommended eightsites which, in its judgment, had put together the mostcreative and most significant combinations of promisingpractices that could be operational in September, 1971.Each of the eight sites was given a 60-day planning grantto work out comprehensive programs meeting all therequirements laid out in the first announcement. Theeight agencies which received the $10,000 planninggrants were:
Austin, Texas, Independent SchoolDistrict
Berkeley, California, Unified SchoolDistrict
Ferguson-Florissant, Missouri, SchoolDistrict
Franklin Pierce, Washington, SchoolDistrict
McComb, Mississippi, Public SchoolsMinneapolis, Minnesota, Public SchoolsRochester, New York, City School
District
.41
A panel reviewed the eight proposals and on April 10,1971, recommended three to be Experimental Schoolsites: Berkeley Unified School District; Franklin PierceSchool District; and the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Each of these sites developed its own uniqueprogram, each met the Experimental Schoolsrequirements in ways which suit the particular needs ofthe communities involved, and each combined a varietyof promising practices into a comprehensive K-12 schooldesign. The plans are complex. They encourageflexibility. They allow for change and adaptability asprogress reports and interim results show the need forchanges in direction or emphasis.
Recognizing the need for long-term assessment,each Experimental School site is funded for five years ofoperation; first for 30 months to be followed byadditional funding for the final 30 months.Thirty-month operational grants in the followingamounts have been awarded to:
Berkeley $3,639,063Franklin Pierce 2,462,718Minneapolis 3,580,877,
The Berkeley, Franklin Pierce, and Minneapolisprojects should not be viewed as models. Each wasdeveloped out of the experience, the history, and thespecial characteristics of a particular site at a particulartimethe spring of 1971.
Each of the three projects combines a diversity ofpromising practices derived from research,demonstration, and experimentation in a comprehensiveeducational program. Some of the most promising ofthese practices are:
"Patterns in Arithmetic" (amedia/programmed approach to individualizedmath instruction) developed by the NorthwestRegional Educational Laboratory.
Bilingual materials developed under aTitle VII, Elementary and Secondary EducationAct (ESEA) grant to Tucson, Arizona, PublicSchools.
"Man, A Course of Study" developed bya National Science Foundation award toEducational Development Corporation.
So
"Collaborative Problem Solving"developed under an Education Professions
Development Act (EPDA) grant.
"Individually Prescribed Instruction"developed by the Learning Research and
Development Center and Research for BetterSchools in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
"Work Opportunity Centers" developedby OE's Bureau of Adult, Vocational, and
Technical Education.
"Environmental Science Center"developed under Title Ill, ESEA.
The Charette (an organizationaltechnique) developed by OE's former Office ofConstruction Services.
"Child Development Center" developedby OE's Follow Through Program.
"Pyramid Reading Program" developedby the University of Minnesota under a Title III(ESEA) grant.
These practices illustrate the movement of ideas
developed by federally supported research programs intowider practice.
Because of the complexity of their programs andbecause of their ambitious goals, any one or all three ofthe 1971 Experimental Schools sites may fail to achievesuccess. But regardless of the degree of achievementoverallor for any of the componentsthe three sitesrepresent nationally significant comprehensiveeducational experiments. Together these first three, andthose to come, promise to give a test to the idea ofcombining several promising practices into a
comprehensive, coherent, articulated educationalprogram.
h. The Future of the Experimental SchoolProgram. The Experimental Schools Program expects tohave a limited number of new starts in each of the nextfive years. During the life of the program a wide varietyof comprehensive experiments will be supported. Thusthe requirements, procedures, format, and criteria usedto select Experimental School sites will change fromyear to year.
Experimental Schools is designed as an evolvingprogram in order to encompass the newest educationalideas as well as to avoid the administrative rigidity andprogram inflexibility that seems to accompany thecreation of new units. Although it is designed as aterminal program, it is constantly revising and reviewingits annual focus. In the fast start accomplished in fiscal1971, two competitions were necessary: the first, forprojects to be operational in September 1971, and thesecond, for projects to receive sufficient planning anddevelopment time to be ready for operation in
September 1972.
Thus, on March 31, 1971, a second competitionwas announced by the Experimental Schools office. Thesecond competition broadened the ExperimentalSchools Program by soliciting proposals forcomprehensive projects which represent significantalternatives to existing school organization, practice, andtraditional performance. Applicants were asked to shifttheir focus and look anew at what students ought tolearn and how to make different use of time and space,to rethink staffing patterns and personnel requirements,to consider alternative ways to organize and administerthe schools, and to include the community in activeparticipation in educational decisions. The secondannouncement was sent out nationwide and more than300 letters of interest were submitted. An independentselection committee chose the following to receive$30,000-$40,000 four-month planning grants to preparea complete proposal:
Chicago Public School Dist. No. 299,Illinois
City School District of New Rochelle,New York
Edgewood Independent School District,San Antonio, Texas
Federation of Independent Cr....-am unitySchools, Milwaukee, Wis,,onsin
Newark Public Schools, New JerseySchool City of Gary, IndianaSchool District of Greenville County,
Greenville, South CarolinaUniversity of North Dakota, Grand ForksVermont State Department of
Education, Montpelier
Similar planning grants were awarded to twoadditional sites in April 1971. On the selectioncommittee's recommendation, Portland Public Schools,
42 51
Oregon, was given an award to continue development ofits proposal. The National Urban League, New York,New York, was awarded a grant to develop a proposalbased on the "street academy" concept. They wereincluded in the second competition with those listedabove.
In December 1971, after a review of all proposalsby an independent panel, three sites (Greenville, SanAntonio and Newark) were designated for large scaleprograms to become operational in September 1972,subject to the successful completion and negotiation of afinal plan. The Piedmont Experimental Schools(Greenville) and the Edgewood School District (SanAntonio) have negotiated contracts and nationalcompetition is presently in effect to seek the mostqualified bidder to evaluate both these projects.
In a special category, 12-month grants wereawarded on July 1, 1971, to five applicants whose lettersof interest presented a uniquely promising componentwhich, when further developed, could later become asignificant part of a comprehensive program. Theone-year grant winners were:
School District No. 9, Browning,Montana
Seaford School District, Seaford,Delaware
Davis County Community SchoolDistrict, Bloomfield, Iowa
West Las Vegas and Las Vegas CitySchool Districts, Las Vegas, NewMexico
Green County Board of Education,Eutaw, Alabama
In fiscal 1971 and 1972, Experimental Schoolsawvrds were limited almost exclusively to existing K-12pul,lic school agencies. These were deemed most capableof implementing comprehensive projects thatincorporated the best of promising practices in a creativeeducational design. From the outset, the planners of theExperimental Schools Program resolved to interpret theword "schools" broadly to include all of education.Thus, future comprehensive projects will be developedto take into consideration such relationships as earlychildhood education and its linkage to K-12
programming, postsecondary school education and itslinkage to K-12 programming, community-basededucation which may encompass all ages in a given
43
community, higher education and its extension, as wellas new forms of education designed to improve andreform the present practices.
i. Summary of 1973 Budget Request (inmillions)
Continuations (second 30-monthawards) of fiscal 1971 initiatives(includes evaluation & documentation)for 3 projects
$11.2Continuations (30-month operationalawards) for 3 projects planned anddeveloped in fiscal 1972 (includesevaluation & documentation) for eachproject
New Starts in fiscal 1973 for 5 projects;planning and development
15.7
3.1
Total Projects: 13 Total Cost: $30.0
j. Conclusion. The Experimental SchoolsProgram itself is experimentalit is testing significantalternatives to present practices in pedagogy andgovernment support for educational R&D. Mostnotably:
1) Funding is for something longerthan a year, allowing for continuity and internalintegrity while testing and retesting possiblealternatives;
2) The target population is largeenough to allow for sufficient experimentation butsmall enough to be thoroughly evablated anddocumented;
3) The choice of curriculum,organization, staffing patterns, and internalevaluation measures are all the choice of localpersonnel and the community;
4) Each applicant is required initiallyto send a letter of interest rather than a
professionally prepared proposal;
, 52
5) Once a letter of interest is chosen
by an independent selection committee as a
possible contender for an operational grant, aplanning grant to allow for any necessary technicalassistance is provided;
6) Instead of the evaluation anddocumentation coming after a project has beencompleted or well under way, it is an integral partof each Experimental School site from thebeginning.
7) Documentation includes not onlythe narrow components in a project, but theproject itself and the total environment of which itis a part and which it is shaping;
8) The independent evaluators will useanthropological and sociological measures toidentify both what is appearing to succeed andwhat is appearing to fail, sharing both the "hard"and "soft" data with the Experimental Schoolsoffice and the local project staff;
9) The three levels of evaluation ensurecompleteness and integrity in the reporting system;and
10) Each site will provide aninformation center for visitors which will notimpinge on the experiment itself yet will fullyinform all interested parties on the results of theexperiment.
2. Career Education
The purpose of career education is to help studentsacquire the competencies and attitudes necessary forchoosing, obtaining, and successfully performing a seriesof satisfying and self-fulfilling careers during the courseof their lifetime. The ability to achieve this goalprobably depends on such variables as: 1) the variety ofcareer experiences one has had, 2) the availability ofauthentic career role models, 3) access to accurate careerinformation, and 4) the possibility of a recurrent cycleof education and employment.
Although popular rhetoric in the professionalliterature has extolled the importance of these variables,very little systematic research has been conducted onthem and schools and colleges do not, in practice,provide much in the way of career experience, career
44
role models, career information, or opportunity foreducation reentry. Indeed, schools and colleges havebecome isolated from the mainstream world ofemployment and appear to serve more a custodial thanan assimilation function.
a. Variety of career experience. Thedominant motivation in the history of support forvocational education has been the need to preparepeople for employment. In times of manpower shortage,industries provide on-the-job training. When there is
competition for jobs, employers depend more on schoolsand colleges for this function. Thus the economicpolicies of the federal government may have more to dowith unemployment and with the status of vocationaleducation than either has to do with each other. Arecent evaluation of vocational education estimated thatall federally-funded manpower training programscombined have reduced unemployment by only .5%(Teeples, in press).
Nevertheless, schools and colleges have a legitimaterole in preparing students for employment, even thoughemployment depends on the availability of jobs, avariable that is beyond the purview of education. Thereare other requirements for successful employment.Acquiring a job depends on knowing what jobs areavailable, on having appropriate credentials andacquisition skills, and on placement assistance. Once ajob is obtained, successful performance depends on ahost of attitudes and skills, e.g., communication skills,technical skills, decision-making ability, problem-solvingability, dependability, job acceptance, etc. Even if suchskills weren't prerequisite to job success, they would beimportant educational goals on their own merit inproviding students with a sense of competence and ofbeing in command of their lives, a range of avocationaloptions, and increased adaptability to change.
The programs considered most successful in
providing these competencies have reported extensiveuse of a wide variety of work experiences. These workexperiences must be legitimate employmentopportunities and not simply game playing. Studentsmust realize actual consequences of their performance,enjoying the rewards and suffering the penalties; theirendeavors must have impact on significant others. Suchwork experiences should take a wide range of differentforms: an activity that simply occupies a person's time, alifework by which a person earns a living such as a tradeor profession, an avocation with its intrinsic benefits, a
53
community service project, a social problem-solvingeffort, etc. The purpose of these experiences is to givestudents a sense of what a particular occupational lifestyle involves. The goal is not to impart specificoccupational skills so much as the generalized copingbehavior and attitudes necessary in the world ofemployment. A wide range of employment experiencesdoesn't merely adjust the student to the world ofemploymentit should also teach the student whatthings are wrong and in need of reform. The studentwho has had a range of work experiences will be betterable to compare the available choices of careeropportunities and is likely to make better careerdecisions. He is also likely to be less intimidated by thebureaucratic environment, having become familiar withit in a variety of forms over a long period. As a result ofearly experience with bureaucracy, the student may feelsome ownership of that environment, have better"purchase" on it, and hence feel less constrained aboutchanging it. It is also possible that varied careerexperiences, interleaved with and related to educationalprograms, will blur the distinctions between school,work and avocation, and will ease the transition fromschool to employment.
Federal legislation provides a number ofauthorizations for the support of current programs thatprovide work experience and occupational skills training.These programs are administered by a variety of bureausin HEW, DOL, OEO, HUD, and include such things as:Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training (DOL),Neighborhood Youth Corps (DOL), Public ServiceCareers (DOL), Work Incentive Program (Federal-StateEmployment Service Offices), Youth OpportunityCenters (Federal-State Employment Service Offices),Job Corps (DOL), Manpower Development Training Act(DOL, USOE, Federal-State Employment Service),Concentrated Employment Program (OEO), VocationalEducation Act Programs (USOE), and Elementary andSecondary Education Act Programs (USOE). Theseprograms are largely remedial rather than preventive innature. They represent the attitude in government thatmanpower training programs can help overcome thestructural barriers and rigidities which impede efforts toachieve maximum employment. Unfortunately it is verydifficult to separate the outcomes of manpower trainingprograms from the manpower effects of governmentpolicy in fields such as national defense, trade policy,natural resource development, and expansion of publicservices.
??.
45
Evaluations of such programs typically reveal thatcompletion rates and relevance to labor marketrequirements could be improved by additionalinvestment but that perhaps greater returns can beobtained from efforts to increase the demand for labor(Mentec Corporation, 1971). There is some evidencethat early introduction of children to employmentexperiences results in subsequent income advantages(Hilton, 1971, p. 104). There is also some evidence thatsecondary school employment experiences are associatedwith improved prospects for employment on leavingschool (Department of Labor, 1971, Vol. 2, p. 19).However, a national survey by Eninger (VocationalEducation, 1968, p. 39) found that the majority ofgraduates of occupational training programs did notenter the trade for which they were trained. It appearsthat "success" is not related so much to specific skillpreparation as to academic level or certification. Veryfew jobs require specific vocational training. Mostproduction methods are taught on the job.
Although cooperative work-study programs areviewed as one of the more successful vocationaleducation innovations, there is some evidence that theyare not significantly more effective than academicprograms in producing social adjustment or adultcompetence in adapting to work, though some studentsdo benefit much more from such programs (Ahlstromand Havighurst, 1971). In general, research onwork-experience programs in schools has yieldedequivocal results due to poorly defined treatmentconditions and to masking effects among different targetpopulations that respond in opposite ways to treatment.However, there have been some notable exceptions. TheDepartment of Defense, for example, has conductedextensive research on work-study experience and has hadconsiderable success in developing effective on-the-jobtraining procedures. One particularly interesting studyby the Human Resources Research Organizationdemonstrated dramatic economies in learning time whenpeers or "buddies" provided on-the-job instruction.Other research suggests that career development ofinner-city students is accelerated by structuredvocationally related activities (Vriend, 1969).
Studies attempting to assess the effectiveness ofwork experience will probably continue to yieldequivocal results until the treatment conditions are moreprecisely defined and controlled. Work-study is anumbrella term that covers a host of treatment conditions
54
that may mask' each other in the global evaluations thatare common to this field. More analytic experimentationis needed on the component dimensions of workexperience using multiple dependent variables to
determine the kind of work experience that is mosteffective for achieving different outcomes by varioustarget populations.
A memorandum from the Educational PolicyResearch Center at Syracuse University describes threetarget populations which cut across traditionalcategories, such as age, IQ, and socio-economic status,that may respond quite differently to career
development programs, Makers, Non-Makers, and
Post-Makers (Green, 1971). Makers are imbued with thepuritan ethic, work hard, get good grades and acomfortable and secure job at the end of the educationpipeline. The Non-Makers either see themselves failing inthe schools or see the schools failing them; they want tosucceed and accept the role of the school in assistingthem in "making it," but the schools are not helpingthem. The Post-Makers have the ability to "make it,"but choose not to. It is possible that entirely differentkinds of treatment are required by these groups andresearch is needed to explore such interactions. Forexample, perhaps the effect of labor marketdiscrimination on the motivation and self concept of theNon-Maker nullifies even the most carefully engineeredschool program while the Post-Maker may suffer from anopposite affliction, an excess of affluence and security; aplacement program that guarantees a well paying jobmay be an effective incentive for the Non-Maker andhave a negative impact on the Post-Maker. A globalassessment of a program that included both Non-Makersand Post-Makers would yield results for these groupsthat masked one another and, consequently, no
significant positive or negative overall effect would beobserved.
While a substantial amount of data has beencompiled by the Commission on Human Resources andAdvanced Education (Folger, et al, 1970) on the careerdevelopment activity of colleges and universities, thecost effectiveness of different patterns of post-secondaryeducation has not been explored. Supply and DemandStudies need to be related to alternative patterns forleaving school. Experimentation with early exit mayyield higher economic return than the present pattern ofprolonged schooling.
Colleges and universities have not experimentedwith work experience as an effective career developmentactivity but recent development of "open university"
programs, such as the Empire State College and theUniversity Without Walls, allow students to obtaindegrees by examination and give credit for learning onthe job and in other life experiences. Such programspromise to improve career education at the
post-secondary level and should be systematicallyevaluated.
Similar programs have been tried at the secondaryschool level. The Parkway program in Philadelphia, theMetro program in Chicago, and the Satellite Academiesin New York City use the entire community as aclassroomhospitals, stock exchange firms, insurancecompanies, churches, the police department and manyother public and private institutions. Almost completelyindividualized programs are possible, and the potentialexists to develop school-work programs in almost anyoccupation. These programs also need to be carefullyevaluated. Too often enthusiasm and faddism substitutefor empirical data attesting to the soundness of suchprograms.
Hypothesis: If all students are exposed to a widevariety of career experiences (sampling a broad spectrumof career possibilities) they will make more informedcareer choices and will be better prepared foremployment.
The statements of the benefits of varied workexperience above are of course hypotheses that can onlybe tested by providing students with a range ofemployment experiences from the very beginning oftheir education. But the students graduating fromschools today have not been exposed to such
experiences. The schools have become isolated from themainstream world of employment; the substance of thecurriculum in most schools is not job-relevant; and theteachers themselves have had limited exposure td theworld of employment.
To integrate schools with society, it will be
necessary to break open our economic institutions, fromlarge bureaucratic corporations to local post offices andreal estate agencies, and give them a share in the learningdollar in return for an explicit role in education. Thismight best be done by giving all students an entitlementof a certain sum which could be redeemed by employersand other organizations which provide educational
services. The young would be assimilated into the
economic activities of adult society from an early ageand adults could cash in their education entitlement atrecurring periods throughout their lives whenever it ismost needed for retraining.
Whatever method is used to test the careerexperience hypothesis, it is clearly a long range R&Deffort that will not yield quick answers and should avoidthe tendency, characteristic of past research in the field,to conduct global evaluations of undefined treatmentsthat have not yet been developed to the point wherestable and predictable results can be obtained. Thefollowing section describes some possible lines ofresearch and development for NIE that will help test thecareer experience hypothesis.
Promising current R&D in Career Educationincludes the Employer's Model (Model II) for careereducation (Morrison, 1971) presently being funded bythe USOE which should be continued by NIE. Earlyresults with the attempts at organizing consortia ofemployers to provide career education opportunities tosecondary students promises to develop into an effectivealternative system of providing career education. TheSatellite Academies in New York City are alreadyoperating and the program is being evaluated by theCenter for Urban Education. Model II provides a vehiclefor testing the above hypothesis and should besupported.
Possible new research activities for NIE includethree areas. One is research on the effects ofheterogeneity or variability of work experience obtainedby a student. Is it better to provide short periods ofexperience in a wide range of different careers, or longerperiods of experience with a small sample of careers?
A second area of research is on the effects ofstructuring the sequence of work experiences. Is aprogression of career experiences, carefully graded indifficulty so that development of coping skillsprerequisite to more advanced opportunities will appearearly in the sequence, prior to the point where they willbe needed, more effective than a more randomsequence? Perhaps common assumptions about startingwith simulated work experience then moving to evermore demanding tasks isn't necessary and merely adds toeducational costs.
The third research area is on the effects of thenature of the work situation. What kinds of workexperience are most helpful in inculcating appropriateattitudes and generalized coping skills in the student?Examine such variables as: amount of pressure ortension; a mo un t of de cision-making involved;personality characteristics of one's fellow workers;
extent of prerequisite knowledge required on the job;and work setting.
Dependent variables in such research projects will,of course, depend on the treatments being consideredand the nature of the target students, but careerdevelopment objectives that are suitable candidatesinclude: coping, planning, communication,problem-solving and decision-making skills; acquisitionand retention of employment; and job satisfactionmeasures.
Four areas of development are available for NIE.First, NIE can support the design and development ofalternative ways of providing work experience in schoolsand post-secondary institutions, e.g., simulations ofcareer situations in the school, school-run industries, etc.Second, NIE can support analyses of obstacles toinstallation of new R&D models and design of proposedsolutions for overcoming these obstacles. Such analysesmay include logistics studies, e.g., the feasibility ofintegrating students into employment settings; entry andexit problems; termination and admission procedures;length of participation time; management studies;staffing, etc. Economic problems need analysis, such ascost effectiveness studies; payment systems for studentworkers; school finance issues related to allocation ofresources to non-school agents to assist in programs.Legal and political problems need analysis, such as credittransferability, accreditation, teacher certification,minimum wage, health and safety insurance, child laborlaws, trade entrance, apprenticeship credits, labormanagement relationships.
Third, a comparison of cost-effectiveness ofalternative career development programs is needed,followed by the selection of the most promisingalternatives for R&D investment. Finally, proposed newcareer development programs need experimental,small-scale trial and revision, with projections for laterwide-scale implementation of those programs that aresuccessfully developed. Implementation plans mustinclude employer, student, and community involvement,and manipulation of incentives, information, and lawsnecessary to the maintenance of successful programoperation beyond the R&D period.
b. Authentic career role models. Mostteachers have only been students before teaching. Theyhaven't been employed in other roles, e.g., manager,plumber, accountant, lawyer, realtor, businessman, etc.
Students lack effective role models: adults who do math,who manage companies. They are isolated from experts.Students must have more opportunity to interact withmen and women from a wide range of careers if they areto learn to appreciate the dignity of many differentkinds of work. Dignity comes from an understanding ofand association with people in a particularoccupationit isn't sufficient to merely read about whatlawyers, architects and salesmen do. Contact with abroad range of career models will help students avoid thenarrowing restrictions on their career aspirations. Thismay be especially important in the case of femalestudents. For example, contact with women careermodels has been highly constrained to the "female"occupations: nurse, teacher, housekeeper. Few femaleaccountants, engineers, or business executives are foundamong the ranks of elementary school teachers.
One way to diversify learning experiences forstudents is to insure that they will receive help from awider range of people. At present, parents, citizens,trade and professional people have too few opportunitiesto be involved with students. One obstacle tore-integrating students with such people is the protectivecertification laws which presently select a very narrowpipeline of teachers with limited experience outsideformal schooling. In contrast to the general population,teachers represent a relatively homogeneous group.Much of the sameness in American education can beattributed to the standard credentialing procedures thatare being used. Of course there are some positive stepsbeing taken to alleviate this problem. In some schooldistricts,, trade and industrial teachers are not required tohave college degrees (Smoker, 1971) but must haveseveral years of work experience. Wisconsin has becomethe first state in the nation to certify counselors withoutrequiring that they have a teaching background. They donot, however, require a range of alternative careerexperience as a prerequisite to employment. Use ofparaprofessional aides is also a step in the right direction,but these aides are largely housewives and don'trepresent the range of career roles in the community.
Those who object to more flexible certificationlaws point out the possible decline in teachingeffectiveness if schools are opened to hordes ofuntrained practitioners from assorted trades andprofessions. Those objections are amplified by thecurrent surplus of school teachers in this country.However, research evidence indicates that professionalteacher training doesn't add significantly to teachingcompetency when measured by student achievement
gains. Experienced teachers do not perform better thantradesmen and college students who have never taught(Popham, 1971).
Hypothesis: Given a wide range of authentic careerrole models, students will more readily acquire desiredjob attitudes and competencies.
Despite the compelling rationale for increasing thediversity of those who teach there is a lack of researchevidence to justify this trend. No one has conducted asystematic investigation to determine whether increasedstaff diversity results in a greater range of learningexperiences for children or in more effective growth instudents. The approach for an NIE program shouldemphasize not only the mechanism for increasing staffdiversity but this work should be based on empiricalevidence that such variability has a significant impact onstudents. Once evidence is obtained to support specificmodifications in personnel certification practices, it willbe necessary to explore alternative ways to obtainchanges in state certification laws. Pilot projects will alsobe necessary to develop new methods for recruiting agreater range of talent into education. The reform ofcertification laws will require the development of newmeasures by which teachers might be certified. This is asubstantial project in itself. Another stage in thisprogram to provide a variety of career role models is aproject designed to modify the incentive conditions sothat staff diversity once obtained will be sustained. Forexample, there is some evidence that the allocation ofsalary levels to staff members does not reward thosepeople who are most effective. In fact, staff memberswho are most effective may be selected out of thesystem after a short period due to competingopportunities from more attractive, better paying jobswith greater recognition and more challenge. Teachersurvival rates are quite low; only half of those peoplewho enter teacher training actually go on to teach andafter three years only fifteen percent of those who wentinto teaching remain.
Research is needed in five major areas here. First,longitudinal studies are needed to better understand whypeople decide to enter teaching in contrast to otherfields. If we are to attract a broader range of people into
teaching, it will be necessary to study the factors thatgovern movement of people in and out of teachingcareers. Second, we need to explore the literature forincentive systems that have been tried and foundsuccessful in recruiting, selecting and rewarding peoplewith a wide variety of career backgrounds to enter and
48 ,
stay in teaching. Replicate successful models anddisseminate the results to school boards. Third, trade-offstudies should be conducted to determine how much itcosts to prepare new teachers as compared to selecting,on the basis of teaching performance measures, personsfrom trade or professional groups who are alreadycompetent and then recruiting them into teaching.
Fourth, we need to study the effects of makingteacher education more relevant to career education,e.g., using people from other professions as teachertrainers, modifying teacher training curricula, requiringcareer experience as a prerequisite for admission toteacher training, etc.
Finally, we need historical studies of the ways inwhich certification laws and credentialing practices havebeen changed over the years.
Several areas of development are possible here. Wecan develop selection tests to measure the competenceof adults in teaching career objectives. Studentachievement and student acceptance might be amongthe criteria for such measures. Then, using theseselection measures, we can experiment with alternativerecruitment procedures for inducing a select sample ofnon-certificated practitioners from a diverse set of careerfields to enter teaching at a number of experimentalschool settings, e.g., retired professionals and tradesmenmight serve short-term appointments as teacher internswhile completing certification requirements. The effectsof increasing staff diversity in these pilot experimentswould then need evaluation. If the evaluation yieldspositive results, we can design plans for developingcompetency-based teacher certification demonstrationsin several locations to show how school districts canobtain a wider range of career role models. At thecollege level, experimental programs might be developedto assess the effects of providing added compensation orpromotions to faculty on evidence of workingexperience outside the university, in government,industry, agriculture, etc.
c. Access to accurate career information.Counseling, guidance, and curriculum specialists agreethat giving students abundant information about theirown abilities and desires in addition to accurateinformation about employment opportunities andassociated requirements, contributes to better careerchoices and more efficient resource allocation(Vocational Education, 1968, p. 5). Although this belief
may be more a professional creed than fact, there issome evidence that increased labor market informationimproves the efficiency of job search (Department ofLabor, 1971, vol. 3, p. 65).
For a variety of reasons, despite the supportive dataand general agreement about its importance, the qualityand amount of career information and supportiveservices for decision making is inadequate. Informationis often too general, refers to job opportunities that arenot available to the student, and does not include suchmundane matters as filling out job applications, how toconduct interviews, or how to assess current wagesversus deferred benefits (Ginzbert, 1972).
Two major sources of career information are:curriculum materials, and guidance and counselingservices. Federal funds from the Vocational EducationAct are currently being used to develop sets ofinstructional materials on subjects related tooccupational clusters. Materials typically provideoccupational information about the world of work forgrades K-6, occupational orientation and exploration forgrades 7-9, and career preparation from grades 10
through post-secondary. Much of this material hasfocused on the emerging occupations such as NuclearMedicine, Environmental Technology, and Chemical(alcohol and drug) Dependency Counseling. Additionalsupport has been given to the Northwest RegionalLaboratory for the reclamation for school use ofinstructional materials originally prepared by theDepartment of Defense that cover a wide range oftechnical occupations.
Most of these curriculum development efforts makevery little use of careful evaluation-revision cycles.Editorial judgment is the primary means for insuring thequality of the materialempirical data on performanceof students using the material is only collected on largeblocks or units and consequently such material is notfinely tuned.
Guidance and counseling services are now widelyavailable. Unfortunately, most counselors have beenacademically trained, have no firsthand experience withthe many careers that students need to know about, andare spread too thinly to be able to offer more than tokenhelp to students (Grant, 1970). Nevertheless, a variety ofnew ideas are being tried to improve the quality andamount of career information available to students.
Elementary schools in Hackensack, New Jersey, forexample, operate school industries, e.g., paintedneckties, rubber stamps, etc., as a vehicle for learningabout different careers. Many junior high schools usesimulated careers in the form of games to provide careerinformation. Georgia has a program of education andcareer exploration that gives students a chance to samplehow it "feels" to be a jail matron, counselor, bankteller, chiropractor, disc jockey, egg packer, etc. At thehigh school level some districts are providing counselorswith paraprofessional assistance, using mobile careercounseling vans, computer-assisted guidance systems,and Project VIEW materials featuring career informationon microfiche mounted in data processing aperturecards. Some school districts are going the next step andproviding placement and follow-up services. Thesedistricts sometimes use special computer files ofavailable job vacancies for referral purposes (Smoker,1971, p. 53).
Hypothesis: If students receive abundantinformation about career cultures in addition to accurateinformation about their own abilities and desires, theywill make more informed career choices.
Recent analyses of 5-year follow-up data on over140,000 students indicated that, despite all efforts atproviding career information in the schools, choices aremade illogically, ignoring the labor market, aptitudes,and arty other information that ought reasonably to haveinfluenced the decisions. Counselors were especiallyunable to help lower socio-economic status students.The analyses indicate that much more is needed bystudents in decision making (Flanagan, et al, 1970).
One of the more flagrant failures in providingcareer information involves the discriminatorycounseling of women against entering jobs that havetraditionally been dominated by men. Though womenare now 38% of the labor force, half of all workingwomen are in 21 out of the 250 occupations identifiedby the Census Bureau. One-fourth of women workers arein 5 categories, all relatively low paying: secretarial,waitress, domestic, bookkeeping, and elementary schoolteaching.
The USOE has recently funded a school-basedcareer education model (Model I), being developed in sixschool districts, that is attempting to pull togethercareer-oriented curriculum segments that have been
50
developed previously, fill gaps with new material andevaluate the entire sequence. This work, beingcoordinated ,'-)y the Center for Vocational and TechnicalEducation at Ohio State University, is an ambitiouseffort that is attempting to infuse the total schoolcurriculum at all levels with information about theculture and life style of careers in the world of work.
The USED also supports the development of ahome-based career education model (Model III) thatprovides career information directly to the home viatelevision. A residential model (Model IV) providescareer education for entire families in a rural settingespecially adapted to the needs of poor people. All threeof these models are just getting underway and progressneeds to be evaluated, but it is planned that they willcontinue to receive support within NIE.
The Appalachia Educational Laboratory withUSOE support is conducting experimental assessmentsof a host of different media for providing informationabout life styles of workers in selected occupations.Video tapes are used to show the worker on the job, inhis home, and in his recreational pursuits. This is one ofthe studies in which impact data are being collected andit should continue to receive support.
Three potential areas of research are noted here.First, the longitudinal effect of intermediate goalachievement can be studied as it relates to over-all goals,e.g., does awareness of career information in grades K-6contribute to the decision skills of those students whenthey exit in school at the secondary level? Second,improved methods of job analysis can be investigated toidentify characteristics that are common to families ofjobs, looking at alternative dimensions for establishingjob clusters, e.g., functional, psychological, sociological.Third, anthropological studies can be made of howmembers of various target groups make career decisions,their information processing strategies, and the effects ofcultural pressures and group stereotypes on theirdecisions.
In terms of development, ME can support thedesign and development of alternative ways of providingcareer and performance information, e.g., preschoolprimers on careers, revised curriculum materials,manpower planning games, self-administering diagnosticassessment instruments, use of mass media, labor marketprojections, a national voluntary job information service,use of paraprofessional career counselors, regional
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information networks, etc. Following that, comparativecost effectiveness of alternative procedures can beevaluated, field tests of the preferred alternatives can beconducted, and a dissemination system developed forthem.
d. Recurrent cycle of education andemployment. Beyond the problem of schools beingisolated from the world of employment is the problemof jobs themselves being less satisfying. Jobdissatisfaction is increasing and ameliorative efforts toredesign jobs by enlarging job responsibilities, rotatingemployees among jobs, and providing educationalsabbaticals, are being tried by large corporations. Jobsare also changing rapidly with advancing technology.The rate of job obsolescence and rapid shifts in thenature of work demand a form of education thatprepares people for change. Education must be moregeneralizable. An education system that offersexperience in learning a wide variety of careers mayprovide more flexibility in students, may help themlearn how to learn, and may develop a readiness forchange, but flexible entry and exit between jobs andeducation will become increasingly more important inthe future as the rate of job obsolescence increases.
Another problem that hampers career education isthe dichotomy between academic college-boundprograms and the general/vocational programs insecondary education. The schools and universities serveas gatekeepers in sorting out the students who willcomplete a college or university and go on toprofessional or managerial careers, from those who willleave high school or junior college and become membersof the working class. The stratification of society intoworking and elite classes limits the career optionsavailable to the poor who drop out earliest. Recognitionof this problem has led to a variety of reform proposalsranging from open college admissions tocompetency-based credentialing. The linear pattern offull-time schooling, for as long as one can persist,followed by a sudden transition to a lifetime of full-timework, with higher ni-Aus and earnings for those who canafford to stay school the longest, maintains apartitioned society with under-utilization of talent andeconomic loss and needs reform. Proposals to separatethe selection function of schools from the educationfunction by turning over the credentialing orcertification responsibility to separate agencies may helpto solve this problem. Allowing students to complete themandatory portion of their education in earlyadolescence and giving them a certain number of
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additional years entitlement to education, usable at anytime during their lives, may also help resolve the dualismresulting from the linear "schooling-first" pattern byreplacing it with recurring cycles of work and education.Although this is a reasonable concept and should besubject to experimental trial, employers in large
industries are unwilling to hire youth under 21 years oldand use a variety of arbitrary hiring requirements toenforce this policy. In addition, most unions support theemployer practices out of a concern for youthcompetition with their adult members over jobopportunities and wage scales. Another obstacle toreentry is the problem of added financial responsibilityof the older person.
In spite of these obstacles, the linear, school-first,t hen-w ork-for-the-rest-of-one's-life, pattern is tooineffective to be tolerated. The knowledge acquired inearly years will not be retained throughout one's career,and has the effect of creating an artificial stratificationof society into separate tracks, wastes talent and resultsin economic loss to the nation. In addition, it alienateslarge numbers of young adults who are aware thateducation credentials are generally unrelated to jobcompetency and serve primarily as a convenientscreening device for employers. Furthermore, a majorityof today's high school students want to go to collegeamuch higher percentage aspire to college than actuallyachieve it (Department of Labor, 1970). The transitionfrom school to work is not always a simple matter ofleaving school and embarking on a lifetime career. In onefollow-up study (Department of Labor, 1971, p. 21)more than one-tenth of a sample of young men notenrolled at the time of the original survey returned toschool during the subsequent two-year period.
Hypothesis: If students are allowed to complete themandatory portion of their schooling in earlyadolescence and are given a certain number of additionalyears entitlement usable at any time during their lives,the present academicvocational dichotomy will bealleviated and a pattern of moving back and forthbetween education and career will be encouraged.
The necessity for short term commitments tocareers in a changing society, moving in and out ofcareers, requires dramatic experimentation withalternative sequences of education and `employmentuntil a more effective sequence can be found. Thetraditional school-then-work pattern probably won'tsurvive another decade. Now is the time to conduct theresearch so that answers will be available when this
policy issue reaches the crisis stage several years fromnow.
Promising current research includes the socialaccounts program at the Center for Social Organizationof Schools at the Johns Hopkins University whichexamines career history data for indices of occupationalassets and deficits. The data show that the effect ofeducation on income is on the rate of increase in theoccupation chosen rather than on initial income. Thissuggests that if alternative paths into high-growthoccupations could be found, they would be nearly aseffective as education per se since education essentiallyserves as a zero-cost screening device on the part ofpotential employers. These findings have implicationsfor the transition between school and work andproblems which arise from explaining the economicutility of educational attainment.
Several kinds of research studies are relevant here.We could investigate various incentive patterns that maypermit the implementation of a shortened period ofmandatory school attendance with a recurrent pattern ofeducation and career. These patterns might include waysof financing students who wish to reenter the educationsystems, a national educational opportunities bank, aspecial loan program for returnees; or tax deductionincentives for corporations that enable workers to takesabbatical leaves for reeducation. Procedures can bestudied for using educational vouchers to reimbursecorporations and other public employers for on-the-jobeducation programs. Simulation studies of the long rangesocial effects of altering the time sequence of schoolingare needed, from a school-before-job pattern to a
recurring cycle of work and education. Historical,sociological, and anthropological studies are needed toinvent new ways of inducing the non-school sector toaccept its educational responsibilities.
Many areas of development are available here. NIEcan eliminate tracking and general education bydeveloping a lottery system for admission to variouspreferred classes and institutions for all students. Forexample, Parkway successfully used a stratified randomprocedure for its admissions policy. NIE can developprocedures for increasing the status of non-academicprograms by experimental manipulation of incentives,setting up rules for admission that add to theirexclusiveness, or requiring such programs of all students.For example, at certain levels career experience may berequired for reentry to continue the educational
sequence. The cost effectiveness of these alternativesmust be evaluated, followed by field tests anddemonstrations of the preferred patterns.
In another area, NIE can experiment with andevaluate school graduation by performance criteriarather than years-completed similar to the GEDexamination for a high school diploma. It canexperiment with reducing mandatory attendance age andmake provision for X years entitlement. A publiclyaccountable agency would issue a voucher for X years'schooling beyond graduation at age 14 for each eligiblestudent. The voucher could be turned over to any schoolor university which had been .iesignated as acceptable bythe agency and it could be spent at any time during thelife of the student. Another possibility is to developalternatives to the academic year cycle in order to spreadout job opportunities. Students could take vacations atdifferent times. This is being tried in an experimentalschool in Oregon. A further possibility is to developyouth advocate positions in schools and universities toassist students who reenter after having left for a periodof work experience. Finally, ME can experiment withfederally and locally supported non-school social serviceemployment for adolescents having difficulty findingemployment.
e. Tentative Buuget for Career EducationR&D, Fiscal 1973 and 1974. 'The following estimates arebased on the assumptions:
1) That R&D on career experience andcareer information are of primary importance andshould each occupy a large share of the careereducation budget. Since the bulk of the ongoingR&D programs are focused on the careerinformation element (counseling, curriculum, etc.),no new research and development is recommendedin that element for fiscal 1973.
2) That career role models andrecurrent cycles elements are at the early stages ofconceptualization and should each occupy a smallershare of the career education budget.
3) That the allocation of new R&Dmoney should be approximately 10% for researchand 90% for development. The development costsare expected to include not only the engineering ofnew systems through a succession of empiricalevaluation-revision cycles but also experimental
Table 4
Tentative Budget for Career Edtic:14on R&D(in Thousands)
I.
Program Element Fiscal 1973 Fiscal 1974
Career Experience
A. Current R&DModel II 500 4,000
B. New R&DResearch 1,000 1,200Development 5,500 6,800
( 7,000) ( 12,000)
II. Authentic Career Role Models
A. Current R&D -0- -0-
B. New R&DResearch 250 300Development 1,500 2,200
( 1,750) ( 2,500 )
III. Access to Career Information
A. Current R&DModel I 7,000 5,000Model III 2,000 1,300Model IV 4,000 4,000AEL 700 -0-
B. New R&DResearch -0- 200Development -0- 1,700
IV. Recurrent Cycle of Educationand Employment
A. Current R&D
(13,700) (12,200)
Johns Hopkins Social Accounts 500 500
B. New R&DResearch 250 300Development 1,000 1,700
( 1,750) ( 2,500)
V. Evaluation and Documentation 800 800
TOTALS 25,000 30,000
demonstration and dissemination costs. Hence thedevelopment costs are much higher than theresearch costs.
4) That current projections for careereducation (25 million for fiscal 1973, 30 millionfor fiscal 1974) are reasonable in view of the highpriority given this area in USOE planning.
5) That current R&D work on themodels, in the vocational education centers, on theprojects at various educational laboratories, e.g.,AEL, Johns Hopkins, should be completed,provided the work is evaluated as satisfactory.
6) That the proposed new program ofR&D may be managed in a variety of ways, in anopen unsolicited receipt of R&D proposals, or as adirected programmatic R&D effort targeted onspecific outcomes and carefully managed from NIE.The decision on management style depends on ahost of variables that cannot be determined yet,e.g., level and number of resident NIE staffmembers, degree of knowledge available in thevarious program elements, and the size and qualityof the R&D talent pool available in the field that iswilling and qualified to work on problems of thisnature.
3. Home-Based Early Education (a sampleoutline for a proposed program)
The major purpose of early education programs isto enable preschool children to acquire skills andattitudes that will help them to be successful in later life.Middle-class and upper-class children normally acquirethese early skills and attitudes in the environment oftheir own home and in planned activities initiated bytheir parent s. However, opportunities for thedisadvantaged child to acquire many. competenciesnecessary to later success are often limited by a numberof environmental factors, as well as by a lack of parentalmoney and time. Therefore, the early education R&Defforts proposed in this section, like nearly all of thecurrent federally supported early education programs,are concerned primarily with disadvantaged children.
A large number of R&D projects in early educationare being supported by federal agencies. In general, theseprojects do not constitute a well-organized effort todevelop one or more comprehensive programs for
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improving the early education of disadvantaged children.Instead, the majority of the projects represent isolatedattempts to deal with rather narrow aspects of thechild's early development. Neither the outcome variablesnor the treatment variables are well defined in most ofthe projects.
The proposed R&D effort represents a moredirected approach than now exists for development ofcomprehensive research-based early education programs.Several components appear to be very important in thedevelopment of effective programs. Included amongthese components are: a) learning outcomes andassessment instruments; b) home learning centers; c)coordination of school and home learning centerprograms; and d) neighborhood child-care informationprograms.
a. Learning outcomes and assessmentinstruments. One of the most commonly cited causes forthe low school achievement of disadvantaged children istheir lack of basic skills when they enter school.Examples of the basic things that a child might beexpected to do when he enters school include thefollowing: demonstrate knowledge of the meaning of aparticular set of important words, follow oral directionsto complete a simple three-step process, cooperate withother children in planning and carrying out groupactivities, and put together simple jigsaw puzzles.Currently there exists no comprehensive listing of skillsthat are basic to success for beginning school children. Itis not possible, therefore, to determine objectivelywhether a child entering school possesses the skillsassumed to be essential to his success.
A comprehensive listing of specific cognitive,physical and social-emotional skills that children shouldpossess at various preschool age levels would be veryuseful in early education research and applied programs.Preschool programs could be designed so that some or allof the listed skills served as the learning outcomes to beattained by children in the program. The list of skills, orselected skills from the list, could provide a set ofmilestones for assessing the individual development ofchildren for both research and educational purposes.
An important complement to a comprehensive listof skills or learning outcomes would be a set ofassessment instruments for measuring development ofthe skills. Several researchers in child development havereported a serious need for improved assessment
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instruments and techniques (Chapman, 1972). A set ofmeasures keyed to important learning outcomes wouldfacilitate evaluation of preschool programs and of theprogress of individual children.
A number of early education R&D programs witheither general goals or limited goals in one or more areasof development are currently 'supported by severalfederal agencies, including the Office of ChildDevelopment (OCD), the National Institute of ChildHealth and Human Development (NICHD), the NationalCenter for Educational Research and Development(NCERD) in the Office of Education, and the Office ofEconomic Opportunity (0E0). Most of the currentprograms are input-oriented, with little or no attempteither to define the desired outcomes in advance or tocontrol and systematically study input variables.Programs which have been designed to implement awell-formulated set of specific skills (e.g., Plant, 1972;Sprig le, 1972) have generally been limited to the area ofcognitive development. One exception to the programswith either very general desired outcomes or a limitedset of outcomes is the Harvard Project (Caldwell, 1972)which includes cognitive, affective and physical skillsamong its desired outcomes.
Based on their review of federal research anddevelopment activities related to early childhood,Stearns et al. (1971) report that goals for acomprehensive child development research programmust be developed to provide a basis for researchplanning and that assessment instruments and techniquesare also badly needed. Currently, there are no federallysupported early education-related programs beingconducted either for the purpose of identification of acomprehensive set of appropriate objectives forpreschool-aged children or for the development of betterassessment instruments and techniques.
Hypothesis: If children participate in earlyeducation programs aimed at development of a widerange of explicitly identified skills, the children willdemonstrate better cognitive and physical skills andbetter social-emotional adjustment.
Several areas of research are possible. First, NIE canobtain normative data on development in children of thedesired cognitive, social-emotional and physical skillswithout preschool intervention and determinerecommended minimal levels of satisfactorydevelopment at various age levels. A second area would
contrast the effects of early education programsemploying as their desired outcomes a list of cognitive,social-emotional and physical skills and programs withno emphasis on development of specific outcomes. Arelated problem is to identify patterns of developmentof skills within and between areas (cognitive,social-emotional, physical) and between various subjectpopulations. Long-range research can determine therelationship between early education outcome variablesand achievement in various aspects of an individual'ssubsequent school career. Resulting data should enableNIE to identify effective methods for attainingparticular outcomes or related sets of outcomes. Finally,NIE should conduct research for the purpose of costingattainment of the various outcomes and determining thelength of time required for their attainment.
The areas of development resulting from researchinclude: developing one or more comprehensive lists ofskills to serve as guidelines for assessing development ofchildren under age 6 and desired outcomes of earlyeducation programs; developing appropriate instrumentsand techniques for assessing young children'sperformance of cognitive, social-emotional and physicalskills; developing exportable curriculum programs,including instructional materials and procedures, that areeffective in promoting children's attainment ofimi.nrt ant sets of skills; developing exportableprocedures and materials for training teachers ofpreschool-aged children in use of lists of skills andrelated assessment instruments to identify appropriateoutcomes and instructional activities for individualchildren.
b. Home learning centers. Psychologists andeducators generally agree that lack of opportunity toparticipate in a wide variety of educational activities inearly childhood is one very important reason for theeducational problems of many disadvantaged children.Such educational activities include exposure to a varietyof toys, games and books; visits to nearby sites with higheducational potential; and frequent verbal interactionswith a parent or other adult. Whereas the middle-classchild normally receives frequent exposure to theseactivities in the home, early participation by thedisadvantaged child in such activities is often severelylimited by lack of parental money and time. For thedisadvantaged child, consequently, initial intensiveexposure to many important early learning activitiesoccurs in the more structured, formal and impersonalenvironment of the school or Head Start center.
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An alternative to the more structured environmentof a Head Start center or school for providing neededearly learning activities would be a program operated fora relatively small group of neighborhood children by oneor more neighborhood adults in the adult's own home.Such a program would involve selection and training of aneighborhood adult to serve as the teacher and tooperate the program in her own home. Data reported byGordon (1972) suggest that selected mothers indisadvantaged neighborhoods can be trained to beeffective teachers of disadvantaged preschool children inin-home learning centers.
A home learning center program for small groups ofneighborhood children (the geographic boundaries for aparticular program could be established to include eithera fixed area or a relatively fixed number of children)would have a number of positive features. A wide rangeof important early learning activities could be providedby a familiar adult for small groups of children in ahome-like environment. The home learning programcould be articulated with the above- described programinvolving development of a list of skills and relatedassessment instruments for preschool children, so thatcritical skills in all areas of individual development couldbe selected and emphasized in the home center. Inaddition, the home learning center would enable thechild to make a much more gradual transition from hisown home environment to the school environment. Ifnecessary, the learning center could also provide aday-care function.
There are a number of current home-centeredprograms, including Head Start programs with a homecomponent, activities sponsored or administered throughpublic school districts or universities, various regionallaboratory and center projects, and other Federal andstate projects (such as the HUD Model Cities Programand OCD Project Home-Start). However, most Federalprograms are linked to custodial day-care services; thereis little effort to develop new programs with anR&D-based education component; university-sponsoredprograms are sometimes research oriented, are notrepresentative, and therefore do not have generalizableresults; most projects deal with both parents andchildren, and it is difficult to isolate the specific effectsof the program; it is impossible to determine whetherthe services directed to the parents or to the childrenproduce the most favorable results.
Many studies have dealt with programs aimed attraining parents at home. This assumes a non-workingadult; however, those unemployed often havesignificantly low social and/or cognitive skill levels,implying little probability of success for the program.This suggests that in-home centers using only selectedparents as directors may be both less costly and moreeffective.
Hypothesis: If children are exposed to an in-homeearly education program, they will demonstrate betterachievement and social adjustment during their schoolcareers.
Significant areas of needed research are evident.NIE can:
Identify the factors (e.g., hours ofoperation, geographic boundaries for enrollment,type of program) which promote high rates ofenrollment and attendance of children in theprogram;
Identify the characteristics ofneighborhood personnel who can be trained to beeffective educators G f children;
Identify the type of home learning centerprogram and environment most conducive toeffeztive learning and social-emotionaldevelopment;
Conduct longitudinal studies of theadjustment to school and achievement of childrenparticipating in home-centered programs; and
Compare the costs and benefits of homelearning centers and other types of early educationprograms.
NIE can stimulate groups to.
Develop replicable, but simplified,programs for selection and training ofneighborhood mothers as home learning centerteachers;
Develop replicable procedures foridentifying resources (persons, organizations, places
to visit, etc.) that can contribute to the learningcenter program within a city, accompanied bydescriptions of related desirable instructionalactivities, learning outcomes, and procedures forobtaining the use or cooperation of these resources;
Develop, field test and refine a balancedhome learning center curriculum (includingrecommendations for outcome and inputcharacteristics, time requirements, teachercharacteristics and training, estimating costs, etc.)to meet the needs of preschool children; and
Develop and field test a comprehensiveplan to cover all phases of installation andcoordination of home learning center programsthroughout a single community or various types ofcommunities.
c. Coordination of School and HomeLearning Center Programs. The available researchevidence (Coffman and Dunlap, 1971; Lazar andChapman, 1972; Plant, 1971) indicates thatdisadvantaged children who demonstrate gains in IQ orachievement from preschool programs typically do notmaintain these gains or perform better in school thanother disadvantaged children. Unless a program thatcoordinates the preschool intervention and theprimary-grade program is established, preschool gains donot appear to make long-term differences in either IQ orachievement (Lazar and Chapman, 1972).
Currently, most preschool and school programsexist quite independently of one another. There is littlearticulation between programs or exchange ofinformation that leads to modifications in curriculum orin the instructional programs for individual children.Children who enter school bearing the "disadvantaged"label are typically treated as if they are indeeddisadvantaged, irrespective of their prior educLdonalactivities and present skills. There is evidence that thepoor performance of disadvantaged children in school isin part due to low teacher expectations for them(Henrikson, 1971), and that as a consequence of theselow expectations, primary-grade teachers provide so fewappropriate learning opportunities for children that thechildren have virtually no chance to attain normalstandards of achievement, even when they have thecapability to attain these standards und-r normalinstructional conditions (Sullivan, 1972).
An R&D program on liaison procedures betweenthe school and home learning center or preschool would
57
have the potential for identifying the effects of severalmanipulable variables which could result inimprovements in the child's school achievement.Included among these variables are factors related to theteacher's expectation level for disadvantaged children;attempts to articulate the objectives of the programs andto maintain continuity of learning tasks for individuals;initial part-day attendance at school by the child forreading and/or other instruction, combined withcontinued preschool attendance to facilitate furthersocial development; and tutoring in the home learningcenter on skills for which the child's school achievementis sub-standard.
Presently there are very few efforts to producesignificant correlation between school and home learningcenter programs. Therefore, long-term gains inachievement are infrequently realized. One programwhich does attempt this is the Head Start-FollowThrough continuum. However, there is no explicitattempt to articulate skills or areas of emphasis, and theresults are consequently ambiguous. A number ofprograms using tutoring by parents or other communitypeople i:ave produced significant increases in the skillswhich children learn at school, particularly reading skills(Niedermeyer, 1970; Sullivan and LeBeaune, 1971). Themost successful programs explicitly provide training andmaterials in areas of concern.
There is a need to coordinate pre-schoolintervention and primary grade programs, possiblythrough individual instruction, and to encourage summerprograms for children. It may also be necessary toprovide intervention earlier and mair`qin it well into theelementary grades. Curreat efforts ,ire beginning torealize these problems.
Hypothesis: If regular liaison aimed at promotingchildren's achievement and social adjustment is
maintained between the school and home learning centerduring the primary grades, the child will adjust better toschool and will demonstrate higher achievement.
Initial research should investigate methods forraising Leacher expectations for achievement ofdisadvantaged children and effects of induced raises inteacher expectations upon subsequent input andoutcome variables. One possible approach is to study theeffects of attempting to establish higher teacherexpfdations for performance on selected importantoutcomes by increasing the amount of time thatdisadvantaged children spend on the outcome. Thisprocedure would contrast with the common practice by
66
primary-grade teachers of establishing low expectationsfor disc ivantaged children and allocating equal or, moreoften, nuch less time to the desired outcomes. A secondapproach might study the effects of determining thetime of entry of children from the home learning centerinto the school program on the basis of their socialdevelopment and skill acquisition, and phasing the childinto the school program by gradually increasing thelength of instruction and variety of school subjects.Basic to this research is the need to obtain normativedata on the achievement levels of primary-gradedisadvantaged children on desired learning outcomeswhen the children have been involved in instructionalprograms judged to be effective, and to determinerecommended minimum levels of achievement at varioustimes with each grade. A final area of needed research isa study of the effectiveness of various procedures,including use of paid adults or teenagers, for providingtutorial assistance in the home learnin3 center forchildren not succeeding in specific skill areas at school.
NIE can affect practice by encouraging thefollowing:
Development of a recommended list ofobjectives or skills to be attained by children in theprimary grades; this list would be articulated withthe preschool list for continuity of skilldevelopment and to avoid unnecessary overlapbetween programs and omission of important skills;
Development of criterion-referenced testsfor regular use in the school program to assesschildren's attainment of objectives and to identifychildren needing remediation; and
Field testing and revision of the materialsand procedures for articulation of various aspectsof the school and home learning center programs,followed by development of a detailed plan forwide-scale implementation of the programcoordination techniques that are effective inpromoting children's adjustment in school and*achievement.
d. Neighborhood Child-Care InformationPrograms. The danger of impairment to healthy humandevelopment is greatest during the period fromconception through the first few years of life. Parentpractices in caring for the child (diet management,exposure to appropriate learning activities and social
58
experiences, etc.) during this period are extremelyimportant to the child's subsequent development and tohis success in later years. Because of such factors as theincreased level of pollutants and other health hazards inmany disadvantaged areas and the limitations in types ofhealth-related goods and services available to low-incomegroups, use of good child-care practices may be evenmore important with disadvantaged children than withtheir more advantaged counterparts. Yet, many parentsdo not know or apply child-care practices that facilitatethe healthy development of their children.
Both knowledge and application of good child-carepractices are needed in the areas of health; social,intellectual and physical development; and nutrition.Also needed by many parents are information andassistance in obtaining child services available to them.An inter - agency effort to develop effectiveneighborhood-based programs has the potential formaking a significant contribution toward fulfillment ofthese needs.
Numerous projects are designed to provide parentswith adequate child-care information. ProjectHome-Start (OCD), several Federal extension services(such as the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education ofthe Department of Agriculture), and a host of stateextension services have already been initiated in thisarea. Most of the effort, however, has been in the formof community action programs and neighborhoodinformation services. Two basic inadequacies in most ofthese services are that they are aimed at only one areaand they deal with problems identified by the researcherrather than the parents. There has been much moreconcern with simply making the information availablethan with studying the effects of such provision orinsuring its application. Lazar and Chapman (1972, pp.7-17) have attempted to explain some of the gaps thatmust be filled in order to promote the effectiveness ofboth on-going and proposed efforts in informationprovision. These gaps must be comprehensively definedand analyzed and corrective action taken.
Hypothesis: If a program of information andactivities on simple, of ective child-care practices isavailable to parents within their immediateneighborhood, parents will utilize improved practiceswith their children.
Research is needed to:
Identify the health habits and theincidence of various health problems among groupsof high-risk individuals in order to determine areasof greatest information need;
Investigate the use of various publicityprocedures and incentives for parents to acquireand use child-care information;
Provide both breakfast and lunch forpreschool children and investigate the effects onvarious aspects of their development; and
Determine the most effectivecombination of means (mass media, neighborhoodcampaigns, home calls, etc.) for improving childcare information and practices and the type oflocation that results in most frequent use of theinformation center.
In terms of development, NIE can:
Provide child-care information centerswhere parents and expectant mothers can come forhelp and can learn child-care practices that willpromote better development of their children;
Develop a program through theinformation centers that coordinates and utilizesexisting resources within a community to provideneeded services for children, including bothpreventive and treatment services;
Develop procedures for identifying andsecuring child services that are needed but do notexist within a community;
Develop simple programs for regularchild care that include free materials (toothbrushes,vitamins, recommended foods, game sheets,recommended parent-child activities, etc.) anddistribute the programs through the child-careinformation center; and
Develop buying assistance programs thattrain parents in nutrition and consumer education,and that give food stamp bonuses or free guidedbuying trips to those who participate.
The R&D budget for program components over afive-year period is estimated (in thousands of dollars) asfollows:
1) Learning Outcomes and AssessmentInstruments $6,000
2) Home Learning Centers 10,000
3) Coordination of School & HomeLearning Programs 4,000
4) Neighborhood Child-CareInformation Programs 5,000
5) Evaluation 2,500
A budget of 2.5 million is proposed to initiate theeffort in fiscal 1973, with $7 million provided in 1974,$8 million in 1975, $6 million in 1976, and $4 million in1977.
4. Learner-Controlled Edwation
The challenge of open education lies in the visionof an open society rather than in the organization of aninformal classroom, or even a "school without walls."An open society requires open access to knowledge forall individuals at every stage of life. It also requiresextensive degrees of self-determination with respect towhat is learned, when it is learned, and how. Foreducation, then, the challenge is to find ways ofdeveloping the full range of each individual's capacitiesand to do so while (as much as possible) putting controlof the learning process in the hands of the learnerhimself. For educational technology, the challenge is toapply technological discipline to the problem ofdeveloping viable learner-controlled educational systems.
This program, then, will be concerned with theprovision of such control. It involves six essentialaspects: (a) the choice and definition of educationalobjectives; (b) the organization and sequencing ofobjectives, i.e., the design of curricula; (c) the problemof displaying educational alternatives to the learner; (d)the provision of learner-control within a giveninstructional episode; (e) learner control of motivation;and (f) evaluation of competence. Of these six areas, allbut onethe concern for displaying alternativeshave, inone form or another, been areas of concern foreducational technology for some time, but this programalso poses new problems for research and developmentin each of these fields.
This program for Learner-Controlled Educationhas, to date, been developed only in outline form. If the
6859
c.
program is accepted for further design effort, thePlanning Unit will continue to expand the outline.Lauren Resnick, who developed the outline, has agreedto continue her effort.
Five-year budget estimates have not yet been madefor the program, but approximately $2 million should bereserved for design during fiscal 1973 if the effort is tocontinue. In addition, the Task Force for this effortprobably should manage and try to integrate theapproximately $5 million in continuing programs fromthree of the Regional Laboratories and Centers.
I.
Outline of R&D Program forLearner-Controlled Education*
Concept of learner-controlled education:
A. Education in which learner himself controlsone or more of the following:
1. Choice of what goals to work toward;2. Choice of materials, methods, and
strategies of learning;3. Choice of timing, i.e., when during
lifespan to engage in study; pacing duringlearning.
B. Reasons for learner control:
1. In a society in which "bigness" oftenrules in the economic and governmentalspheres, learner-controlled educationprovides a domain in which people canexercise individual responsibility andself-control.
2. Le arner-controlled education isresponsive to the diversity of goals thatcharacterize a pluralistic society.
3. Learner-controlled education is a meansof implementing basic principles oflearning and instruction.
4. Learner-controlled education can permitflexible programs, with respect to when
* Prepared by Lauren B. Resnick, Leaming Research andDevelopment Center, University of Pittsburgh.
people enter and leave, etc. Educationalactivities can occur in widespreadlocations and at different times inpeople's lives. This allows economicalextension of education, and flexibleresponse to changing vocational andavocational needs of adults as well asyoung people.
II. Possible models of learner-controlled education:(These can be grouped roughly according toage-level, which in turn determines the kinds ofgoals that will be of dominant concern, and thekinds of capacities for self-directed education thatcan be relied upon.)
A. Infancy through early pre-school.
1. Goal at this stage of development is tonurture and develop general capacitiesfor self-directed learning that will becalled on later.
2. These general capacities include:
a. Basic cognitive abilitieslinguistic,perceptual, conceptual, etc.
b. Ability to engage in self-directedand purposeful exploration of anenvironment;
c. A sense of mastery and confidence,particularly in one's ability toexercise control over hisenvironment in socially acceptableways;
d. Social skills, including abilities ingiving and requesting help;
e. Physical skillsgeneral body controland fine motor skills of variouskinds.
3. Capacities to be relied upon in designingeducational programs are mainly those ofuniversal human striving forunderstanding of his world. Since muchdevelopment in this period appears tohave biological components (e.g., aspects
of perceptual development, physicaldevelopment, language development),opportunities and demands of theeducational program must respect thesedevelopmental processes.
4. Possible model is a nurturantenvironment, much free choice ofactivities, adults responsive to children'sinitiative, planned efforts to fostergeneral capacities for learning.
B. Basic literacy periodroughly 4-10 years (timeperiod will vary greatly for individuals).
1. Primary educational goal at this stage isacquisition of basic literacy in culturallynecessary domains, of which the mostimportant are verbal and mathematicalliteracy.
2. Other aspects of personal and cognitivedevelopment are not neglected, butindividuals and educational systems willprobably invest most of their resources inliteracy development, since this is
necessary for extensive learner-controllater.
3. Capacities for learner-controllededucation that can be relied upon at thisstage are:
a. The capacities for self-directedlearning developed at the earlierstages;
b. Children's desire to masterculturally relevant skills such asreading;
c. Continuing drive to understand andmaster the environment.
4. Possible models are the "open" primaryclassroom, individualized instruction;perhaps a mix of both, in order to assurebasic literacy acquisition in the contextof a partially learner-controlledenvironment.
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Exposure to information stagefromwhenever basic literacy is established throughearly adolescence.
1. Major goals are to:
a. Expose the child to a wide range ofinformation about theworldinformation on the basis ofwhich he can make choices for thedirection of his own life later;information which extends theboundaries of his world from hisown family and social group;
b. Build skills in independentinformation gathering andinformation processing;
c. Build social skills, especially thoseinvolved in group activity.
2. Capacities now available include thecrucial ones of literacy, also continuingdevelopment of reasoning and otherculturally important skills. The child'sability to move around the city orcountry area makes it possible to usecommunity resources, flexible schedules,etc., to a greater degree than before.
3. A possible model is a "school withoutwalls," one in which children "sign up"for various activities, many of theextended "project" type. Skill andresource centers are located both withinand outside the school building. Craftand technical skills as well as academicones are called upon.
D. Adult stageincluding later adolescence.
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1. A great diversity of goals to matchcurrent interests and vocationalpreparation needs of individuals, whichwill include expressive goals, such as thearts. Technical skills may be acquired fortheir own sake, not only for vocationaltraining purposes. Academic learning isavailable through lectures, seminars,"courses," programs, etc.
2. Resources to be relied upon are as variedas the goals. Education is seen as takingplace throughout society and is not thespecial prerogative of "schools."Conversely, schools welcome a muchwider variety of people and resources,and so the school/real life boundarybecomes appropriately blurred.Individuals have developed skills andcapacities during the preceding stagesthat permit them to use this diversity ofresources effectively.
3. Model is one of open access to resourcesof community and educational resources.
III. Research and development necessary for theestablishment and continuous improvement oflearner-controlled educational systems fall into sixmajor areas.
A. Choice and definition of objectives
1. Broadening objectives to whicheducational resources are devoted anddeveloping useful means of statingobjectives in domains other than thetraditional academic knowledge and skillareas are crucial tasks.
a. Research question: Usefulness ofdifferent ways of specifyingobjectives must be explored.
b. Development task: Educationalgoals must be identified that matchthe interests of various socialgroups.
2. A second major concern is identifyingand defining generative learning skills
(i.e., "learning to learn" skills)appropriate to various stages ofeducational development.
a. Research questions: What basiccapacities matter in learning ofreal-world tasks? Which of these willyield to controlled instructionalefforts?
b. Development tasks: Development ofapplied education programs to teachlearning skills.
B. Organization of objectives
1. The current condition in education istypically either "lockstep" orrandomness with respect to sequencingand organizing of objectives.
2. The problem for R&D is to find the bestbalance between openendedness andstructure in curriculum.
3. Research questions:
a. Identifying real dependencies andindependencies among learningobjectives.
b. Explicating the structure ofsubject-matterthe "what is to belearned"so as to discover optimalpatterning of content with respectto psychological processes calledupon in learning. This is the growingarea of "task analysis" in terms ofcognitive processing demands.
4. Development tasks:
a. Develop modular and flexiblesystems that allow use of new kindsof materials and new objectives asthey are developed.
b. Establish curricula that respectnecessary prerequisites, but do notrely on arbitrary ones; curriculawith multiple entry points andpathways.
C. Learner-controlled instructional methods
1. Research questions:
a. How good are people of differentages and educational experiences at"programming" their own learning?
b. What conditions optimize suchself-programming?
c. What behaviors on the part ofteachers are conducive to good"self-programming?"
d. What kinds of "tradeoffs" betweenlearner control and efficiency arenecessary?
e. Can tutoring programs help in
developing self-direction skills in thelearner and in the tutor?
2. Development tasks:
a. Wide varieties of instructionalmaterials must be developed toaccommodate various interest andability patterns.
b. Examine industries and businessesthat are successful in some aspect ofeducation (e.g., language schools;computer training schools;secretarial schools) and incorporatetheir methods and perhaps theirservices.
c. Develop highly efficient teachingmethods for the core cultural skills,and, where possible, for the"generative learning skills."
d. Develop materials and strategies forpromoting investigations; thesemust somehow become"disseminable," although thegreatest successes in this domainhave up to now been largely "local"efforts.
e. Develop strategies for training'teachers and other resource peoplein effective forms of instructionalin teraction in learner-controlledsystems.
D. Display and access systems
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1. "Open " - access, learner - con trollededucational systems could lead to
widening differences between privilegedand less advantaged people, since theformer group will know more about howto use the opportunities.
2. To assure functional ;quality of access,methods must be developed for:
a. Displaying educational options informs that are useful to all segmentsof the population;
b. Teaching people to use these
displays in the most productiveways;
c. Helping people clarify theireducational goals so that they canuse educational resources as
productively as possible.
3. Research questions:
a. How good are people at choosingoptions that match their abilitiesand maximize achievement of theirgoals?
b. To what extent do people chooseon the basis of plans and to whatextent on the basis of a momentarycapturing of interest. if the latter,are people potential victims of"packaging" competition?
c. How do people use competencemodels? Most research in the area ofmodelling has been concerned withsocial behavior. What is the role ofmodelling in the acquisition ofin tellectual and technicalcompetencies?
4. Development tasks. Several models ofdisplay and access of educationalresources should be developed and thenstudied for their effects.
a. One model is "informationretrieval." Educational resources aretreated like items in a
(computer- accessed) librarycatalogue and individuals learn howto in teract with theinformation-retrieval system to findthe resources they want.
b. Another model is that of"browsing" among alternatives. Thisis the one that characterizes the"open classroom." One problemhere is how to display the outcomespossible for given resources (i.e.,what you can do with each). Onesolution is modelling.
c. Another model is of "counselingand guidance." To the extent thatrequirements and fixed routesdisappear in education, a greaterdemand is placed on guidance;effective methods, suited to a
learner-controlled, adaptive .ystem,must be developed.
E. Measurement
1. In a learner-controlled educationalsystem, tests designed primarily to selectand compare students can be expected toplay a decreasing role, since access toparticular educational activities will bebased on the student's interests, togetherwith his command of specificprerequisite competencies. This does notmean, however, that there will be no rolefor testing, but rather that testingmethods will be needed that are useful ininstructional decision making,particularly for the learner himself, butalso for his teachers and parents.
a. The !ewer needs to find outwhether he is making progresstoward his objectives.
b. The learner needs to know if hemeets prerequisites for someeducational activity.
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c. The learner needs to know what thecompetencies are that he is workingtoward in as explicit a form aspossible. Tests can help to providethis information.
2. R&D tasks:
a. Development of methodologies oftesting suitable to the aboverequirements. Work already begununder the title of domain- andcriterion-referenced testing.
b. Study of the ways in which thesetests are used by learners, teachers,guidance people, parents, etc.
c. Establishment of kinds of abilitytesting that could help learners inmaking instructional decisions. Pastwork on aptitude-treatmentinteractions has turned up no usefulmeasures for this purpose. A newapproach seems to be required.
d. Development of tests for outcomesother than the traditional academicones.
F. Evaluation
1. Evaluation, always difficult, is moredifficult than ever because of themultiplicity of goals and activitiesinvolved.
a, Stodolsky's work points out thatfree-choice "curricula" are actuallya multiplicity of curricula, and thatdifferent outcomes can, therefore,be predicted for differentindividuals.
b. Educational systems must beexamined, with respect to how theymeet both "consumers" (i.e.learners') and "sponsors" (i.e.society's) needs.
2. R&D Tasks:
a. Develop approaches to evaluationthat respect this pluralism and stillprovide information educationalsponsors and users need to decidewhat is worth maintaining andusing. Cooley's paper, Campbell'swork to be cited as relevantdiscussions. Perhaps also Bormuth'srecent work on cost-effectivenessmeasurement.
b. Descriptive research that tells us
how learner-controlled educationworks, as well as whether or not it isworking as needed. This is
particularly necessary in the earlystages of a new educational venture;it helps to identify the crucialquestions and to provide a basis forcontinuous refinement of thesystem itself.
IV. Steps toward implementation of a
learner-controlled education program
A. Research questions identified require activityon the part of a variety of scholars often, butnot always, in cross-disciplinary investigations.Some examples:
1. Psychologists studying structure ofsubject matter, nature of generativelearning skills, people's abilities in
self-programming, how interests and"displays" interact, social behavior inlearning contexts;
2. Sociologists studying the relation ofeducational goals to social structure andposition, the ways in which differentsocial groups make use oflearner-controlled resources;
3. Anthropologists describing "educationalcultures" that emerge inlearner-controlled systems;
4. Economists studying costs and feasibilityaspects;
5. Measurement and evaluation expertsdeveloping t esting and evaluationstrategies.
B. Some kinds of research (especially descriptiveand evaluative types) can occur only afterfirst - approximations to learner- controllededucational systems are actually operating.Thus, development must occur simultaneouslywith research. This makes Centers, Labs andother organizations in which research anddevelopment people are in working contactwith one another, ideal locations fordevelopment work. A period of R&D activityis necessary before widespread disseminationof particular components, in order to preventfaddist solutions. Some of the people whomay be called upon in development workinclude:
1. Instructional designers; those withexpertise in lesson-writing and design ofeducational environments;
2. Test developers;
3. Information retrieval specialistsperhapsin departments of library andinformation sciences;
4. Teachers and other resource people withdemonstrated competence in managinglearner-controlled education.
5, Unbundling Higher Education
Institutions of higher education perform severaldifferent functions tied together in one package andoffered to students on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Thisfurnishing of unneeded services along with desiredservices and requiring students to purchase all is wastefulof both institutional and student resources. In addition,it enables institutions to resist the introduction oftechnology or other innovative practices.
The purpose of this program is to introduce greaterflexibility and productivity into the system of highereducation by: (1) defining the now "bundled" functionsof universities and colleges (including the educative,credentialing, distributive, social, and role-modelfunctions); (2) incrementally developing specificunbundled services until they can compete successfullywith the traditional total-package arrangement; and (3)developing a plan for offering the variety of highereducational services through discrete agencies.
Development of curricular materials which can be
studied independently of institutional settings appears tobe one of the most essential items in an unbundlingprogram. Appropriate credentialing mechanisms are alsoimportant, because without them the student would notbe in a position to choose alternative forms ofinstruction. In addition, technological devices, such asinteractive cable TV and comiuters, extensive tutoringand counseling services, and use of private and public"industries" as training agencies would be part ofprogram consideration.
In short, the notion that only formal institutions ofhigher education can have educating functions is
unproductive. It would be far more useful to visualize avariety of educative functions in virtually all structuresof society.
A short statement describing this program appearedin the Planning Unit's January 20th interim statusreport. Since it still represents a consensus of PlanningUnit views, it is not presented again, but is available onrequest. If the program is accepted for further designeffort, Dr. Harold Hodgkinson has agreed to help expandthat statement, including the provision of estimates. Inthe interim, 1973's initial year budget projection fordesign and development is tentatively set at $2.5 million.
6. Community Education Agencies
This program is suggested in response to thefractionated communities everywhere that are in need ofradically new institutions to bind them together whilepromoting pluralism. It is a proposed experiment for anew organizational structure and a new way of governingeducation for the community. The effort involvesdeveloping variations in how we link educational serviceto families, to neighborhoods, and to metropolitan areas;and proposing experimentation with governingmechanisms, organizational structures, and use ofresources. Alternatives such as the family assistanceagent, family tax credit models, neighborhood voucheror neighborhood corporation models, or publicfoundation models will be considered for experimentaldevelopment in the program. The emphasis is not uponplanning substantive changes, but upon providingmechanisms that will allow local genius to deviseeducational programs to meet the needs of all ages.Finally, a major research efforta longitudinal study ofcommunities in their natural stateis also suggested as apart of this programmatic effort.
The program is, thus far, developed only in outlineform, with the outline presented on the following pages.If the program is accepted for further . Inflation, MarcTucker, the developer of the ow nr, e agreed tocontinue this explication. The genera range forthe program over a five-year period : 1:f million. Inthis R&D agenda, $2.5 million has ....aggested as thenecessary funds for fiscal 1973 design and developmentefforts.
Outline for CommunityEducation Agencies
Topic A: Systematic Variation of AlternativeGovernance and Organizational Mechanisms LinkingAvailable Resources to Educational Needs of VariousCommunity Groups.
General Background
1. Educational institutions dysfunctional. Theinstitutions formally charged with the educativefunction are widely perceived by their eients of allages as dysfunctional, nonresponsive anc, inflexible.
2. Institutions responding to needs of theirprofessionals. In part, educational institutionssuffer from their own success in producing asociety of professionals. As specialization increases,it produces reward systems that increase thepressure to professionalize all forms of activity.Each profession, including education, moldsinstitutions responsive to its own needs rather thanthe needs of its clients.
3. Institutions unresponsive to technological change.Institutionalized education has failed to adapt tochanging technologies. Though most educationalinstitutions still behave as if their principal missionwas to transmit information, that function is
rapidly being taken over by other agents. Theadvent of community cable systems, for example,will bring the average citizen into direct andinteractive contact with an almost unlimited supplyof information from almost every conceivablesource, unmediated by "educational" institutions.
4. Institutions unresponsive to societal fragmentation.Institutionalized education has failed to produce anappropriate institutional response to the dispersion
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and fragmentation of its client groups and to thefluidity with which those groups form andrecombine. Educational institutions continue tooffer programs based on assumptions ofhomogeneity of values, aspirations andbackgrounds of client groups in an eracharacterized by fundamental clashes of valueswithin and between ethnic, racial, socioeconomicand geographically defined constituencies.
5. Institutional failure promotes alienation andcommunity failure. The failure of educational andother institutions to respond to the specific needsof components of an increasingly fractionatedsociety have produced a society characterized byalienation of man from man, man from hisinstitutions, institution from community, and manfrom community. Many community membersappear to exhibit a sense of impotence;powerlessness, estrangement and a lack of sense ofpersonal worth in relation to self and others, or ofbelonging to a community.
6. Cost of maintaining existing institutions placesunacceptable limitations on corrective action.
Educational institutions and the educationalprofessions represent an enormous fixed cost. Someeighty-five percent of most school budgets is tiedup in salaries. Flexible funds for all of theexperimentation in most districts represent at bestsome three percent of total expenditures. It is littlewonder that experimentation has not producedmajor change. There is little likelihood that majortransformations in education can be brought aboutuntil the flexible resources approach twenty-fivepercent or more of the total budget.
The costs of the present educational institutions,structures and professions have been rising muchmore rapidly than community income. Provision ofsubstantial additional educational services tocommunity groups not now receiving them tocorrect the problems cited above is beyond thefiscal capability of most taxing units if the newprograms represent additional costs over the fixedcosts referred to above. The existing institutionsmust be reorganized to free and reallocate more ofthe resources tied up in present structures.
7. New mechanisms of governance and organizationrequired.
A central problem of education in communitysettings is to invent new governance and
organizational mechanisms for the education ofentire communities that will provide the essentiallinkage, integration and synthesis functions toovercome the sense of alienation and lack ofcommunity generated by our rapidly fluctuatingsociety and perpetuated by the institutionsformally charged with the educative function.
8. Assumptions underlying suggested approach.
Development of the new methods of governanceand organization of community education mustproceed from the following assumptions: (a) nosingle institution can meet the needs of any givengroup, whether defined by age, race, ethnicbackground, class, or societal function; (b) thenature of client groups, however defined, willchange rapidly as new alignments destroy oldgroups and create new ones; (c) the agency must bea broker, not an owner, of resources; (d) it mustrespond to, support and recognize the legitimacy ofsmall groups while at the same time finding ways tobind these shifting groups together in a largercommunity.
9. Goals of the new agency.
The overarching goal of the new linking agencyshould be the production of an educatingcommunity that addresses itself to cognitive,
psychological and social needs of its members inan integrative, synthetic fasion. It should seek to:(a) give those affected by its decisions a feeling ofthe legitimacy of those decisions; (b) create a senseof control, of power to influence, among those itaffects; (c) create a sense of meaningfulness, ofself-worth and purpose; (d) create a sense ofintimacy, of belonging; and (e) accommodate andpromote pluralism of all sorts, from basic values toindividual and group life styles.
10. Proposal for NIE action.
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We therefore propose that the NIE undertake aprogram of systematic variation of alternativegovernance and organizational mechanisms linkingthe resources available with the educational needsof various client groupings, based on the followinghypothesis.
Hypothesis: If appropriate new designs for the
governance and organization of educational resourceswere formulated and implmented, the capacity ofcommunities and subgroups within communities toachieve a broad range of cognitive, psychological andsocial outcomes for all their members would besignificantly enhanced.
General Research and Development Program
The N1E should deliberately attempt to stimulate socialexperiments designed to test the differential effects of avariety of governance and organizational mechanisms onthe capacity of communities and community groups toachieve a broad range of cognitive, psychological andsocial outcomes for their members.
The experiments would vary in three dimensions: (a) theform of governance; (b) the nature of the client group;and (c) the scope of functions over which the groupexercises governance.
With respect to development, NIE would providefinancial support to selected communities for planning,coordination and technical assistance. Limited fundswould also be provided to augment program funds for aspecified period. In no case would NIE fund the entireoperating costs of an experiment.
Possibilities for variance along the three dimensions areoutlined below.
I. Governance
In general, we envision a community educationalagency that has jurisdiction ultimately overresource allocation for substantially all educationalfunctions of the community for people of all ages.The key functions of the agency would be toadjudicate among demands for resources fromparticular client groups; to identify, develop anddistribute resources; to link individuals and groupsin t he identification of needs, programdevelopment and organizational development. Ineach case, the client groups would control thedefinition of program and the nature of resourcesrequired to conduct the program. Thusexperimentation with governance and organizationis required at two levels: the community educationagency itself and the client groups it supports.
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A wide range of governance forms should be
considered for one or both levels, varying withrespect to degree of participation required.sanctions available, and resources controlled.Among them are:
town meetingregulatory agencyprivate foundationextension agentmulti-national corporationconsulting firmeverybody-a-teacherengineering or formal planningschool board with increased jurisdiction
communerepublic
democracyindividual voucher
family vouchercommunity voucher
2. Client groups
"Communities" generating programs should varyfrom individual families, or even individuals, tolarge metropolitan areas. Clients may be groupedby geography, work, function, age, handicaps,interests, identity, and by clusters andcross-classifications of all these. Since individualsare simultaneously members of many suchgroupings, one would not expect classifications tobe stagnant, but would expect a great deal offluidity as various programs develop.
Among the classifications of client groups thatshould be selected for participation in the programare:
metropolitan areacity
small townneighborhoodother geographic areasfamilies (extended and nuclear)
3. Functions
functional clustersracial groups
ethnic groupsage groups
The functions performed by the experimentingagencies should also be subject to patternedvariation to include experiments limited to a singlefunction (e.g., consumer education for olderpeople) to multi-functional programs involvingeducational, social, psychological and physicalcomponents for large groups.
to: P-1r t
The NIE should systematically vary different mixes offunctions, client groupings and governance mechanisms.The program should begin on a small scale in areas wherelegal and social factors are conducive to
experimentation. Each experiment, once funded, shouldpermit very broad latitude for the community to evolveits own program. A large portion of the allocated fundsshould be devoted to the independent evaluation anddocumentation of each experiment to supportreplication and improvement of the models developed.
The topics addressed below are intended not asprescriptions but as illustrations of experiments thatmight be funded. The last topic describes proposedstudies of communities in their "natural state." Thesedescriptive studies would substantially improve the basisfor educational policy decisions whether made by localcommunities involved in the proposed program or byany other body.
Topic B: Alternative Models to Link EducationalServices to Families
Governance mechanisms relating resources to familyunits provide an experimental setting which has thecapability of maximizing the principle that one shouldhave control over one's own destiny. A major concern inany experimentation with governance models on thelevel of family units should be the inherent danger thatsuch models may lead to greater, not less, fragmentation.Care must therefore be given to provide linkages withthe rest of the "community."
Examples of the forms of control which might be triedare:
Family Voucher Model
Vouchers could be redeemed by the family for anynumber or combination of educationally related services.Vouchers might be used to provide families withalternative schooling choices, as described most recentlyby Coons, et al, and Jencks. Although much discussed,the Jencks (0E0) voucher has not been implementedand the Coons "family power equalizing" model hasreceived even less attention. Both are worthy ofexperimentation. Vouchers redeemable forsupplementary educational goods and services such asbooks, tutors, music lessons, etc., might prove easier toimplement initially and should provide some insights as
69
to how implementation on a larger scale might takeplace. The alternative school voucher suffers under asevere handicap since it represents a direct and frontalassault on one of the best established of the governancemodels, the local school board. Perhaps vouchersredeemable for use in preschools and child care centerswould be less threatening and hence more politicallyattractive.
Vouchers could also be issued and made redeemablethroughout the life of the holder, thus offering optionsto the age-constrained and unbroken pattern of a periodof uninterrupted schooling followed by a period ofuninterrup ted work.
Family Assistance Agent Model
This model would be characterized by groups of familiesselecting from among a set of trained "family assistanceagents" one agent to represent them.
1. The Family Assistance Agent (FAA) would bebacked by legal and financial authority to
command response from educational and socialservice agencies charged with providing familyservice.
2. The FAA would help families diagnose areas inwhich they needed or could use help, and helpthem select kinds of help, if any, that they woulddesire.
3. The FAA would serve on a limited term contract tothat set of families. They would decide periodicallywhether to renew his contract or seek a new agent.Groups of families could also split up and regroupwith other families from time to time.
4. Family groups could be formed on any basiswhatsoever: geographic area, functional association(all worked together, all had children the same age,all were elderly, etc.), friendship, or anything else.No family could be a member of more than onegroup, but all would be a member of one.
Family Tax Credit Model
This program would encourage families to move ingenerally accepted socially desirable directions byproviding tax credits for moves in those directions.
78
Examples might be:
1. Limiting natural children to two and adoptingchildren for third or more child. Extra creditsmight be provided for adopting of minority orhandicapped childron.
2. Attaining additirmal educationany member of thefamily could receive tax credits for successfullyachieving a higher level of education. The amountof the credit might also be weighted according towhere the person began, with larger inducementsfor the least educated.
3. Time devoted to special areas of needcreditsmight be awarded for volunteer aid to hospitals, orclinics, or homes for the mentally retarded; workwith various social projects, such as litter control,recycling, or tutoring youngsters with special needs.
4. Credits to encourage women to return to the laborforce.
Topic C: Alternative Models to Link EducationalServices to Neighborhoods
One client group of educational services is theneighborhood. Simply defined, a neighborhood is agroup of people who inhabit a defined geographic areaand who see themselves as in some way separate anddistinguishable from those around them. There is
evidence that neighborhoods can be defined, even inlarge and complex cities. Some "new towns" such asReston deliberately create neighborhood units withsome governmental responsibilities. The essence of aneighborhood group is that it is self-defined.
Examples of functions which might be placed under thecontrol of the neighborhood governance mechanisminclude: neighborhood public schools; neighborhoodkindergartens; preschools or day care centers;evening/adult and unemployed/job retraining classes;educational programs presently run by service agenciessuch as the YMCA, Boy Scouts, etc.; and generalrecreation programs including parks, playgrounds,swimming pools and other recreational centers.
Examples of the forms of control which might be triedare:
Neighborhood Voucher Model
Neighborhoods would apply for vouchers which couldthen be used to purchase services to meet a variety of
70
neighborhood educational needs. A neighborhoodvoucher would differ from a typical grant in that theallocation of the resonrces would only be restrictedwithin broad, general, problem-related categories. Forexample, a neighborh iod could apply for a voucher tosolve the problem of poor nutrition among preschoolers.The voucher would only be redeemable for purposesrelating to that problem but could be used to select froma wide variety of alternative solutions, ranging perhapsfrom nutrition training for mothers to providing meals.The emphasis should be on solving a neighborhood'sself-perceived problems by any methods theneighborhood may choose and not by the imposition ofpredesignate d, bureaucratically designed programs.
The vouchers might be granted for limited time periodswith regular reporting and evaluation components togarner evidence for possible renewal and dissemination.Such a system might also generate sets of alternativeschools whenever neighborhoods could agree upon theirdesirability.
Neighborhood Elected Education Board Model
This model would be characterized by:
1. Neighborhood boards with control over all of thepublic funds which would go to their publicschools, including such categories as teachersalaries, materials, building maintenance and capitalequipment.
?.. Policy-making power appropriate to the power overfunds, including such things as the power todetermine the, nature of the school organization,staffing patterns, length of day and year, hiring andfiring, and substantive curricular offerings.
3. Funds allocated to neighborhood boards on asliding or weighted scale, giving additional fundsper pupil to neighborhoods with largeconcentrations of minority or low-income students,or deteriorating physical plant.
4. Broad guidelines and standards established by thecity-wide school board; these would begoal-oriented and functional, rather than specificand descriptive.
Neighborhood "Educational Extension Agent" Model
1. An agent assigned by the city or state to serve asthe linkage mechanism between any particularself-defined neighborhood and the educationalresources of the city and state.
2. The agent would help the neighborhood diagnoseits educational problems. He would have legal andfinancial control over, and access to, such expertsas he needed to do an adequate diagnosis of aneighborhood's problems. He would work with theneighborhood people to teach them how to makeuse of the advice of the experts.
3. The agent would have the ability to commandresources from various city and state educationalagencies with respect to finding solutions to hisneighborhood's problems: basic research people,developers, planners, demonstration events, evenphysical trips by neighborhood people to see
projects in effect elsewhere.
4. The state would back the neighborhood extensionagent with training programs, dissemination arms,legal authority, and substantial flexible funding.
Neighborhood Corporation Model
This model would be characterized by:
1. A public, nonprofit corporation in which allmembers of a neighborhood participated by virtueof their residence in the neighborhood.
An elected Board of Directors from neighborhoodpeople.
3. A hired executive staff responsible foradministering the public funds controlled by thecorporation.
4. Receipt of legal control of public funds granted tothe corporation by the city and state to run certaineducational functions for the neighborhood, whichcould include the schools, day care centers, adultand elderly training programs, and even recreationaland parks activities.
5. Responsibility for meeting such legal constraintsand conditions as cities and states may require ofsuch public nonprofit corporations.
Topic D: Alternative Models to Link EducationalServices to Metropolitan Areas
In metropolitan areas it is the linkage function which isprobably the most critical and certainly among the most
71
neglected. Paradoxically, the resources and the problemsof the metropolitan area are both unmatched by anyother local units. Within a metropolitan area one canfind scores of scholars, artists, actors and other personalresources along with museums, zoos, art galleries, sportsarenas, diverse communication resources, etc. and yetwith all that, city dwellers have the highest degree ofanomie and alienation and the lowest perceptions ofcontrol over their destiny and sense of self-fulfillment.There is every indication that many urban schoolsthroughout the United States will soon collapse. Theflight to the suburbs is taking the urban core's brightest,most highly motivated youth away from what is themost available source of valuable resources. It is ourhope that improved linkage systems like the modelsdescribed below can stem the tide of desertion andimprove education for entire metropolitan areas.
Public Foundation Model
1. A corporate board of popularly elected memberswould meet periodically to make grants foreducational activities on the basis of staffrecommendations.
2. A fixed percentage of the funds would be allocatedto neighborhood corporations, for stated terms.Neighborhood boundaries would be adjudicated bya subcommittee of the board.
3. A fixed percentage would be reserved for
applications from groups transcendingneighborhood boundaries (e.g., science enthusiastsrequiring a specialized facility, a Montessori schoolwith metropolitan enrollment, consumers desiringa metropolitan approach to environmental hazardeducation).
4. A fixed percentage would be reserved fordevelopment of foundation staff to carry outpolicy analysis, research, development, evaluationand technical assistance activities in support ofgrant programs.
Representative Town Meeting Model
1. An educational finance committee would beappointed from among the citizenry by a
committee consisting of the senior member of thejudiciary, the mayors of the componentmunicipalities and the chairmen of the legislativeunits in the component municipalities.
so
2. The citizenry would elect a board of selectmen toadminister the expenditure of educational fundsand prepare an annual metropolitan warrantcontaining articles authorizing expenditures forparticular educational purposes.
3. The board of selectmen would appoint citizens toserve without pay on various committees dealingwith particular educational matters. Citizens couldpetition for the formation of standing or ad hoccommittees on particular subjects.
4. Citizens from each neighborhood would electrepresentatives to attend the annual metro meatingto vote on the articles in the warrant. The financecommittee would present an analysis of andrecommendation about each article in writing andorally to the metro meeting members. Argumentsfor and against each article could be made on thefloor of the meeting by anyone present. Th.moderator would be elected by popular vote of themetro citizenry.
Multi-National Corporation Model
1. Vouchers would be issued to individuals annuallyfor life by the state, to he exchanged for educationprovided by commercial concerns.
2. Profit - oriented corporations would organizesubsidiaries to meet the needs of specificpopulations, each subsidiary to besemi-autonomous with respect to its own methodof operation, subject to annual review by thecorporate headquarters of profitability and certainkey "production" measures. Each subsidiary wouldbe managed as much as possible by "nationals ofthe host country."
3. Corporate headquarters would retain control overinvestment, management recruiting anddevelopment, and research and development. Itwould merchandise to its subsidiaries certainservices, like cable communications, that theycould use in common.
4. The state would establish a division of its consumerprotection agency to protect its citizens againstshady corporate practices.
72
Topic E: Longitudinal Studies of Communities intheir "Natural" State
Hypothesis: If community policy makers at all levels hadbetter information concerning differential impacts of abroad set of variables on the full range of desirededucational outcomes for community members.significant improvements could be made in the design ofcommunity education programs.
Background
1. Though the Coleman report cast into doubt muchthat was thought to be known about causes ofvariance in outcomes of schooling, it contributednothing definitive to new knowledge on the subject(e.g., what are the specific educational influences oftelevision on which population groups, in whichsettings?)
2. Outcomes of schooling are frequently confusedwith outcomes of education. Little is known aboutthe degree of positive correlation betweenattainment of schooling objectives and the abilityto lead a satisfactory life in all the dimensionsconsidered important.
3. Relatively little consideration has been given to theinteraction between variables causing differingeducational outcomes for individuals and variablescausing differing educational outcomes for groups,institutions and communities (e.g., healthy schools,healthy churches, healthy political institutions,etc.).
4. Little if any work has been done to developconceptual models describing factors causingvariance in the educational health of entirecommunities or other social units. One particularlyimportant set of variables about which we knowlittle, for example, is the set associated with a senseof belonging to, or membership in, a community.Another is the set that contributes to individualand group sense of purpose and influence overothers (e.g., how does the formal and informalpattern of governance of a community and otheraspects of its "hidden curriculum" affect theindividual's sense of membership in the communityand his sense of self-worth?)
81
5. Significant work has been done in the delineationof stages of individual growth and developmentwith respect to moral, cognitive and social areas.But almost nothing is known about the influence ofparticular community settings on individual growthand development.
6. In general, communities have not been perceived orstudied as complex educating mechanisms havingeducational influence over all the members andinstitutions within their sphere. Curiously,communities have been studied as delivery systemsfor the provision of physical and mental healthservices, as economic systems, etc. Until suchstudies are performed from the perspective ofeducation, educational policy will be made on thebasis of wholly inadequate assumptions about whatdoes and what does not affect educationaloutcomes under particular circumstances, and why.
Possible Research Activities
1. Search the literature on human development, withparticular attention to assertions about mechanismscontributing to maximization of development, togenerate hypotheses concerning humandevelopment in particular community settings thatmight be tested in descriptive studies.
2. Search the general sociological literature and theliterature on mental health and organizationaldevelopment to generate hypotheses concerning thetherapeutic educational effects of differentinstitutional settings that might be tested indescriptive studies.
3. Conduct long-term (15 to 20 year) longitudinalstudies in 10 to 15 communities to determine thefactors contributing to variance in the attainment
of a broad range of educational variables for allsegments of the community population.
Communities should be selected so as to representdifferent geographic localities, population densities,economic characteristics, etc. Communities,subcommunities, population groups andinstitutions should be selected for intensive studythat should vary widely with respect to theirsuccess as educating entities in order to isolatefactors which account for variance. (What makesone ethnic group, church, school, family or socialclass more successful as "educator" than another ina particular community setting or in general?)
Studies should be conducted in two stages. In thefirst stage, perhaps two years, conduct retrospectivecase studies of individuals particularly successful inidentified goal dimensions and trace through depthinterviews the forces that appear to havecontributed the most to the specified outcomes.Using first stage studies to provide clues as tosources of variance, the second stage studies wouldconsist of the large-scale studies outlined above, inwhich different groups of different ages would betracked through a 15- to 20-year period todetermine sources of educational variance.Outcomes to be studied might include suchdimensions as sense of self-worth, sense ofaccomplishment, sense of personal efficacy, senseof membership in a human community, economicachievement, sense of purpose, etc.
Possible Development Activities
As a part of research studies outlined above, developinstruments and methodologies that would permit anycommunity to study its own educational processes andto make decisions based on such studies.
IV. SUMMARY OF BUDGET AND MANAGEMENT SUGGESTIONS
FISCAL 1973
The NIE interim structure described in a
supplementary document proposed three mainsubstantive operating units: a Bureau of R&D Resources,
a Bureau of Educational Systems, and a Bureau ofDirected Programs. For each Bureau the placement ofprograms, budget allocation, management style and
personnel requirements should reflect program purposesand characteristics. Therefore, this section of the reportprovides suggestions concerning the way programcharacteristics should be reflected in organizationalplan ning.
A. Bureau of R&D Resources
1. Programs
Programs suggested for this office are unsolicitedbasic and applied research, directed intramural research,researcher training, and management of developinginstitutions.
2. Budget
The budget suggested for this Bureau in fiscal 1973is approximately $20.5 million. This figure, whichincludes personnel costs, is about 17% of the total NIEbudget. The budgets suggested for the Bureau'scomponent programs are S12,000,000 for basic andapplied research, $5,000,000 for researcher training(including a small grants program) and $2,000,000 fordeveloping institutions.
Allowable support for intramural research is
$3,000,000, with $2,000,000 of that drawn from thebasic and applied research area for internally directedresearch programs, and $1,000,000 from ResearcherTraining for an internal apprenticeship program. Becausethe Institute is in its first year, the availability of peoplefor intramural programs and the speed with which theprograms can be initiated is unknown. Therefore, theS3,000,000 allocation for this function is suggested as anupper limit only, allowing funds to be spent eitherintramurally or extramurally.
During fiscal 1972, about 65% of all funds for basicand applied research were spent in the learner goal area,with about 50% going to the cognitive development goal.About 5% went to research in the enabling goals, andabout 30% to research in system goals. A change inbalance is recommended for 1973, with 55% going tolearner goals, 15% to enabling goals, and 30% to systemgoals. Within learner goals, the allocation of research oncognitive development should be reduced to 35% infavor of a higher budget (15%) in the social-emotionalgoal area.
74
3. Management Style
The Office of R&D resources generally will call fora supportive mode of program management. Thisrequires that adequate publicity be given to the areas inwhich the agency plans to support research or researchertraining. The primary emphasis will be in enticingfirst-rate scientists and bright young scholars from awide range of discipline:; to get involved in research oneducation-related topics. The participants and clients ofthis office include university researchers from a widerange of academic disciplines, e.g., anthropologists,sociologists, psychologists, historians, etc. The primaryprogram management activities generally center aroundthe decisions of which applicants to support, whetherthe grantee has fulfilled his agreement, and how theproject results should be disseminated. The contractor,because he is the expert in this area, needs littlemonitoring.
4. Personnel Requirements
The number of people that manpg: contractsshould build up gradually, beginning with pt)ple for theongoing projects and adding staff as new projects areundertaken. One scheme for estimating neededmanagement staff by salary levels is found in Table 5.This suggestion provides for slightly higher staff levelsthan USOE has in its R&D program, and accounts fordifferences in staffing due to size of contract. That is,the larger the contract, the smaller the proportion ofprogram funds needed for management. Obviously, sucha scheme must be experimental, but it would provide amore rational basis for allocating personnel than is
currently used.
Staff for the unsolicited basic research programshould not only have management skills, but substantiveexperience in the mix of disciplines represented by eachof the goal areas. These people will be able to maintainprofessional contacts with researchers in the field, tojudge quality of work, and, when called upon, to serve astemporary staff in the problem-solving areas.
The intramural research should be carried out bysmall teams of people assigned to specific projects. Thesize of the internal research group should be flexible, buta reasonable average for 1973 might be four seniorresearchers, four associates (about a new Ph.D. level), sixassistants, and three secretaries. With three such internalresearch groups, N1E would need 51 intramuralresearchers in the Bureau of R&D Resources.
Table 5
Unsolicited Research Contract Management
Staff Required by Level*Personnel Costsof Management
Contract Size and Number of Months (including overhead)
I II III IV
Below $100,000 0 1 2 1 $6,000
$101,000-300,000 0 2 2 1 8,500
$301,000. 650,000 2 2 4 3 20,500
$651,000. 1,000,000 4 4 6 6 38,500
Over $1,000,000 8 8 12 12 77,000
Examples of percent management costs by sample contract sizes are as follows:
$ 50,000 12%
200,000 4%
475,000 4%
775,000 4%
2,000,000 3%
*Mean salaries suggested for staff levels are:
I $30,000
II 20,000
III 10,000
IV 8,000(includes secretaries)
B. Bureau of Educational Systems
1. Programs
Programs suggested for this Bureau are
Experimental Schools and the four specialty areas ofInstructional Personnel, Curricular Programs,Organizational Change, and Planning, Management andEvaluation. Though most work in the Specialty Areas isdone by Regional Laboratories and Centers, this is notthe only source of support for those organizationswithin the 1973 R&D agenda.
2. Budget
The suggested fiscal 1973 budget is $54 million orabout 45% of the total NIE program budget. $30 millionof this amount, double that of fiscal 1972, is providedfor Experimental Schools, with $21 million for the fourspecialty areas of Instructional Personnel, CurricularPrograms, Organizational Change, and Planning,Management and Evaluation. The remainder of the $54million goes to personnel costs; the allowable intramuralresearch funds to be taken from program funds is
$1,000,000. The major budget change since fiscal 1972is a doubling of the Experimental Schools budget. Levelfunding or small decreases are proposed for the specialtyareas.
3. Management Style
Programs in this Bureau will be characterized byprocedures that encourage planning and implementationof improvements by school systems, State departments,and other education agencies. The activities will oftenresult from the initiative of the client, but willoccasionally be a result of NIE initiative. Clients willinclude developers and school agencies that adopt R&Dresults. Relationships with school systems will normallybe through a nondemanding contract and of a
supportive nature. Use of other organizations, such asevaluation contractors in the experimental schoolsprogram, may be through more demanding contractualinstruments.
Proposals for developing improved practices thatschools might later adopt would come from the R&Dcommunity: Regional Laboratories, R&D Centers,School System Researchers, Universities, etc. Theirprominent activity would be development, evaluation,and demonstration, supported by contracts awarded forunsolicited proposals. Evaluation of proposals would be
76
accomplished by review panels of consultants.
4. Personnel Requirements
The requirements for personnel in proportion toprogram funds in the Bureau of Educational Systems isslightly higher than that of the Bureau of R&DResources. This is primarily because contracts issuedfrom this office involve development, which requirescloser monitoring and more emphasis on implementationor dissemination than the research contracts located inthe Bureau of R&D Resources. Figure 10 provides ascheme for estimating the number of people needed forprogram management that is similar to the one presentedearlier, but reflects the higher costs associated withmanagement of development.
For the specialty area programs, personnel shouldhave both management skills and substantive expertise inthe areas of contracting. That is, instructional productdevelopers will be needed in the curricular program area,computer systems specialists should be available in themanagement area, etc. For many programs of thisBureau, staff should be professionals drawn fromoperating school agencies. Some of these staff membersmay be temporary people who come into NIE from thefield for a year or so to manage specific projects andhelp keep the continuing staff current and the R&Dprojects relevant.
C. Bureau of Directed Programs
1. Programs
All of the suggested activities within the Bureau ofDirected Programs are comprehensive problem-solvingefforts. The current Career Education Program and thefour suggested new programs, Home-Based EarlyEducation, Learner-Controlled Education, UnbundlingHigher Education, and Community Education Agencies,are included in the office. It is also recommended thatsome of the early childhood efforts from the NationalProgram for Early Childhood Education and from five ofthe Regional Laboratories be considered for placementin the Home-Based Early Education Program and someactivities from the Wisconsin and Pittsburgh R&DCenters and the Research for Better Schools Laboratorybe placed within the LearnerControlled EducationProgram. These efforts might provide some base for thenew programs, be shaped to fit the program area, or, asthey are completed, provide resources to do work of thenew program area.
85
Table 6
Unsolicited Development Contract Management
Personnel CostsStaff Required by Level of Management
Contract Size and Number of Months (including overhead)
I II III IV
Below $100,000 0 1 2 1 $6,000
$101,000-300,000 1 2 2 1 12,250ti
i.
$301,000-650,000 3 5 5 6 36,000
$651,000-1,000,000 6 9 9 9 62,250
Over 1,000,000 9 9 12 12 83,250
Examples of percent management costs by sample contract sizes are as follows:
$ 50,000 12%
150,000 8%
475,000 7%
800,000 7%
2,000,000 4%
. 8677
2. Budget definitive schedules, management plans, and the like willnormally be expected of performing organizations.
This office has a total proposed budget of $45.5million or about 38% of the 1973 program budget. Abreakdown of that figure includes:
Career Education
Home-Based Early EducationContinuing ActivitiesNew Design and Development
Learner Controlled EducationContinuing ActivitiesNew Design and Development
Unbundling Higher EducationNew Activities
Community Education AgenciesNew Activities
$25,000,000
4,000,0001,500,000
5,000,0002,000,000
2,500,000
2,500,000
The allowable intramural budget in this area is $3.5million. That figure is high, to provide for new programdesign and initiation of development within theInstitute. Again, this figure is a top limit rather than aspecific allocation, and, depending on the Bureau'sneeds, the money can be spent intramurally orextramurally.
3. Management Style
Programs in this Bureau are generally characterizedby NIE initiative, planning, and direction. The Bureauwill, for example, be responsible for the implementationof the research, development, and disseminationactivities started by the Planning Unit. The general modeof program management within this division may becharacterized by such words as positive, directed, andintrusive. Close monitoring, thorough managementreview, and familiarity with the contractor operation,management, and personnel will be more common thannot. Program monitors will make frequent trips tocontractor facilities. Specific performance criteria,
78
4. Personnel Requirements
The requirements for personnel in proportion toprogram funds are higher for the Bureau of DirectedPrograms than for the other two Bureaus. This is becausethe work is either initiated internally, or is performedthrough solicited R&D contracts which require heaviermonitoring than unsolicited efforts. A scheme forestimating management personnel needs,similar to thosepresented for the other Bureaus, is shown in Tables 7and 8.
The participants and clientele served by this Office(lawyers, economists, management scientists, large R&Dagencies, government planners, etc.) are likely to have astrong analytic and action orientation. The internal staffwill serve on problem-oriented task forces that have thecapability to carry out the research, development, anddissemination that is needed. The task force will consistof a team of senior and junior professionals who havebeen transferred from the Office of Problem Analysisand Program Planning, augmented by additionalpersonnel.
The most effective size of task forces is unknownand probably should be subject to NIE experimentationduring 1973. Initial experience in the Planning Unit hasshown that effective size varies from task to task, andsomewhat with the personalities involved in the taskforces. For 1973 estimates, a reasonable average size toinitiate programs might be two senior researchers, twoassociates (about a new Ph.D. level), two or threeresearch assistants, three secretaries, and the equivalentof one year of senior researcher consultant time. To havea task force of this size for each of the four newprograms would require forty-four staff members. Inaddition, the on-going Career Education Task Forcecould profit from having a staff of twenty-five now, andstaff needs in other efforts will also grow as design anddevelopment progresses.
Table 7
Solicited Research Contract Management
Staff Required by LevelPersonnel Costsof Management
Contract Size and Number of Months (including overhead)
I H III IV
Below $100,000 0 2 2 2 $9,500
$101,000-300,000 1 3 3 3 18,000
$301,000-650,000 3 5 5 6 36,000
$651,000-1,000,000 5 8 8 12 60,750
Over 1,000,000 12 12 24 24 129,000
Examples of percent management cost by sample contract sizes are as follows:
$ 50,000 19%
150,000 8%
475,000 7%
775,000 7%
2,000,000 6%
Table 8
Solicited Development Contract Management
Staff Required by LevelPersonnel Costof Management
Contract Size and Number of Months (including overhead)
I H III IV
Below $100,000 1 4 4 3 $21,750
$101,000-300,000 3 5 5. 5 35,000
$301,000-650,000 5 8 10 7 62,000
$651,000-1,000,000 12 12 12 12 102,000
Over 1,000,000 18 12 18 18 138,000
Examples of percent management cost by sample contract sizes are as follows:
$ 50,000 43%
150,000 17%
475,000 13%
775,000 13%
2,000,000 6%
80 . 89
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