Word: gardners
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What is needed, as Gardner sees it, is the development of an entirely new series of relationships in the name of "creative federalism." Already, he says, "the Federal Government has established a wide array of partnerships-not just with state governments, but also with local governments, with universities and hospitals, with voluntary agencies and professional associations, and with the whole of the business world." Under Medicare, an extraordinary partnership has been forged involving 6,750 hospitals, 2,500 nursing homes, 250,000 physicians, 107 Blue Cross and Blue Shield programs, 26 private insurance carriers, all 50 state health agencies...
...Gardner, the great weakness in the complex, interlocking chain is the fact that "most state and local governments do not have the vitality and competence to play their role in an effective partnership with the Federal Government." In all 50 states, no more than a handful of education commissioners are regarded as good administrators; nearly half are elected politicians. For men of superior talents, the glamour is in Washington, not in Albany or Austin; the money is in business, not in a city council or a zoning commission...
National Preoccupation. Within his own department, Gardner is experimenting with a spate of solutions to what he calls the "crises of organization" that afflict practically every domestic U.S. program. "Most organizations have a structure that was designed to solve problems that no longer exist," says Gardner, and he has been tinkering with HEW's machinery ever since he arrived...
...been greatly assisted by the topflight men who work for him. "There are a lot of top executives who can't tolerate first-class men around them," he once wrote. "They separate the men from the boys, and hire the boys." By a stroke of luck, Gardner had 14 top-level positions in HEW to fill when he took over. Lyndon Johnson gave him a free hand in filling them ("Forget about any political considerations"), and Gardner picked men for the jobs...
...Commissioner of Education, he named former Scarsdale Schools Superintendent Harold Howe II, 48, a skillful administrator whose choice reflects Gardner's lifelong crusade for better education. The ultimate purpose of education can move this ascetic, unflappable man to evangelistic fervor. "The idea of individual fulfillment within a framework of moral purpose," he says, "must become our deepest concern, our national preoccupation, our passion, our obsession." What rankles him is the fact that so few educators seem to share his concern. Only a fraction of 1% of all the billions spent on education goes to research. In many American schools...