Word: shedd
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...transfer aids desegregation. More significant, ATE seeks integration by creating magnet schools that offer advanced programs to qualified students who live anywhere in the city, and by setting up more than 100 part-time career counseling, cultural and remedial programs. These include natural science courses at the lakefront Shedd Aquarium and courses in hotel management offered at two downtown Holiday Inns...
Soon after his appointment, Shedd began to decentralize the large (285,000 students) and cumbersome system by giving principals greater autonomy. At the same time, he streamlined administrative procedures. In the wake of the 1967 protests, Shedd installed one of the nation's first large-scale black studies programs, including courses in Swahili. Shedd's best-known project was developing the Parkway "school without walls" (TIME, March 23, 1970), which tried to combat student restlessness by holding classes throughout the city, in museums, factories and even in Rizzo's police academy. Morale in the system rose...
Alienating Whites. Philadelphia, meanwhile, was inexorably generating the kind of pressures that have cut the average tenure of big city school superintendents to three years during the past half decade. The foundation grants and federal aid that Shedd had obtained to launch his lively ideas were cut back by the recession. In addition, his reforms provoked opposition from the entrenched school bureaucracy, which did not take to Shedd's often aloof and highhanded manner. Although his new programs were not designed exclusively for the long-neglected problems of black students, few of the innovations percolated into the classrooms...
...Shedd offended conservatives and veterans' groups by granting student demands for draft-counseling services. Many parents blamed violence in the schools on his policies: he gave students a "bill of rights," granting them a voice in curriculum and disciplinary procedures. He also authorized them to invite black militants as guest speakers. Last week Shedd admitted to TIME Correspondent Roger Williams that "perhaps I was too idealistic" and allowed that "dealing with the alienation of the black community has had the effect of somewhat alienating the whites...
...Some of Shedd's reforms will survive, but the board has made it clear that his successor will come from among the system's regulars. The odds-on favorite is Matthew Costanzo, an associate superintendent known as a sound administrator who is somewhat less permissive toward students than was Mark Shedd...