Word: sizer
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Jumping on the Dean and the Faculty for these failures, however, is not quite fair. Sizer is aware of the lack of coordination in the reform movement but feels it's unavoidable. "You don't change universities from the top," says Sizer. "The head is -- to mix a metaphor -- a sort of catalytic traffic cop, giving the nod to some things, stopping others. It's always sloppy and irregular movement on a lot of fronts." Also, for all their shouting last spring, MAT's have been less than hungry for opportunities to work in the field and intern...
Equally important, financial problems have forced Sizer to choose between research projects and programs for training urban teachers. The Ed School has one of the lowest endowments in the University (less than two percent of the University's total), dependent on grants for two thirds of its funds. It runs a perpetual deficit, compounded in the past few years by an expensive project to construct a new library...
...only way to fill the curricular gap in teacher training, of course, is to hire more faculty. Sizer could throw out established or incipient research projects to raise the funds and hire faculty but he refuses. "There have been very few schools," says Sizer, "that have been able to stay with basic inquiry. The one's that don't, become trade schools. We can't keep putting band-aids on urban schools. We've got to have some long-range solutions." To get at the problem of training teachers Sizer has applied for a federal grant to fund two clinical...
...FACULTY intransigeance on grading is not what it seems. Two years ago, with Sizer's backing, the Faculty voted a laissez-faire policy on grading -- professors are completely free to decide whether or not they want to give finals or grades. Now, over half the Ed School's courses are ungraded, and the number increases yearly...
...Sizer apparently expects change in urban curriculum to follow the example of grading policy -- a slow and persistent evolution. Whether his policy works will depend to a large degree on the students and faculty who are supposedly pushing for change...