“Learning and Instruction, A Chicago Inner City Schools Position Paper” presented in June of 1968 to the Chicago Board of Education, was produced by the planning staff in Chicago made up of Dr. Donald, William Farquhar, Lee Shulman, and the Chicago and Michigan State universities in collaboration. One reference used was “Soviet Preschool Education” translated by Henry Chauncey (Educational Testing Service, Princeton, N.J.) This position paper laid out the plan to restructure Chicago’s inner city schools from a traditional grading plan to an ungraded plan using Skinnerian mastery learning and continuous progress/individual education plans. Education Week carried an article in its March 6, 1985, edition entitled “Half of Chicago Students Drop Out, Study Finds: Problem Called Enormous Human Tragedy” (subscription required).
The program was one of the first experiments with mastery learning, later referred to as Outcomes- Based Education and in the 90’s and early part of the Twenty-first Century, referred to as Direct Instruction. The paper also called for extensive community involvement and emphasis on changing the values of teachers, students, and the community as a whole. This project was the most important pilot project for the restructured educational system presently being implemented in the United States and worldwide today, and is a perfect example of the use of the minority community in educational research which would in 2008 affect all teachers, students and schools in the nation. The new system satisfies the needs of the business community worldwide since it is performance based.
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