<![CDATA[
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" vlink="#CC0000" alink="#CC0000"><center><hr width="350" size="1" align="center" noshade>An important documentary about innovation, principals, teachers, parents, and pupils<hr width="350" size="1" align="center" noshade><p><a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/ChicagoBook.aspx?ISBN=9780877220978&&PRESS=temple" target="_top">Buy this book!</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">View Cart</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">Check Out</a></p><p><img src="51_reg.gif" height=200 border=1 vspace=4></p></center><!--none//--><h1>Tales Out of School</h1>
<H2>Implementing Organizational Change in the Elementary Grades</H2>
<h3>Leila Sussmann</h3>
<P>cloth 0-87722-097-2 $27.95, May 77, <FONT COLOR=#990033>Out of Print</FONT>
<BR> 266 pp
</P><P>The author, who was the editor of <I>Sociology of Education</I>, spent a substantial period of time as a participant-observer in three public elementary schools. In this book she shows us successes and failures in innovation, strong and weak principals, skilled and not-so-skilled teachers, powerful and powerless parents, achieving and non-achieving pupils. The result is an important documentary for sociologists of education and those who study organizational change, educational administrators, teachers, and indeed everyone concerned with the dynamics of education.</P>
<P>The schools had very different kinds of pupils and parents. The first was a ghetto school, 80 percent black youngsters from the surrounding neighborhood and 20 percent white pupils who had agreed to be bused in. The second was an ethnically integrated urban school serving a district of white upper-middle-class students as well as students from low-income Black and Hispanic families. The third was an upper-middle-class white school in a suburban neighborhood. In spite of these differences, the schools had one common characteristic—each was innovative.</P>
<P>Comparing these schools led the author to several important generalizations. One of the more interesting suggests that several innovations which are superficially different had the same thrust in terms of changing the social organization of the classroom. Professor Sussmann postulates that this new, innovative classroom cannot survive at the upper grade levels because it presupposes abandonment of the selection function—the sorting of "able" students who will be successful in school from those who will be mediocre of or fail. However, our society requires that the school system perform this selection function, though it need no longer do so in the primary grades.</P>
<P>The book also includes observations on subjects such as the prevalence of change in our school system, the relative importance of various staff levels in the innovation process, the importance of a realistic assessment of resources and the costs when innovating, and the impact of individualized instruction on the curriculum. </P>
<P>Professor Sussmann has assessed these schools' innovations with candor, and she reports her findings in a style that is free from jargon. Her work will add greatly to our understanding of how schools operate and how they can be improved.</P>
<BR> <h2>Contents</h2><P>
<p>Acknowledgements
<BR>Introduction
<p><B>Part I: The James Weldon Johnson: A Ghetto School</B>
<BR>1. A History of Innovativeness
<BR>2. Johnson under a Militant Black Principal
<br>3. Innovation in 1972-1973
<BR>4. Teaming for Individualized Instruction
<BR>5. Goal-Defeating Behavior
<p><B>Part II: Southside: A School in a Complex Environment</B>
<BR>6. The Institutional Setting
<BR>7. The District's Innovation: Individualized Reading
<BR>8. Walton University's Innovation: Open Classroom Teaming
<BR>9. Open Classrooms: Variability in Implementation
<BR>10. Innovation in a Complex Environment
<p><B>Part III: Coolidge: An Upper Middle-Class White Suburban School</B>
<BR>11. Professional Teachers, Powerful Parents, and Misbehaving Pupils
<BR>12. Innovation at Coolidge: Open Classrooms
<BR>13: The Conflict over Open Classrooms
<p><B>Part IV: Conclusion</B>
<BR>14. Implementing Organizational Innovations
<BR>15. The Social Organization of Innovative versus Traditional Classrooms
<BR>Appendix: Research Methods
<BR>Notes
<BR>Index
</P><BR> <H2>About the Author(s)</H2>
<P><B>Leila Sussmann</B> is a professor of sociology at Tufts University. She has written three other monographs. Her other publications on education include <I>Innovation in Education—The United States</I> and "The Roles of the Teacher in Selected Innovative Schools in the United States.</P>
<BR><H2>Subject Categories</H2>
<p><A HREF="/tempress/education.html" TARGET="_top">Education</a>
</p>
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