Facility planning and curriculum design, key ingredients of effective schooling, should complement one another. The open-classroom concept failed because of poor coordination between facility design and instructional practice. Aesthetic qualities of learning environments express certain values and affect teacher energy and student creativity.…

Catalogues past experience in haphazard curriculum planning and offers suggestions for ensuring that curriculum design occurs through logical, orderly, and comprehensive planning. (Author/WD)

Despite the lean times on which the study of traditional and contemporary literature has fallen, it not only will survive but at some future date it will again flourish. (Author/JM)

To overcome the fragmentation of secondary school curricula, the authors argue for a core curriculum of cluster courses, allowing students to acquire required skills and pattern their options. They suggest clusters in languages, business, histroy, art, home economics, and industrial education, alternating through four years of the curriculum. (JW)

Based on empirical evidence that nearly all students can learn most of what they are taught, mastery learning is recommended as a teaching strategy with the goal of maximum development of student learning potential. The implementation of mastery learning at one junior high is analyzed. (MLJ)

Based on the assumption that self-esteem is essential to student success, this article describes a program, called Quest, that attempts to build self-esteem. Several examples are given of the program's impact in secondary schools across the nation. (WD)

School districts need a comprehensive, long-range blueprint for their total operation. The goal-competency-objective hierarchy allows them to become systematic in design and operation. (Author)

Broken Arrow Public Schools (Oklahoma) planned and implemented a successful computer education program for students at elementary, middle, and high school levels within a modest budget. After resolving four basic questions concerning goals, integration, responsibility, and implementation, the district developed overlapping programs in computer…

A Goals 2000 grant enabled Rutland Northeast (Vermont) Supervisory District to conduct a year-long unit-design project for K-12 teachers and university interns. Participants reported a sharpened focus for classroom activity, with purpose clearly defined by authentic tasks and rubrics. Freeing time for unit development represents a cost recoverable…

The Massachusetts World Languages Curriculum establishes language proficiency as a priority. Cost has prevented some districts from incorporating world language programs at the middle level. Staff at Wachusett Regional School District decided to expose all their middle-level students to four different languages (French, Spanish, German, and…

How can high schools counteract deterrents to achievement that disadvantaged students face? "Project P-BLISS: Problem-Based Learning in the Social Sciences" presents "hidden" disadvantaged gifted students with a curriculum that first captures their interest and challenges them to realize their true potential. (MLH)

Curriculum organization, particularly in the secondary school, should provide for continuity, sequence, and integration of knowledge. There are five basic schemes of organization discussed in this article. (Author/WD)

Describes Mathematics in Context, a middle-level mathematics curriculum developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. Instead of proceeding from a generalization to specific examples, the math originates in real problems; conversely, the mathematics learned is used to solve…

An Indianapolis magnet middle school is successfully using mental models and multiple intelligences theory to guide collaborative professional development and equitable education. A curriculum originally developed for gifted and talented students is now accessible to all students. The program draws upon students' individual strengths across all…

Using several charts, this article compares strengths and weaknesses of Japanese junior high schools and American middle schools. Each system could learn something from the other. As an adaptive, reactive culture, Japan might benefit from a more flexible, diversified school atmosphere, while an individualistic, pluralistic United States might gain…