Putting Ideas to Work

Fresh ideas abound for U.S. schools, but spreading them is something else again. According to a Columbia University study, it takes something like 15 years for a new teaching concept to reach 3% of the nation's schools, 50 years for it to reach all of them. Last week a small group of researchers calling itself the Educational Research Council of Greater Cleveland was doing its best to hurry the process for suburban schools around the city.

Launched a year ago by George H. Baird, former research head of the Shaker Heights schools, the council is a nonprofit corporation of experts, who recommend improvements and charge the schools a modest fee to put ideas to work. "The nation has 603 organizations doing educational research," says Director Baird. "We are the only one set up specifically to make research available in the classroom."

Triangles & TV. The council's first job is to revamp math teaching for 100,000 youngsters from first through eighth grade. The basic idea is to make math fascinating instead of a drudgery. First-graders use Tinkertoy-type men with wooden "fingers" to play variations on a theme of ten. Mental arithmetic encourages fast shortcutting. Algebra's inscrutable x's and y's become inviting squares and triangles that cry to be filled in.

To get the system across to teachers, the council persuaded commercial station KYW-TV to take Dave Garroway off the air for half an hour one morning a week and let Math Professor Bernard Gundlach lecture to 2,000 teachers. KYW's Garroway fans howled (phoned one irate viewer: "What's that clown doing on the air?"), but the teachers think it is great. An hour before the kids arrive, teachers gather around school TV sets as Gundlach demonstrates the new approach to math. By lunchtime, many have put the ideas into practice.

Taxes and Promotions. Baird started the council with $100,000 from Cleveland businessmen, hoped seven school systems would join. By last week he had signed up 21 (including private and parochial schools), who pay $6,000 apiece for expert help. The council plans to get to work soon on science and English curriculums. The 23-man staff will also tackle any other problem that concerns the schools. The experts analyze bond issues and tax rates, even plan new schools. Suburban Berea originally planned to build a new high school in 1965, but the council's researchers proved that Berea, with its growing population, would need the school two years ahead of schedule. This month Berea voted $2,900,000 to start construction next spring. Says Council Director Baird: at a time when many educators call for a massive infusion of Government research money in schools, "this organization shows that local initiative can produce the kind of education the nation needs."

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