Ed School Will Plan Roxbury Courses

The Boston School Department has agreed to let a team from the Graduate School of Education help plan and teach experimental courses for two Roxbury schools this fall.

Most of the planning will take place during a month-long summer program for 300 Roxbury students, to be taught by 20 Faculty members and students from the Ed School and 30 Boston teachers. It will be the first time that a large group of Boston teachers and Ed School researchers have designed a school curriculum together.

The Ed School's Center for Research and Development will allot $40,000-$50,000 for the salaries of the Harvard researchers through the school year, Roston's share in the program is being financed by a federal grant.

The aim of the program, on which the Boston School Department has been working for more than a year, is to turn Roxbury's Boardman Elementary School and Lewis Junior High into a "model sub-system"--a testing ground for new ideas. The Boardman School was deliberately included by the Department, most observers feel, because it is one of the schools most criticized by parents' groups in Roxbury.

The Ed School, volunteered to help design the program late last year. The summer session will be watched closely at the School to see whether "we can put the Bostons and the Harvards together," George Thomas, associate in Education, and director of the program, said yesterday.

Last year's Harvard-Boston Summer Program, in which $30 Boston children took part, was drafted almost entirely at the Ed School. Thomas pointed out that "Both groups are new at getting together, and maybe a little reluctant."

Most of the classes during the summer will be taught by small teams of teachers from Harvard and Boston, who are now meeting to plan their courses. During the year, most of the teaching at Boardman and Lewis will be done by the Boston group. But there will be several Harvard consultants and, possibly, graduate students from the Ed School to serve as teaching assistants.

Thomas also hopes to interest several research groups at the Ed School in using the Boardman and Lewis Schools for their projects.

If the program is a success, the Ed School may hold an institute in Urban Education in the summer of 1997 for a large group of teachers and educators to discuss what is learned from the project.