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To carry out this basic strategy, New York's new superintendent aims to use all the new tools of suburbia's academic reform. He welcomes the school curriculum ideas now coming out of universities. To free the bright and the dull from lock-step schooling, he wants all the new liberating procedures—non-graded classes, programmed learning, team teaching, flexible walls for flexible grouping. But no one man can decree this next Monday in New York's monolithic system, nor does Gross intend to. He has other methods.
One of his principles is that the top boss of a vast organization, be it New York schools, G.M. or the U.S. Army, can deal effectively with only about five subexecutives. Another is that dictatorship by the boss is ineffectual; shrilling orders only freezes minds and breeds bureaucracy. Instead, a leader should spur incentive and competition among hundreds of groups and individuals.
Small-Town Spirit. Ideally, perhaps, Livingston Street should be all but abolished, its garrison troops sent off to the trenches. That day is far distant. But going for Gross meanwhile is a happy heritage of the 1961 school scandal.
To put the people closer to the schools, the new board of education revived the spirit of decentralization. It appointed 25 local school boards to work with the city's 25 field superintendents, and they have generally proved to be composed of citizens avid to upgrade local schools. These boards are being consulted on such vital matters as building and integration, and Gross sees a chance to produce "something that makes sense—a small-town atmosphere that is totally unknown in big-city school systems."
Almost certainly the local boards will play a role in one of Gross's pet plans. Using foundation "startup money," he hopes to flood a few districts (notably in slum areas) with all the new academic reforms, thus attracting more money and setting new standards for all districts to match. This is an end run around Livingston Street's all-or-nothing inertia. "Systemwide reform brings in too much brass," says Gross. "It kills the teachers' spirit. We ought to let a few areas get out ahead, and then ask if the rest of the folks can catch up. What we need is real community participation and intramural competition."
l-Can-Do-lt. Everything Gross plans is aimed at giving teachers real freedom to use their abilities, "to try out a new idea, to make an original plan, to deviate for the sake of an individual pupil from a citywide norm or a prescribed routine. I want to see the shots being called as far down the line as possible." Nothing appalls Gross more than the bureaucratic arrogance that feeds what he calls the system's "I-can't-do-it neurosis." He abhors time clocks and lesson plans as "abominations" and says that "no one should have to stand around waiting for a civil answer—or be forced to shout to get one."