The Urban Review

, Volume 27, Issue 3, pp 251–261 | Cite as

The limited value of planning in education: Getting back to the basics isn't all about curriculum

  • Robert P. Engvall
Article
  • 34 Downloads

Abstract

In these times of tight budgets and political intoleance for taxation, public schools, particularly urban public schools, will continually have to look for ways in which to spend less while dealing with ever-increasing societal problems. While the ability of schools to improve the overal “product” with less resources is highly suspect, this article addresses one way in which spending less might actually improve school perfomance.

The best planners in the best schools should be the administration, techers, students, parents, and the comminitu at large, and not outside esxperts hired to improve a school's “comprehensive” or “strategic” plan. By forcing the segments of the public that have the largest stake in the educational outcomes of schools to work together to plan for the future, schools will improve the efficacy of their staffs, their students, and allow parents the self-satisfaction of playing an important role in their children's education. An improtant side effect of such a method may be an increasing awareness by the public of the difficulties that schools face, and perhaps a better understanding of the important need for higher expenditures.

Keywords

Public School High Expenditure Educational Outcome Good School Societal Problem 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Human Sciences Press, Inc. 1995

Authors and Affiliations

  • Robert P. Engvall
    • 1
  1. 1.University of IowaIowaUSA

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