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This report describes the development of an organic curriculum in the public schools of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Superintendents of 13 school districts met with members of the U. S. Office of Education in May 1967 to establish the initial network of the curriculum overhaul program entitled Educational Systems for the Seventies (ES'70). This report covers a) the objectives as initially defined including a redefinition of educational goals and an overhaul of the educational process, b) the identification of the adjustments to the initial structure and redefinition of goals undertaken through the coordinator's organization, c) the functions and requirements of the coordinator, d) major activities and accomplishments of the program, and e) the dissemination activities. The conclusion suggests that this type of consortium has a greater impact upon education, especially in the area of staff improvement and dissemination activities, than do research and evaluation by institutions of higher education. Appendixes include learning packages and other documentary evidence to support the text. (Related documents SP 005 658 and SP 005 662 are ES'70 programs in other schools.) (MJM)

The multiunit elementary school is an organizational structure for elementary schools which incorporates shared decision-making into its operations. The school's Instructional Improvement Committee (IIC) serves to link the teaching and administrative levels of the school by having teacher representatives and the principal share the responsibility for formulating decisions, plans, and procedures which coordinate the school's instructional program. A study was conducted to determine the variables which associate with operationally effective IIC's. The results of the study revealed a significant correlation between IIC effectiveness and the interrelationship of the IIC chairman's leader Consideration and Initiation of Structure behaviors and IIC chairman--IIC member compatibility. Other variables such as attendance at workshops, chairman's administrative experience, or the amount of meeting time were not significant. (WS)

Recently the relevance of dialectological study to reading instruction has become apparent. The teacher speaks one language while the child, often disadvantaged, speaks another. The ability to identify utterances is attributed to human tolerance called the phoneme concept, a generalization of a potentially infinite number of sounds into a small number of speech sound concepts or classes. When a group agrees on a body of phonemes, it shares a particular phonemic inventory. In learning a second language, the individual usually substitutes those sounds not existing in his own tongue with similar ones present in his own native inventory. A similar situation exists between standard English and its dialects. If a phoneme-grapheme correspondence is to be taught, the phonemes used as reference patterns must be determined. The usual tests to determine auditory discrimination are based on inadequate phonetic knowledge. Teacher training should include dialectology, speech sound analysis, and the concept of phonemes. A good reading teacher must either learn the child's dialect or teach him the standard dialect as a second language. (WL)

In this paper some of the issues and recurring problems in operating Multidisciplinary Training Teams in school settings are recounted, and principles and procedures for dealing with such matters as initial attachment of the team to a school, problems within the MDTT team itself, and modification of roles are discussed. (Author)