Abstract
In June of 1977, the public school system of Greenfield, Massachusetts, * in conjunction with the Massachusetts State Department of Education and the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts, embarked on a two-year collaboration to conceptualize and design a more responsive and effective secondary education process. The Greenfield Secondary Schools Project (GSSP) was to be an attempt by teachers, students, administrators, and community members to develop comprehensive solutions to educational problems. The GSSP represented a major attempt at broad-based, decentralized innovation in public education. Despite the collaborative approach, shared decision-making strategies, local control, and decentralized structure, the GSSP was unable to effectively manage major obstacles, and participant commitment to the change process began to dissolve. The main body of this article contends that preexisting expectations and assumptions about change, shared by participants, can inhibit and even break down a progressive, elaborately preplanned change model. The article's postscript describes the unique regeneration of the GSSP in terms of a new minigrant program and the consolidation of project leadership.
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