ABSTRACT
Theodore Sizer, or Ted, as he is affectionately known, is an acclaimed educational reformer with a key role in putting forward a new vision for schools and schooling and in vigorously putting it into action. Sizer was born 23 June 1932 and grew up on a farm just north of New Haven, CT. He is the celebrated founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, the founding director of the Annenberg Institute for Education Reform and its director until 1996. Sizer crystallized his most fundamental values, ideas and beliefs on schooling and the approach to schooling, into nine principles. These ideas, which were published in 1983 and in 1985, became known as the Coalition's Common Principles. Sizer offers a systemic educational view, involving every component and level of the system including the curriculum, instruction, learning, assessment, organizational structure, educational policy, professional development and out-of-school reality, all bound synergistically together to form a coherent whole.
