Obituary: Theodore R. Sizer, 77, Education Advocate
October 23, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Theodore R. Sizer, whose ideas on secondary education helped shape numerous nonprofit efforts to overhaul the schools, died Wednesday at his home in Harvard, Mass., of colon cancer, The New York Times reports.
A former dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, Mr. Sizer founded the Essential Schools movement, which championed a pluralistic philosophy of investing greater policy control at the level of individual schools and treating students as equal members of an egalitarian community.
The Coalition of Essential Schools now includes several hundred U.S. schools aiming to follow Mr. Sizer’s principles. He also founded the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, established in 1993 with financing from the late media mogul and philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg.
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