HARNESSING THE COMPUTER IN EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT

Computer applications in education have generally either (1) streamlined some existing routine operation such as payroll or scheduling or (2) attempted some very sophisticated modeling of, for example, learning processes or cost functions for an institution. None of these applications has made a noticeable impact on the practices or the management of education. The proper function of the computer is as a filter to suppress irrelevant data and highlight critical data, to make short term projections of trends, to visually display the dynamics of system interactions, and to allow managers and teachers to interact with models of the system (e.g. the student or the school) they are supposed to be in charge of. The paper sketches the outlines of a computerized information system designed to use the strengths of the computer to complement the strengths of the human teacher and manager.