The Gary Plan was a new method of building a highly efficient public school system that was much discussed in the Progressive Era in the 1910s and 1920s.
It was designed by School Superintendent William Wirt in 1907 and implemented in the newly built steel mill city of Gary, Indiana.
[1] Ronald Cohen states that the Gary Plan was popular because it merged together Progressive commitments to:paedagogical and economic efficiency, growth and centralization of administration, an expanded curriculum, introduction of measurement and testing, greater public use of school facilities, a child-centered approach, and heightened concern about using the schools to properly socialize children.
The core of the schools' organization in Gary centered upon the platoon or work-study-play system and Americanizing the 63.4 percent of children with parents who were immigrants.
[4] The theory behind the Gary Plan was to accommodate children's shorter attention spans, and that long hours of quiet in the classroom were not tenable.
[6] Mayor John Purroy Mitchel had visited Gary and was an enthusiastic advocate as the city worked to restructure schools buildings and schedules.