Organizational hostility plagued the entire 1972-1978 Experimental Schools (ES) program in Constantine, Michigan, and ultimately resulted in its failure. Constantine had a history of conflict between those residents advocating local control and those, mainly newcomers, advocating external intrusions into the community. When the ES program began, teachers were attempting to assert their professionalism, rural values were less esteemed, and external influences were being felt in the town. The ES program was intended to leave the basic educational organization intact but to modify the curriculum and teaching methodology by instituting individualization and humanization (egalitarianism). The plan was severely affected by the eruption of a week-long teachers' strike at the beginning of the implementation year. The strike resulted in social and civic repercussions, a change in school functioning, and an altered balance of power. Teachers, unified against an administration that would not yield them any control and threatened by lessened classroom control, did not entirely support the ES plan. Residents, never really included in the plan, felt it was unimportant and resoundingly defeated a tax increase to continue it. At the end of the five years, authoritarian relationships remained, student attitudes and achievement had not improved, and career preparation was unchanged. (SB)