The Ed School faculty yesterday began formal debate on a proposal for massive regrouping and reorientation of the school's resources.

The proposal, which the faculty's Committee on Academic Policy released last week after a 15-month study, attempts to consolidate the school's two dozen doctoral and master's programs within a framework of newly emerging priorities and declining federal support.

Theodore R. Sizer, dean of the Ed School and chairman of the committee, acknowledged that the proposal had not been able to go into finances "in a detailed way."

He added, however, that the committee had assumed the School could enact the proposed reforms without outside funding.

"We intend to play things conservatively," he said, explaining that the school hopes nonetheless to receive substantial outside aid.

Such conservative planning, at its most extreme, would force several professors, most of them non-tenured, to be dropped from the school. The present 8-1 student-faculty ratio would grow as high as 14-1.

Ten years ago the Ed School was mainly a place to train teachers. More than two-thirds of the students were working for a Master of Teaching Arts in a specific subject area such as math or science.

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation was a financial windfall for the school. Its budget soared from $2 million in 1960 to an $8.2 million peak in 1968, 57 per cent of which was supplied by the government. Men like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nathan Glazer, Christopher Jencks, and David Cohen rode in on the harvest.

The school celebrated its good fortune by mounting a $6 million drive to build the finest education library in the country, with extensive research and teaching facilities in addition to book space.

During this time the school met new trends and needs in education by simply growing, mainly in the number of research associates and associate professors.

But the Nixon administration's failure to continue vigorous federal support to education has forced the Ed School to reassess its process of change and clearly delineate its priorities.

Introducing the reform proposal to the Faculty yesterday, Sizer said that "the halcyon days of change by addition are gone. The committee, in making its proposals, had to assume that new programs would have to take place of old ones."

The greatest resistance to the proposed changes appears to come from faculty members- primarily those in subject-oriented areas- whose positions would be jeopardized by them.

Fletcher Watson, professor of Science Education, said at yesterday's meeting that "a piece of pie can only be sliced in so many ways, and this is a small piece. According to this report the teaching area vanishes."

But Sizer said last week that financial difficulties have had a "definitely secondary" influence on the proposed reforms. He said that major changes in the organization of instruction have been contemplated for years.