This study examines three veteran urban school superintendents who were highly respected by their colleagues but who came under intense pressure from forces outside the school systems in the 1960's. Chapter 1 explores the context of the desegregation controversy and the furor over an independent evaluation that faced Benjamin C. Willis in Chicago.…

The idea that schools seldom change is debunked as a myth and discussed in terms of two types of change (incremental and fundamental) that have marked the history of public schools. This myth has also affected the education of children with disabilities, particularly concerning judgment of the success or failure of innovations. Suggestions for…

This case study of the origins and development of junior high schools illustrates the shrinking of aspirations and adaptation of school reform to the existing social architecture that occur as the reform becomes institutionalized. Institutional theories of organizations are used to explain this phenomenon. (SLD)

Two specific questions guide this study: (1) Did teacher-centered instruction persevere in public schools during and after reform movements that had as one of their targets installing student-centered instruction? and (2) If the answer is yes, to what extent did it persist and why? If the answer is no, to what extent did instruction change and…

Test misuse is neither isolated nor recent. It is a problem that cannot be easily solved. While test misuse may be reduced or managed, it cannot be eliminated. Test misuse has cut across America's social, economic, and political institutions, including schools. The most flagrant abuse of a test is what happens to the results of the Scholastic…

In answering the question posed in the title, the author begins with a story that businessman Jamie Vollmer told to educators a few years ago. In examining business involvement in U.S. school reform, the author looks at the 1890s through 1920s and the 1970s to the present--two points in history when business leaders and educational entrepreneurs,…

The changing role of the kindergarten in U.S. educational history illustrates the ways in which educational reforms are altered as they survive. From a reform aimed at altering the relationship between school and community, kindergarten has become essentially a way to get children ready for first grade. (SLD)

This book investigates teaching practices before, during, and after reform impulses in the 20th century aimed at changing what teachers routinely do. Patterns of stability and change over a 90-year period are developed from evidence from a wide variety of sources, including classroom photographs, textbooks and tests used, student recollections,…

This second edition updates material in the first edition for another decade to 1990 and responds to criticisms of findings in the first edition. This book investigates teaching practices before, during, and after 20th-century reform efforts aimed at changing what teachers routinely do. Patterns of stability and change over a 100-year period are…

Examines the history of students who cannot do what educators want them to do, noting how educators have labeled poor performers in different periods and how these labels reflect both attitudes and institutional conditions. The paper summarizes four major historical explanations for why children fail and explores implications of this history for…

A tension has long existed between Americans' intense faith in education and the slow pace of changes in educational practices. Citizens have attempted to improve the future by arguing about how to improve youth through education, but actual school reforms have rarely matched expectations. Why this situation has occurred, and why such resistance…

This paper analyzes the planned and unplanned and external and internal forces that influence curriculum. Three questions guide the analysis of curriculum change in American schools during the 20th century: what forces changed curriculum? what forces maintained stability? which forces are amenable to planned change and are appropriate candidates…