This article employs historical methodology to explore the evolution of Grow Your Own (GYO) teacher programs. These initiatives, which continue to rank among the most popular methods of teacher recruitment, originated as "future teacher" clubs designed to attract students into the profession during a severe staffing shortage that…

The public discussion of education consistently emphasizes school failure. To better understand this rhetoric, we tracked its appearance in five prominent print outlets from 1984 to 2016. By distinguishing between arguments about local schools and the nation's schools, we found that discussions of "failing schools" surged first as a…

The emergence and transformation of kindergarten in the United States is the quintessential example of the irrepressibility of schooling expansion, the ever-greater institutionalization of education in children's lives, and the rise in formal education's emphasis on cognitive skills among young children. This article explores the cultural…

This article examines the legal and political significance of teacher unionization in rural and suburban school districts between 1960 and 1975. While most historians focus on the growth of unions in urban areas, strikes in outlying districts played a determinative role in the development of public sector labor law, particularly in the arbitration…

The debate over charter school effectiveness relies largely on neoclassical logic: individual parents or students express demand for a widening array of school types and then experience variable levels of organizational quality. We argue that market-like behavior is nested in segments of local organizational fields with different types of charter…

This article examines the federal role in adolescent literacy from its roots in Lyndon B. Johnson's administration with the Economic Opportunity Act (1964) through the Reading for Understanding grants of 2010. The authors consider the extent to which the recent attention to and changes in the federal approach to adolescent literacy can be…

The principal assertion of this article is that Indigenous research methodologies should be used to develop educational policies and practices for Native students. The history of American educational research is marred by a near complete dismissal of Indigenous knowledge, as Western research methodologies continue to define the landscape of P-12…

This study investigates the cross-national institutionalization of English as a regular school subject over the past century and discusses how the rise of English as a global language in today's curricular policy models around the world reflects an expansive conception of supranational citizenship. Our extensive comparative and historical data…

Elite public schools must use some method of selecting their students. Given the desirability of this scarce resource, these methods are closely scrutinized. Demographic and other changes in the school districts may make unstable procedures that were deemed successful at one point. This "recurring problem" is the subject of this article,…

From a slogan that, from 1945 to 1954, had limited significance in education practice and, from the 1950s through the 1970s, had a small place in education histories, since 1980 life adjustment education has become, for historians, an anathema representative of the worst reform impulses in American education. By interpreting life adjustment…

This article looks at urban education through the vantage point of Chicago's mayors. It begins with Carter H. Harrison II (who served from 1897 to 1905 and again from 1911 to 1915) and ends with Richard M. Daley (1989 to the present), with most of the focus on four long-serving mayors: William Hale Thompson (1915-23 and 1927-31), Edward Kelly…

This study, as the first empirical test of P-16 policy antecedents, reports the findings from an event history analysis of the origins of state dual enrollment policies adopted between 1976 and 2005. First, what characteristics of states are associated with the adoption of these policies? Second, to what extent do conventional theories on policy…

Replacing boards of education conceived during the Progressive Era with mayoral control has been a popular reform strategy in urban districts such as Boston, Chicago, and New York City. A thorough review of the extant research, however, shows little evidence regarding its impact on governance, management, school organization, or teaching and…

Despite a statutorily narrow scope of bargaining, the scope of topics of union-management discussions has widened over the last 20 years, resulting in the birth of reform, or professional, unionism. But over the last half decade, professional unionism has waned. School management often refuses to see unions as partners, politicians fail to view…

In the early twentieth century, a new alliance formed between university-based scholars who dedicated themselves to the scientific study of education and public school officials. This alliance centered on the proposition that applied research could advance the professionalization of schooling and become a prestigious academic specialty in its own…