Discusses the issue of parent participation in the schools in historic context. Describes a parent participation program developed by the Yale Child Study Center Team in the New Haven Public Schools. The program successfully improved the academic ranking of the school from 32nd out of 33 schools in 1969 to 3rd out of 26 schools in 1984. (MD)

Details the most important curriculum movements--which can be generally classified under the two headings of subject-centered curriculum and student-centered curriculum--their adherents, and their rationales. (Author/WD)

Sixth in a series of seven articles on innovative programs, this description of the fate of Northwest High School in the Shaunee Mission (Kansas) School District reveals that low test scores and lack of student discipline necessitated a return to a more traditional organization. (WD)

Earlier in this century, the schools presented new visions of social possibility and cognitive worlds to conquer. Stripped of these dimensions, the schools will continue to reflect fragmentation and organize conflict rather than integrate new possibilities and enhance learning. (Author/IRT)

Because past educational reform movements were stimulated by events not directly related to schools, the movements' leaders have lacked dependable information about schools' actual effectiveness. This article faults past commissions for their omissions and impractical solutions. Real school improvement happens when school staff and parents…

Reviews the history of reform movements in secondary education in the context of the overall development of secondary education since the 19th century. Suggests treating reports advocating reform as position papers helping make broad social changes intelligible by revealing the shifting relationships between changing concepts of education and…

Reflects on the experience of attending high school in the mid-1940s in New York State. From a white, working-class neighborhood boasting no college graduates and a handful of high school graduates, the author managed to learn about Ibanez, Goya, Murillo, Velazquez, Neruda, Marti, and Azuela. Questions the need to reform "Eurocentric"…

The 1954 "Brown" decision and its 1955 enforcement decree were merely keystone events in a decade-long effort to replace South's elaborate system of legal segregation with type of de facto segregation found in northern, western, and midwestern cities resulting from well-defined racial barriers between neighborhoods. The traditional…

When No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law, the President and secretary of education promised sweeping reform of the American education system. In the five years since the law took effect, U.S. public schools have, indeed, seen remarkable change. However, not all of the changes have been well received. Policy makers, scholars, and…

A comparison of a modern teacher certification exam with one administered more than a century ago suggests that teachers in 1876 were required to exercise a greater range of mathematical skills, concepts, and principles. (Author)

Describes how two progressive Democrats initiated the school charter movement in California. They crafted a legislative proposal that retained the attractive features of the voucher movement (school choice, local control, and responsiveness to clients) while preserving the basic principles of a free, nonsectarian, and nondiscriminatory public…

Policy makers in education have long embraced reform. Unfortunately, education reforms have consistently been plagued by the reformers' lack of knowledge and appreciation of the history of education. Accordingly, the latest reform, touted as a panacea, meets with failure, and the search for the magic elixir begins anew. The ahistorical nature of…

Quality education occurs by improving the instructional and administrative means used to achieve intelligent ends. The experiences of Superintendent Parker in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1873, emphasize the need to seek understanding and meaning, to see education whole, to value teachers, and to view superintendents as thoughtful educators, not…