The United States history survey course is a standard high school history class in the state of New York. The academic goal is for students to understand key people and developments that molded the United States into its modern identity as a progressive, democratic nation-state. This research examined one manifestation of this course in New York…

Currently, the perceived use of critical theoretical frameworks to shape instruction in public K-12 education is undergoing intense scrutiny in popular and political debate. Chief among such frameworks has been Critical Race Theory (CRT), which, at the time of this writing, has been legally banned or restricted in eighteen states -- with similar…

By the end of the nineteenth century, the momentum for the idea of a more practical education better suited to life in a modern, technological world brought the first educational reform movements in the nation. Concurrent reform efforts at the state and national levels influenced both the historical development of Earth science education and the…

The work of student journalists often appears as a source in the footnotes when researchers tell the story of perhaps the most significant period in the history of higher education in the United States--the student protest era throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Yet researchers and historians have ignored the student press itself during this…

This dissertation is devoted to a history of the New York State elementary school teacher certification requirements, specifically in mathematics, during the nineteenth century. In the last half of nineteenth century, teacher education and uniform certification procedures were beginning to become the norm in the educational systems throughout the…

This dissertation examines the formation, reformation, and standardization of land-grant colleges in the Northeastern United States during the last four decades of the nineteenth century. It is a history that explores the turbulent origins of land-grant colleges in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont,…