The data presented in this bulletin were furnished, for the most part, by the various State departments of public instruction, on the Bureau of Education blanks. The statistics for Kansas and for Missouri were obtained entirely from printed State school reports, those for Iowa largely from printed reports, and those from Mississippi were obtained…

Suggesting that the United States' dominant form of literacy is contingent and historical, not permanent and absolute, this book asserts that when a society changes its definition of literacy, it also changes its models of mind and its models for teaching English. The book challenges the assumption that the public schools are a failure, arguing…

This paper briefly highlights the past four decades of the often contentious relationship between school districts and the environmental movement revealing the difficulties that environmental policy has had on the nation's educational systems. It reveals the public's increasing awareness of environmental factors within the school that jeopardize…

Offers a brief history of Louisiana, highlighting the establishment of Catholic schools by missionaries before the development of public schools. Covers the French and Spanish, and Black Catholics in Louisiana, the Code Noir and the missionary church, the beginning of public schooling, north Louisianan schools, and the civil war. (DMM)

The purpose of this study was to investigate and explain the censorship of written curricular and library materials in public schools over the past 20 years. Analysis of the 15 cases decided between 1972 and 1992, only one of which was decided by the Supreme Court, indicates that: (1) in every case except one, a school board or employees of the…

The Cleveland (Ohio) Board of Education opened the Cleveland City Normal School in the fall of 1874 to provide a teacher corps for the public schools that was prepared to meet the unique needs of the rapidly growing metropolitan area. Increased Ohio teacher certification requirements prompted the school board and Western Reserve University to…

Describes how Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.) testing came to be used in the Los Angeles, California public schools. Argues that the test generated more confusion and frustration among teachers and administrators than previously believed. Concludes that, despite pressure to use I.Q. scores exclusively for student classification, individual teachers…

A comparative analysis of urban public schools as learning environments during the early 1900s shows that although public schools in the early 1900s were ageist, sexist, and racist, they were, nonetheless, havens of liberating possibility. Schools today, although stripped of racism, sexism, and ethnocentricity, are nurseries of oppression. (RM)

Provides a historical overview of Catholic education in Canada, with particular emphasis on Ontario's publicly funded Separate School System. Discusses the administrative structure, financial resources, and flaws of this system. (DMM)

Protestant and Catholic missionary organizations contributed to the development of American schooling. On the Protestant side, the American Home Missionary Society and the American Sunday School Union provided missionaries who frequently became active in school activities. More importantly, these agencies, typical of the evangelical alliance of…

Holds that "improvement" is an important theme for understanding the early history of public schooling in Buffalo. Describes Oliver Steele's strategy for linking public schooling with the concept of "public improvement" and argues that an unfortunate part of Steele's legacy was the idea that a suitable building guaranteed a…

Furnishing textbooks at the expense of the community, free to the individual school children, is not a new idea in the United States. It began as a movement in city school administration nearly a century ago. Philadelphia made provisions for free textbooks in 1818. Other cities, principally in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts,…

Iowa law requires direct reporting by mandatory reporters in all schools to the Department of Human Services. State law also requires all schools to adopt a uniform procedure for investigating allegations of abuse of students by school employees. The Department of Education and the Department of Human Services have established administrative rules…

Every era of deep social change in U.S. history has produced incessant calls for social improvement through the reform of the public schools. This fastback sketches some common themes and recent discontinuities in the history of school reform. It focuses on three aspects of change during key eras of reform: the sources of education change, the…

The 1954 Supreme Court decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" brought a legal (though hardly political or social) end to the practice of segregated education in the United States, and has accurately been described as both a major legal victory for the civil rights movement and as a precursor to other battles that were still to be…