In the United States, parents have been homeschooling their children since the colonial ages. Back then, homeschooling was a way of life, and parents provided education at home because there was no such thing as compulsory education or mandatory attendance of any kind. Homeschooling continued as a practice until Horace Mann, in 1850, helped…

This fourth annual update on America's high school dropout crisis shows that for the first time the nation is on track to meet the goal of a 90 percent high school graduation rate by the Class of 2020--if the pace of improvement from 2006 to 2010 is sustained over the next 10 years. The greatest gains have occurred for the students of color and…

This article elaborates the impact that crises of authority provoked by animal magnetism, mesmerism, and hypnosis in the 19th century had for field formation in American education. Four layers of analysis elucidate how curriculum history's repetitive focus on public school policy and classroom practice became possible. First, the article surveys…

Since their creation over two centuries ago, public schools have been coupled with students via geographical zones. Bolstered by compulsory attendance laws, public schools have a very consistent clientele. Based solely on where they resided, students were required to attend specific schools between Kindergarten and Grade 12. Schools have, in…

This highly acclaimed volume in the "Defending Public Schools" series is now available in paperback from Teachers College Press. It is a practical, necessary addition to the work of administrators, teachers, policymakers, and parents as they negotiate the difficult path of how to best teach and educate today's children and youth. This…

Compulsory attendance is desirable, according to the author, for the good of society and the individual, not for the good of the educational establishment. He lists five "wrong" reasons for compulsory student attendance. (Author/DS)

It is an underlying principle of Australian Education Review (AER) 54 that active efforts should be made to cultivate the latent bilingual potential within Australia's wider population and that this should be linked to major improvements in the quality of language teaching in schools. A combined approach of this kind will require investment in…

Author tackled the controversial subject of compulsory school attendance and based upon our educational history supplied his reasons for extending it upwards to the age of 18. (RK)

A review of material on driver education in Illinois was conducted to support the recommendation that the state mandate for driver education be removed. Examination of the historical background and the components of the mandate suggested that there were three major goals for driver education: traffic accident reduction, provision of driver…

The fundamental characteristics of private and public education--voluntarism and government control--are described and related to authority, consensus, and commitment in schools. The paper argues that public schools rely on legal/rational authority and private schools on value consensus and traditional authority. (AM)

Examines the legal reasoning behind the Yoder and Mozert court cases, which objected to mandatory secondary education and to a required reading series, respectively, discussing why one was granted and the other rejected; asserting that the two cases are essentially similar, turning on the notion of mere exposure as harm; and discussing how the…

Discussion of compulsory school attendance in United States focuses on a national exodus from public schools into self-education or other alternative education by the 5 percent of the nation's children classified as gifted. Nurturing of the innovative mind and entrepreneurial daring by the public library movement is addressed. Six references are…

Presents the U. S. Supreme Court decision in the 1925 case of Pierce, Governor of Oregon, et al. v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. v. Hill Military Academy. Decrees that the state law requiring parents to enroll students between the ages of 8 and 16 in a public school is unconstitutional. (VWC)

Parents, guardians, caregivers and school administrators will sometimes disagree over whether a student resides in a school district and can be enrolled in a district public school. The information in this manual is designed to help parents, guardians and caregivers understand the legal concepts involved in residency disputes, and to inform…

Proposes that the formalization of common schooling in the United States derives from the sequence of institutional formation beginning with the state asylum, moving to the reformatory, and then moving to compulsory attendance. Shows the integration of delinquent and special youth in the U.S. educational system. Contains 112 references. (SLD)