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Learning from the Past

What History Teaches Us about School Reform

edited by Diane Ravitch and Maris A. Vinovskis

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Many Americans view today's problems in education as an unprecedented crisis brought on by contemporary social ills. In Learning from the Past a group of distinguished educational historians and scholars of public policy reminds us that many of our current difficulties – as well as recent reform efforts – have important historical antecedents. What can we learn, they ask, from nineteenth century efforts to promote early childhood education, or debates in the 1920s about universal secondary education, or the curriculum reforms of the 1950s?

Reflecting a variety of intellectual and disciplinary...

Many Americans view today's problems in education as an unprecedented crisis brought on by contemporary social ills. In Learning from the Past a group of distinguished educational historians and scholars of public policy reminds us that many of our current difficulties – as well as recent reform efforts – have important historical antecedents. What can we learn, they ask, from nineteenth century efforts to promote early childhood education, or debates in the 1920s about universal secondary education, or the curriculum reforms of the 1950s?

Reflecting a variety of intellectual and disciplinary orientations, the contributors to this volume examine major changes in educational development and reform and consider how such changes have been implemented in the past. They address questions of governance, equity and multiculturalism, curriculum standards, school choice, and a variety of other issues. Policy makers and other school reformers, they conclude, would do well to investigate the past in order to appreciate the implications of the present reform initiatives.

Reviews

Reviews

The quality of the contributors alone is enough to make this an excellent book. It is a valuable compendium—and bibliography—of recent thinking on the historical context of current discussions of educational reform. It should be read by educational policymakers and by anyone who wants to be sufficiently well-informed about education to participate in the reform process.

The quality of the contributors alone is enough to make this an excellent book. It is a valuable compendium—and bibliography—of recent thinking on the historical context of current discussions of educational reform.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
400
ISBN
9780801849213
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Changes in Education Over Time
Chapter 1. Assimilation, Adjustment, and Access: An Antiquarian View of American Education
Chapter 2. Who's in Charge? Federal, State

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Changes in Education Over Time
Chapter 1. Assimilation, Adjustment, and Access: An Antiquarian View of American Education
Chapter 2. Who's in Charge? Federal, State, and Local Control
Chapter 3. Attitudes, Choices, and Behavior: School Delivery
Part II: Equity and Multiculturalism
Chapter 4. Changing Conceptions of Educational Equity
Chapter 5. Ethnic Diversity and National Identity
Chapter 6. American History Reconsidered: Asking New Questions About the Past
Part III: Recent Strategies For Reforming the Schools
Chapter 7. The Search for Order and the Rejection of Conformity: Standards in American EDucation
Chapter 8. Reinventing Schooling
Chapter 9. The New Politics of Choice
Part IV: The Six National Goals
Chapter 10. School Readiness and Early Childhood Education
Chapter 11. School Leaving: Dead End or Detour?
Chapter 12. Rhetoric and Reality: The High School Curriculum
Chapter 13. Literate America: High-Level Adult Literacy as a National Goal
Chapter 14. Reefer Madness and A Clockwork Orange
Contributors

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor in the School of Education at New York University and holds the Herman and George R. Brown Chair in Education Studies at the Brookings Institution. She was an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education, and she serves on the National Assessment Governing Board. Her publications include Learning from the Past: What History Teaches Us about School...