The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) represents a quantum leap in both Federal involvement and Federal mandates to schools. In the relatively short period of less than a decade NCLB has changed how teachers teach, what subjects are taught, and how teachers and principals are evaluated. As NCLB continues to impact American education and educational…

This article will briefly narrate illustrative life stories of some of the 450 men and women who taught in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, between 1919 and 1949 and identify and explain how they employed these options to build occupational pathways. Taken together, these "microbiographies" show patterns in the life trajectories of ordinary people. They…

Writing in 1962, Phillippe Aries argued that an initial step in the movement to establish schools for children in Europe took place during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when moralists and artists began portraying children as different from adults. According to Aries, the portrayal of childhood as a unique period enabled the family and…

In 1879, with aid from the Peabody fund, Texas's first tax-supported teacher training institution, Sam Houston State Normal Institute (SHNI), opened on the site of the old Austin College in Huntsville (Richmond 1941, 37). The need for qualified educators in Texas was growing as the state struggled to make up for decades of neglect of and antipathy…

This article will consider the career of Massillon Alexander Cassidy, a Progressive Era school superintendent in Lexington, Kentucky, 1886-1928. The authors' review of school board records, personal letters, newspapers, and scholarly accounts, presents a rich outline of one man's career in public education that is illustrative of how progressive…

Many scholars have argued that history education during the antebellum period in the United States supported conservative values and sought to produce close-minded citizens. History textbooks of that era, they frequently posit, cast Americans as God's chosen people and present the past in a style that reaffirms established social conventions. Ruth…

A majority of American students have taken the journey through schools that progressed from first to twelfth grade. So by the 1913 Committee on the Economy of Time in Education, American education featured a twelve-grade system quickly evolving from the forces of consolidation and corporate efficiency. Such was not the reality in Texas schools.…

Harvard is easily the most recognizable American institution of higher education, freighted with rich associations to the nation's leaders. This article provides an opportunity to examine the history of higher education through a lens often overlooked--fiction. By doing so, the authors provide a richer understanding of a particular institution and…

In this article, the author shares the potential applications of Paul Ricoeur's philosophies of history, memory, and narrative to the interpretation of educational histories, and those histories' life spans: moving cyclically from early conception, to evidentiary construction, to published dissemination; and ultimately to death or immortality. Her…

In the closing weeks of 1867, an educational organization was founded in Washington, D.C., that should have been stillborn. Most farmers dismissed scientific agriculture as useless book-farming. They should have been lukewarm to the Patrons of Husbandry's promise to sponsor monthly meetings for mutual instruction in the application of scientific…

In 1999, the changing goals of American schools were explored in "Education Week" through the events, achievements, and personalities that had formed United States education in the 20th century. First a series of articles, the collection was later published in book form as "Lessons of a Century: A Nation's Schools Come of Age." The chapter titled…

This article will focus on the efforts of the State of Illinois to desegregate Chicago Public Schools between 1971 and 1979. The article also examines the responsibility taken on by the State of Illinois to desegregate schools and the limits between establishing the mechanisms to desegregate and the ability to accomplish those goals in Chicago.…

Education played a pivotal role in African-Americans' post-World War II struggle for equality. Many activists believed that victories against racially discriminatory school systems would lead to gains in other critical areas. By examining Howalton Day School, a black private school on Chicago's South Side in operation from 1946-1986, this article…

As a cultural and university historian focusing on Europe and the United States, Sheldon Rothblatt is more interested in understanding the multiple bearings of liberal arts education as it has developed across the ages. The American high school, from its origins in the 19th century to the contemporary period, represents only a fraction of the…

In the progressive era, the distinguished political scientist Robert Putnam explains, progressives invested heavily in "social capital," that is, in the stock of active connections, social networks, shared values, norms of reciprocity, trustworthiness, and friendship that bind people together (Putnam 2000, 395). They were, he argues, wise to do so…