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…

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…

Recent scholarship has suggested that: "A Nation at Risk" had put education on the national agenda," that it "catapulted education near to the top of the national political agenda," and that it started "an ambitious and well-publicized elementary and secondary education reform ... that has already lasted for more than a quarter of a century." The…

The role of federal involvement in education has, in recent years, become more and more prevalent. Such an involvement was not part of the historical origins of education at virtually any level. Whether it was for economic reasons, defense of the nation, the accountability of American taxpayers, or the pursuit of better civic-minded individuals,…

During the period 1962-1994, the United States Supreme Court handed down several decisions that increasingly limited the influence of religion in schools ("Engel v Vitale" 1962; "Abington v. Schempp" 1963; "Lemon v. Kurtzman," "Early v. DiCenso," and "Robinson v. DiCenso" 1971; "Wallace v. Jaffee" 1985; "Lee v. Weisman" 1992). In particular, these…

The 1960s was a tumultuous decade in American public education. It was a time of transition and change. To many Americans in the early 1960s, Max Rafferty appeared to be a reactionary conservative harking back to an educational past. The longer perspective of history may instead see Rafferty as a harbinger of the educational policies of the 1990s.…

In "Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980," education historians David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot (1982) offer a model for understanding the evolution of U. S. public school leadership from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. The authors assert that prior to 1890, common school "crusaders"…

Wesley Null's provocative questions that guided the session on the future of teacher education curriculum at the 2007 Midwest History of Education Society cut to the very rationale for compulsory public education in America. The only justification that can be morally sanctioned is that without adequate preparation for their civic duties, citizens…

This article reports the results of a study about the factors that affect social studies development in Jordan's secondary schools. An evaluation of data obtained within the limitations of this study relative to the development of social studies education, in particular, and education, in general, indicates that the principle of the Great Arab…

Parochial and private schools in the United States have maintained opportunities for students to attend same-gender settings without interference from policies governing public education. The gender composition and curriculum of public schools, however, have been influenced by societal regulations and expectations that have often utilized…

Congressman George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts introduced a bill "to establish a system of national education" on February 25, 1870. This bill, and others that followed, opened an acrimonious political debate that lasted for twenty years. The opening salvos of that debate, and the regional issues of ethnicity and religion that framed the debate,…

The condition of education within the academy in the period surrounding desegregation might best be described as beleaguered. Ironically, this vulnerable and largely defensive stance emerged as the dividend of a unified movement among educationists (a derogatory term assigned to education faculty and those who populated the public education…

Patricia Graham's recent defense of public education in the United States shows that public education has been responsive to society's demands and supports the earlier observation of Charles Burgess and Merle Borrowman that the dominant educational ideology is a function of the nation's need for human resources. When the nation has clear and…

The American Civil War transformed societies' beliefs about education, as well as state policy regarding schools. The common schools of the 1850s tended to be locally funded, selective, and voluntary institutions. The Civil War, and the widespread belief, especially in the North, that a national system of common schools might have averted that…