Explores how analyses and visions of U.S. society shape the appeal of progressive pedagogy but focusing on the evolution of political and educational ideas among African American civil rights activities who created alternative schools for black children in the 1960s and 1970s. Concludes that support for progressive pedagogy depends on the…

Discusses Freedom Summer, the voter registration and educational program conducted in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. The importance of adult education in this civil rights effort is analyzed in parallel with the work of Paulo Freire in Brazil. (SLD)

To test R. E. Callahan's (1962) theory about superintendents' vulnerability to interest groups, the career of E. C. Hartwell is examined. Hartwell's career in three cities (1914-22) demonstrates the power that a superintendent could acquire and wield. (SLD)

Since 1933, elementary and secondary student-teacher ratios have decreased, while ratios in college have increased. Until the late 1960s, the high birth rate and increasing proportion of college students demanded more teachers. Current enrollments in bachelor of education programs are three to four times too high for teacher demand. (CP)

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)