Progressive education was pluralistic and often contradictory in its missions, motives, and degrees of success as was progressivism in general. The larger political progressive movement with its genesis in the latter half of the nineteenth century peaked in the Progressive Era at the beginning of the twentieth century. Until Lawrence Cremin's "Transformation of the Schools" (1962), historians paid little attention to the educational aspects of progressive reforms. Progressivism, nevertheless, was central to the history of American education and its expansion in the twentieth century. Cremin concluded that the conflicted enterprise of progressive child-centered education did not leave a lasting legacy. However, adapting schooling to address the needs of the "whole child," mind and body, can be seen as part of a mental health or mental hygiene approach to curriculum, as argued by John Dewey in 1928. Differentiating curriculum to pay attention to the individual needs of students was introduced into high schools in the 1930s and it remains a significant feature of secondary education today. This article examines reform in secondary education supported by Rockefeller related philanthropies as grounded in a mental hygiene approach to curriculum that coincided with progressive ideas about education for democracy and citizenship. Mental hygiene was a Progressive Era term as well as an accompanying movement supported by Rockefeller philanthropy and the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (NCMH), which called for the prevention of mental illness as a causal factor in a variety of social problems from wars and economic depressions to labor unrest. Children and youth were recognized as target populations for prevention with families and schools as sites for intervention. The mental hygiene rationale for secondary reform is consistent with educational policy and practice today. In fact, people are more concerned now than at midcentury with identifying, monitoring, and addressing the needs of special populations. Accountability and efficiency are currently nationalized as a priority in ways that would not have been possible in previous eras. Schools still struggle with their dual mission to produce mentally and emotionally competent citizens and a compliant workforce.