In this 2022 Organization of Educational Historians Presidential Address, Platt states that in the face of a world fettered by anti-intellectualism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and class disparity; as well as harmful state legislation that hampers academic freedom, heightens political disunion, and frustrates social justice; it is essential that…

Efforts to modernize and improve policing are not new. A push to professionalize police took place in the United States at the turn of the century and again during the civil rights era of the 60s and 70s. As a former journalist who covered law enforcement and participated in police training to build understanding and relationships with law…

Black students were not allowed to enroll in Missouri public schools until 1866. During the fugitive school era (prior to 1863), keeping Black children and youth safe from white terrorists committed not only to disrupting nascent learning but burying Black bodies became priority one for clandestine school leaders (Williamson 2005). Later, when…

Teacher education remains a largely unexplored area within the history of American education. This paper is an example of the types of state-specific stories that are needed as university administrators and policymakers make critical decisions about the content and purpose of teacher ed curriculum. These decisions, in turn, have a direct impact on…

Robert Burns Eleazer (1877-1973), a liberal white Methodist from Tennessee, served as the education director and director of publicity of the Atlanta-based Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC) from 1922 to 1942. As education director, he developed a strategy for improving race relations which entailed offering prizes to young people in the…

The final decades of the twentieth century were rife with education reform. "A Nation at Risk" (1983) compared American schools to their counterparts in other countries, and found America wanting while E.D. Hirsch and others decried Americans' lack of knowledge of their own institutions and heritage (Hirsch 1987). These alarms caused…

In 2017, one of the largest investments in education reform in California's history came to an end. The James Irvine Foundation announced that it was shifting its investment focus from Linked Learning, a college and career readiness high school reform, to other projects (Linked Learning Alliance 2017). Unlike the Gates Foundation's well-publicized…

This article examines counter-hegemony occurring through the development of the Hawaiian language immersion movement, successfully leading to the saving of both Hawaiian culture and the Hawaiian language. After almost 100 years without Hawaiian being the language of instruction, it has re-emerged. Counter-hegemony began in the 1960s with the…

Rapid changes in American society in the early twentieth century fostered both a general sense of optimism for America's future and a perceived sense of moral dislocation affecting present and future generations of America's youth. Urbanization, modernization, and the increasing presence of immigrant populations were often viewed as challenges to…

Recently, two phenomena have been discussed in higher education-specific media: (1) the prevalence of institutional mergers to promote longevity; and (2) institutional rebranding to improve public perceptions and increase enrollment through enhanced and/or clarified missions (Wexler 2015). Although such has been reported in "The Chronicle of…

The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS or Council), established in 1921, was buffeted by demands for change in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From its birth, this professional association had served as a "big tent" for various social studies constituencies, disciplines, and philosophical orientations. It was a…

Diane Ravitch's "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" (2010) and "Reign of Error" (2013) represent a significant shift in the contemporary political dialogue on education reform. The once staunch supporter of national academic standards and market-based reforms, Ravitch reversed nearly every position she…

This paper analyzes several elementary and middle school textbooks, educational decrees, and other primary sources to help shed light on how schooling, and more generally education, during what would be known as the "Reign of the Colonels" or "Military 'Junta'" attempted to reshape a Greek national identity. This paper seeks to…

The six Land Grant colleges and universities across the upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota State, South Dakota State, and Iowa State) all faced unprecedented challenges in the 1890s. The economic depression brought on by the Panic of 1893 saw budget cutbacks and lean times, but the "McKinley Prosperity," combined…

Reformers during the antebellum period of American history frequently expressed contradictory ideas on the topic of female education. These contradictions illustrate the challenge historians face in pinning down the female educational vision held by antebellum-era reformers. That the classics comprised the core of colonial and revolutionary era…