Contrary to Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell's majority opinion in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez" (1973), Texas's school finance system was the result of years of legislation and state-building that gave some areas the resources and capacity to provide more educational opportunities than others. As this…

When the New Orleans school board appointed E. J. Edmunds, a light-skinned Afro-Creole man, the mathematics teacher for the city's best high school in 1875, the senior students walked out rather than have a "negro" as a teacher of "white youths." Edmunds's appointment was a final, bold act by the city's mixed-race intellectual…

New Brunswick High School, which had been racially integrated for decades, became majority-minority (and soon, all minority) in the 1970s, after years of legal wrangling led hundreds of its students to depart for a new, nearly all-white high school in the adjacent suburb of North Brunswick. White suburbanites invoked "local control" to…

The essential nature of oral historical inquiry "naturally" and "relentlessly" brings an oral historian to theory. In this essay, the author argues for the relevance of theory in oral historical research that explores generational transformations in the relational experiences of youth attending desegregated schools in the…

During the decades around the beginning of the twentieth century, public universities in the United States commonly employed a "certificate system" to establish eligibility for undergraduate admittance. "Certification" meant that between 1877 and 1931 representatives of the University of Wisconsin inspected high schools and had…

This article contributes to one's historical understanding of student experience in general, and more particularly, to one's understanding of developing cross-group relationships within desegregated schools over the second half of the twentieth century. The article draws from a broader study that examines students' evolving relationships within a…

This article features Ruth Wright Hayre, Philadelphia's first black high school teacher and principal whose work at William Penn High School for Girls became a model for counseling and motivation programs at other majority-black high schools in Philadelphia, expanding educational and career opportunities for thousands of "able" students.…

A host of scholars have illuminated the ways in which schools and other institutions have created and then sustained a vast gender gap in the scientific professions. Many of these studies have focused on overt discrimination: deliberate efforts by men to prevent the entry of women into scientific pursuits. Others have identified subtle and…

While the national debates over the accreditation of Catholic schools remain an essential element of understanding Catholic education during the early 20th century, this study examines how individuals, groups, and institutions grappled with the perceived need for standardization and increased articulation of schools. In particular, it examines the…