The world of private fundamentalist education grew prodigiously throughout the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. These schools needed curricular materials and guiding educational philosophies. The impassioned debates among leading fundamentalist educators directly affected the education of hundreds of thousands of students. Concern over the…

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.…

Historians such as Seth Koven and Carolyn Steedman have shown how visual and literary depictions of children helped move late-nineteenth-century middle- and upper-class audiences to join in child-saving philanthropy aimed at the deserving poor. This essay focuses on an analysis of the promotional literature of the free kindergartens. Starting from…

Head Start, the federal program that provides preschool education, health, and social services for children from poor families, is one of the United States' most popular government programs. Created in 1965, it has endured as a symbol of commitment to children, serving just fewer than one million children a year in neighborhood sites across the…