The United States occupations of Cuba and Puerto Rico following the War of 1898 instituted immediate reforms to the educational systems of the islands. The imposition of public school systems modeled on those of the United States and a concurrent wave of Protestant schools established by American missionaries are well-known features of the…

This article summarizes and assesses federal K-12 compensatory education policies during the past six decades. It focuses on the centerpiece of that effort, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Related programs such as America 2000, Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind, and Every Student Succeeds Act are discussed. It…

Historical policy stories that situate teachers as the root cause of problems in public schools have long accompanied educational reforms, including No Child Left Behind. This article portrays the history of teacher blame as a defining component of the grammar of American educational reform. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century reformers identified…

Chicago's magnet schools were one of the nation's earliest experiments in choice-driven school desegregation, originating among civil rights advocates and academic education experts in the 1960s and appearing at specific sites in Chicago's urban landscape during the 1970s. The specific concerns that motivated the creation of magnet schools during…

A discussion of scholastic competition in early American schools and the effect of increasing numbers of female students. Suggests that the presence of girls in the classroom prompted a reconsideration of the accepted practice of encouraging student competition. Educators saw the need for educating women, but competition conflicted with their…

Characterizes the relationship between family and school as educational agents during the nineteenth century. Based on personal-history documents, the article examines effects of social and economic change on family life, individual development, and school role. (AV)

The symposium transcript presents and discusses commentaries on "Schooling in Capitalist America," by Sam Bowles and Herbert Gintis. The transcript serves three functions: (1) it offers a comprehensive account of the role of schools in America; (2) critiques efforts to reform schools; and (3) suggests alternative visions of how school reform…

Traces the private boarding school movement in the United States, discussing its growth and service to a "democratic nobility" which would be trained to lead the country. Examines the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant control of private schools until the 1960s and explores changes in admissions and administration policies. (GEA)

Since the 1970s the history of educational development has become the object of scholarly research once more. Within the context of recent educational history, the postwar period has aroused particular interest in educational historiographers. The history of the educational development of Berlin in the 1950s and 1960s is discussed. (RM)

Reviews three books on education in China: "Educational and Social Change in China: The Beginnings of the Modern Era" (Borthwick, 1983), "Education and Popular Literacy in Ch'ing China" (Rawski, 1979), and "Education under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools, 1960-1980" (Unger, 1982). (JDH)

Reviews Carl F. Kaestle's 1983 book, "Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860." Maintains that this work synthesizes and refocuses both old and new interpretations of the political and institutional history of the common school before 1860 in the United States. (JDH)

Reviews "Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980" (Tyack & Hansot, 1982), and "Public School in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years" (Tyack, Lowe & Hansot, 1984). Maintains that the strength of these two works lies more in their balanced synthesis of the scholarly literature than on the direct policy…

In 1923 John D. Rockefeller's General Education Board (GED) undertook a project to reform the public schools in two rural Indiana counties. The GED demonstration project developed from more than two decades of concern about America's rural problems. The attempt by cosmopolitan outside experts to change the rural schools is described. (RM)

Although some educational progress at grassroot level was made by the Dutch Reformed Church Mission (DRCM) in African Malawi, the DCRM system contributed mostly to underdevelopment. Most Malawians were introduced to semi-literacy under thousands of semi-qualified teachers, and very few Africans who passed through the system later distinguished…

Informed by recent Marxist education theory, the author gives a new account of the changes brought about by the 1875 Education Act in South Australia. Many of these changes, although couched in terms of morality and efficiency, represented a direct assault on the lifestyles and culture of the laboring people. (RM)