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…

Reviews Chinese educational history from the Sung dynasty's support of local schools from about 960 AD to 1279 AD. Concludes that much of the historical data is misleading because they generally enhance the emperors' reputations as supporters of education. (CFR)

Discusses the educational experiences of historians during the middle 1800s. Describes changes in historical research methods and historical interpretation that developed a new type of professional historian. Asserts that the school environment for adolescent boys directly was related to changes in historiography and historical writing. (CFR)

Summarizes the crises and calls for change from 1981-1988 within the Detroit (Michigan) school system that led to the creation of the HOPE (Hayden, Olmstead, and Patrick for Education) coalition. Discusses the years the HOPE coalition headed the school board and the reasons for its failure. Addresses the implications for other cities. (CMK)

Considers the state of the urban public education system in Chicago (Illinois). Addresses the effects of demographic and economic changes, the role of Benjamin Coppage Willis as superintendent of the Chicago schools, and the effects of inequality and plans for desegregation. (CMK)

Addresses the change from the system of workshop apprenticeship to that of industrial training, pioneered in 1878 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works and the Spring Garden Institute, that eventually spread to the public school system in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). (CMK)

Discusses the educational destruction and construction in Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) under the Khmer Rouge regime. Explains that in constructing the Democratic Kampuchea education system the Khmer Rouge sought to harness the power of education to their agenda of egalitarian, self-reliant, and agrarian socialism. (CMK)