American Education Reform: History, Policy, Practice

About this course: Discover what shapes how we talk about schools today by exploring the history of U.S. education reform. Engage with the main actors, key decisions, and major turning points in this history. See how social forces drive reform. Learn about how the critical tensions embedded in U.S. education policy and practice apply to schools nationally, globally— and where you live.

Created by:  University of Pennsylvania

• Taught by:  Dr. John L. Puckett, Professor of Education

  Graduate School of Education

• Taught by:  Dr. Michael Charles Johanek, Senior Fellow

  Graduate School of Education

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Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects.

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University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (commonly referred to as Penn) is a private university, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. A member of the Ivy League, Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and considers itself to be the first university in the United States with both undergraduate and graduate studies.

Syllabus


WEEK 1


The Colonial Period and Early Republic



This module looks at the sources of education in Colonial America; factors that motivated the acquisition of literacy in the colonies; formal educational institutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; post-Revolution republican visions of free public schools; characteristics of elementary schools in the early Republic; and Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Academy.


8 videos, 1 reading expand

1. Video: Course Overview
2. Video: 1.1) Course Introduction
3. Video: 1.2) U.S. Education - An Early Transformation
4. Video: 1.3) Literacy in the Colonial Period
5. Video: 1.4) Institutions of Colonial Education
6. Video: 1.5) Early Republic Proponents of Common Schools to Build a New Nation
7. Video: 1.6) Early Republic Schooling in the United States
8. Video: 1.7) Benjamin Franklin’s Academy
9. Reading: Further Learning

Graded: Colonial Period/Early Republic Quiz

WEEK 2


The National Period



This module takes up the accelerating market economy between 1815 and 1850; the Second Great Awakening and its spur to social innovations; Horace Mann’s paean for “common” schools; Whigs and the common school movement; Catholic opposition to common schools; the suppression of black literacy in the antebellum South; and nineteenth-century academies.


8 videos, 1 reading expand

1. Video: 2.1) Introduction
2. Video: 2.2) The National Market Economy
3. Video: 2.3) "What God Hath Wrought": Dramatic Social Innovations
4. Video: 2.4) Horace Mann: Avatar of Common Schools
5. Video: 2.5) The Common School Idea as a Social Movement
6. Video: 2.6) Protestants and Catholics in the Arena
7. Video: 2.7) Education of African Americans and Native Americans
8. Video: 2.8) Secondary Schooling in the Common School Era: The Academy
9. Reading: Further Learning

Graded: National Period Quiz
Graded: Peer Assessment 1

WEEK 3


Postbellum Period



This module considers the post-Civil War expansion of the common school and the reality behind the myth of the “Little Red Schoolhouse”; the educational gains made by blacks during the Reconstruction period and the limits white supremacists put on blacks’ educational progress after Reconstruction; the Hampton/Tuskegee model of industrial education for blacks and the role of northern industrial philanthropists; Plessy v. Ferguson and Jim Crow schooling in the South; the Carlisle Indian School; and the early progress of the American high school.


7 videos, 1 reading expand

1. Video: 3.1) Introduction
2. Video: 3.2) Expansion of the Common School
3. Video: 3.3) After Emancipation: Education of African Americans in the Reconstruction South
4. Video: 3.4) Industrial Education in the South's Organic Society
5. Video: 3.5) Jim Crow and the Radical Segregation of African Americans
6. Video: 3.6) Boarding Schools for Native Americans
7. Video: 3.7) The Rise of the American High School
8. Reading: Further Learning

Graded: Postbellum Era Quiz

WEEK 4


The Progressive Era



This module looks at the Progressive movement writ large; the U.S. settlement movement as a source of urban school reform; the changes “administrative progressives” effected in the governance of urban school districts; the influence of the U.S. Army’s World War I intelligence- testing program on the American school system; social efficiency schooling and its theoretical foundations; the Committee of Ten, 1892–93; the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 1918; and Booker T.Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.


9 videos, 1 reading expand

1. Video: 4.1) Introduction
2. Video: 4.2) Progressive Seedbeds of Education Reform
3. Video: 4.3) Rise of the Administrative Progressives in American School Reform
4. Video: 4.4) Psychological Testing Movement
5. Video: 4.5) Social Efficiency Schooling
6. Video: 4.6) The Committee of Ten
7. Video: 4.7) The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education
8. Video: 4.8) The Southern Education Movement
9. Video: 4.9) Rosenwald Schools and County Training Schools for African Americans
10. Reading: Further Learning

Graded: Progressive Era Quiz

WEEK 5


John Dewey and the Pedagogical Progressives



This module takes up the major characteristics of Dewey’s Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, 1896–1904; the role of reflective thinking in Dewey’s theory of knowledge; Dewey’s conception of the school as a social center; Dewey’s disengagement from public schools after 1904; William Heard Kilpatrick and the pedagogical progressives’ distortion of Dewey’s theory; and the cornerstones of Dewey’s educational philosophy.


6 videos, 1 reading expand

1. Video: 5.1) The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago
2. Video: 5.2) Dewey’s Theory of Knowledge
3. Video: 5.3) Dewey’s Idea of the School as a Social Center
4. Video: 5.4) Dewey: Missing in Action
5. Video: 5.5) The Pedagogical Progressives
6. Video: 5.6) A Neo-Deweyan Critique of the Pedagogical Progressives
7. Reading: Further Learning

Graded: John Dewey Quiz

WEEK 6


The Depression Era



This module looks at the New Deal’s contribution to the education of American youth; the impact of the Great Depression on education; social reconstruction and the schools; schools as social centers, community centers, and community schools; the Nambé School, New Mexico; the Arthurdale School, West Virginia; and Benjamin Franklin High School, East Harlem.


7 videos, 1 reading expand

1. Video: Episode 6.1: The Great Depression and a New Deal for America's Youth
2. Video: Episode 6.2: High Schools in Hard Times
3. Video: Episode 6.3: Social Reconstruction and the Schools
4. Video: Episode 6.4: Antecedents to America's Community Schools: Social Centers and Community Centers
5. Video: Episode 6.5: The Nambé Community School
6. Video: Episode 6.6: Arthurdale
7. Video: Episode 6.7: Leonard Covello's Community High School in East Harlem
8. Reading: Further Learning

Graded: Depression Era Quiz
Graded: Peer Assessment 2

WEEK 7


Post-World War II



This module takes up the Cold War and education; the conservative attack on “life adjustment education”; McCarthyism and the New York City schools; federally sponsored New Curricula, late 1950s–1960s; the “radical romanticists”; the post-Brown struggle for racially integrated schools; the Ocean Hill–Brownsville conflict; and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.


9 videos, 1 reading expand

1. Video: Episode 7.1: Life Adjustment Education
2. Video: Episode 7.2: The Cold War, McCarthyism, and the Public Schools
3. Video: Episode 7.3: Waging the Cold War in Schools: Federal Support for Academic Rigor
4. Video: Episode 7.4: "Radical Romanticists"
5. Video: Episode 7.5: Education and the Civil Rights Movement: From Plessy to Brown
6. Video: Episode 7.6: The Last Hurrah of Jim Crow Schools
7. Video: Episode 7.7: Busing Goes North: The Limits of Racial Integration
8. Video: Episode 7.8: Community Control and Teacher Unions
9. Video: Episode 7.9: Title IX and the "Hidden Injuries of Coeducation"
10. Reading: Further Learning

Graded: Post-World War II Quiz

WEEK 8


Post-1983



This final module addresses the rise of school choice and charter schools; markers of the evolving (expanded) federal role toward standards and accountability in public schools; significant reauthorizations of Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA); the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2002; the critique of charter schools; school district portfolios of school choice; Teach for America and others markers of teaching as a semi-profession; and post-NCLB developments, including Race to the Top, Common Core Standards, and online learning.


8 videos, 1 reading expand

1. Video: Episode 8.1: Introduction
2. Video: Episode 8.2: The Expanded Federal Role in Education Reform: The Elementary & Secondary Education
3. Video: Episode 8.3: Ramping Up Reform: The Rise of Standards and Accountability
4. Video: Episode 8.4: No Child Left Behind: Still Leaving Children Behind?
5. Video: Episode 8.5: Public School Choice: Charter Schools
6. Video: Episode 8.6: School Choice Run Amok? Diverse Providers and Portfolio Management Models
7. Video: Episode 8.7: Attacking the Ed School's Teacher Education Monopoly
8. Video: Wrap episode
9. Reading: Further Learning

Graded: Post-1983 Quiz