Diane Ravitch

Learning from the Past. What History Teaches Us about School Reform.

Many Americans view todays problems in education as an unprecedented crisis brought on by the rise of contemporary social problems. In Learning from the Past a group of distinguished educational historians and scholars of public policy reminds us that many current difficulties-as well as recent reform efforts-have important historical antecedents. What can we learn, they ask, from nineteenth-century efforts to promote early childhood education, or debates in the 1920s about universal secondary education, or the curriculum reforms of the 1950s? Reflecting a variety of intellectual and disciplinary orientations, the contributors to this volume examine major changes in educational development and reform, consider how such changes have been implemented in the past, and warn against , exaggerating their benefits. They address questions of governance, equity and multiculturalism, curriculum standards, school choice, and a variety of other issues. Policy makers and other school reformers, they conclude, would do well to investigate the past in order to appreciate the implications of the present reform initiatives.

The schools we deserve : reflections on the educational crises of our times

Introduction Forgetting the Questions: The Problem of Educational Reform The Schools We Deserve The Continuing Crisis: Fashions in Education Bring Literature and History Back to Elementary Schools American Education: Has the Pendulum Swung Once Too Often? Scapegoating the Teachers The Meaning of the New Coleman Report From History to Social Studies: Dilemmas and Problems Curriculum in Crisis: Connections Between Past and Present Is Education Really a Federal Issue? 60s Education, 70s Benefits The Case of Tuition Tax Credits The Uses and Misuses of Tests On the History of Minority Group Education in the United States Integration, Segregation, Pluralism Desegregation: Varieties of Meaning Color-Blind or Color-Conscious? Politicization and the Schools: The Case of Bilingual Education A Good School On Thinking About the Future Prospects

Why Public Schools Need Democratic Governance

By endorsing mayoral control and privatization, the Obama Administration is making a risky bet.

The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980

* Postwar Initiatives * The Rise and Fall of Progressive Education * Loyalty Investigations * Race and Education: The Brown Decision * Race and Education: Social Science and Law * From Berkeley to Kent State * Reformers, Radicals, and Romantics * The New Politics of Education * Epilogue: From 1945 to 1980