John L. Rury

Suburban Advantage: Opportunity Hoarding and Secondary Attainment in the Postwar Metropolitan North

This study examines urban/suburban differences in educational outcomes in light of Tilly’s conception of “opportunity hoarding.” Data from the U.S. Census reveal the changing circumstances of 17-year-olds in central city and suburban settings across the post–World War II period. Focusing on the metropolitan Northeast and Eastern Midwest, we consider a range of factors associated with differences in educational attainment. Using a multilevel analytic strategy, we find evidence that clear distinctions emerged in this period, marking the educational status of youth in central city and suburban settings. While there were signs of urban/suburban inequality in certain metropolitan contexts and for specific types of suburbs in 1940, 40 years later the urban-suburban divide was clearly evident across all metropolitan settings. A wide range of factors became associated with this form of spatial differentiation in school experiences during the postwar era, suggesting that a prolonged process of systematic exclusion characterized this dimension of metropolitan development. We close with a brief discussion of policy implications for addressing school-related factors that may contribute to these differences.

Democracy’s High School? Social Change and American Secondary Education in the Post-Conant Era

In this article I discuss James Conant’s ideas about the democratic role of the comprehensive high school and address just how those ideas have been treated by history. I consider the historical context of the post–World War II United States, focusing on several issues: (a) race and the growth of school segregation, (b) the rise of a youth culture and the movement for students’ rights, and (c) the changing national economy, especially with respect to rising educational expectations. Drawing on the work of Amy Gutmann and other treatments of democratic education, I assess how these factors changed the prospects for democracy in American high schools. I also examine major policy statements and commission reports concerning secondary education from the 1970s and 1980s. Altogether, it appears that these major historical events converged in the postwar period to make Conant’s vision of the democratic high school problematic, at least in the nation’s large metropolitan areas. Thus the future of democratic education is an open question for the great variety of U.S. youth to be educated in the coming century.

Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago's Public Schools: Benjamin Willis and the Tragedy of Urban Education.

This essay examines the development of schools and educational policies in one city, Chicago, Illinois, during a time when its school system underwent a process of dramatic change. The Chicago schools were led by Superintendent Benjamin Coppage Willis from 1953 to 1966, one of the most widely acclaimed urban school leaders of his time. Public education in Chicago became something of a showcase under Willis’ leadership, but it also ultimately came to exhibit many of the problems of racial inequity and discrimination endemic to the age, most of which he was quite reluctant to acknowledge publicly. Eventually, however, Willis was not able to avoid these issues, and he became embroiled in the growing storm of controversy over racial injustice in education following the historic 1954 Brown decision. The long-standing political arrangements that had guided big city school systems since the progressive era, and which had become so familiar and comfortable for him, proved inadequate to the task of governing urban public education in the era of civil rights. The challenges facing the school leaders of this period were further compounded by the process of suburbanization and the subsequent transformation of urban neighborhoods along the line of race and social class. As Whites left the city in ever-larger numbers, Chicago became a different city in the 1960s, and this presented a host of challenges that its educators had not faced before.1

Social Capital and Secondary Schooling: Interurban Differences in American Teenage Enrollment Rates in 1950

This article considers the influence of social capital on secondary enrollments in American cities in 1950. Data from the U.S. census are utilized to analyze enrollment rates across metropolitan areas with populations greater than 500,000. The effects of adult education levels and poverty rates were linked to social capital; employment patterns and the size of various ethnic groups also affected enrollment levels. Overall, trends were similar to those observed in studies of earlier periods, but this article identifies certain urban milieus where community values may have encouraged high school attendance, representing a departure from earlier patterns. Characteristics of particular communities and forms of social capital related to school attendance are discussed.

Rethinking the history of American education

Introduction: A Multifaceted and Changing Field W.J.Reese & J.L.Rury Literacy, Common Schools, and High Schools in Antebellum America M.Vinovskis & G.Moran The History and Legacy of the Savannah Education Association J.Jones Children in American History N.R.Hiner Historical Perspectives on African American Education M.Fultz Immigration and Education in American History M.Olneck Womens Education in the United States M.A.Nash Higher Education in American History C.Ogren Teacher Education and Teaching in 20th Century America K.Sconzert Curriculum History and Its Response to Revisionism B.Franklin Bridging the Gap between Metropolitan and Educational History J.Dougherty The Evolving Federal Role in American Education A.Nelson On Policy Relevant Knowledge: From the War on Poverty to the War of Ideas E.Lagemann Epilogue: Looking to the Future W.J.Reese & J.L.Rury

American school enrolment in the Progressive era: An interpretive inquiry ∗

∗∗ The research for this paper was supported by the National Institute of Education, Contract No. 400‐79‐0019. The author would like to acknowledge his debt to NIE.

The Political Economy of Women's Work: 1900-1920

Recent work in womens history suggests that the dramatic rise in female labor force participation in the first decades of the twentieth century cannot be understood solely in terms of labor market forces. Although the demand for female labor increased substantially between 1900 and 1920 (Oppenheimer, 1970), such variables as religion, education, ethnicity, and social class interacted to determine the supply of women available for hire at any one time. It should not be surprising, therefore, that “cultural” variables such as these also served to limit the ability of women to improve their position in the labor market generally. This article will examine the ways in which the family and work environments interacted to determine the responsiveness of working women to different sorts of organizations which (theoretically) could have assisted them in altering the basic conditions of their work and family experiences.

“We teach the girl repression, the boy expression”: Sexuality, sex equity and education in historical perspective

Sexuality and sex equity are hardly new issues in American education. Educators, parents, doctors, and other interested parties have been debating these issues for nearly 200 years. This article will focus on the principal arguments in which these concerns appeared during three crucial periods in American history: the antebellum period, the latter 19th century, and the opening decades of the 20th century. As such, it is concerned more with ideology than it is with behavior. But ideas about sexuality in education formed more than 100 years ago continue to exert an important influence today. The terms of debate over issues of sexuality in schooling differed from one period to the next. In each of these periods, however, conceptions of gender in education revolved around a distinctive set of assumptions about male and female sexuality. In Victorian America (from the early 19th century to 1900) it was widely believed that men possessed powerful sexual drives, and that women were naturally passive and morally pure (Smith-Rosenberg & Rosenberg, 1973). Education for men, in that case, often was designed to control or to redirect their supposed sexual energy, while womens education was intended to shield or protect them from the corrupting or otherwise threatening influences of the male world.

An end of innocence: African-American high school protest in the 1960s and 1970s

This paper considers African-American student protests in secondary schools during the 1960s and early 1970s. Taking a national perspective, it charts a growing sense of independence and militancy among black students as they made the schools a focal point of activism. Activist students challenged established civil rights organisations on a variety of questions. They also engaged in an escalating series of protest activities to make schools change. Much of this focused on curricular change, particularly adding black history courses and hiring African-American teachers and principals. Generally, these protests proved quite successful. Black students also protested against conditions encountered in integrated schools, where they often met hostility from whites. Distinct regional patterns characterised such activities, with more protest over school issues in the North and greater conflict regarding desegregation in the South. By the mid-1970s the era of black secondary student protest concluded, although its legacy continues to live.

The Trouble with Coeducation: Mann and Women at Antioch. 1853-1860.

Olympia Brown came to Ohios Antioch College in 1856 in search of a liberal education. At Mount Holyoke Female Seminary she had found too many rules and restrictions: “young ladies are not allowed to stand in the doorway”; “young ladies are not allowed to linger in the halls”; and “we never examine young ladies in Algebra.” Reared in Michigan under the influence of a mother determined to see her daughters fully educated, Brown was attracted to Antioch “by evidence of a broader spirit.” She graduated four years later and went on to become the countrys first ordained female Universalist minister, a womens rights activist, and a vice president of the National Womens Suffrage Association. In the 1850s, however, she was particularly interested in what Antiochs first president, Horace Mann, described as its “Great Experiment”: coeducation.