“Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day. The seeds of all that were planted long before our official birth date, in 1776, when the men known as our founders formally declared independence from Britain.” The 1619 Project

The history of U.S. education is inherently linked to the history of nation-building, which is why we begin this chapter with this essential framing. Given the current polarizing role of race in our country, we will use the history of slavery to illustrate the difficulty of teaching “hard history” in the United States. In this section, we will trace key historical periods to identify the forces that left lasting influences on American education.

The American educational system has typically been centered around the ideals of meritocracy and equality, promoting the belief that hard work alone guarantees access to the American Dream. However, this conventional narrative often omits that slavery was the economic engine that financed the nation’s birth and early growth, and furthermore that specific laws and policies perpetuated racial inequalities from the antebellum period through to the modern day. This failure to critically reflect on slavery’s role has contributed to deep national divisions. Many within U.S. society struggle to understand the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities because these realities contradict the foundational myths of meritocracy and equality they were taught.

As former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun argued, “to get beyond racism we must first take account of race, there is no other way.” Curricular efforts that address the racism foundational to the nation, such as the 1619 Project, are often met with resistance from those in power. Opponents frequently reject such content, dismissing it as “ancient history,” “shaming,” or “unpatriotic.” However, many scholars argue that ignoring the nation’s history of racial inequity prevents a pluralistic nation from moving forward and achieving healing and growth. Teachers have a critical role to play in “leaning into” teaching hard history. Therefore, teacher preparation programs must effectively equip educators to handle these sensitive, and often highly politicized, topics. While discomfort and disagreement are inevitable, educators must be prepared to navigate environments where local districts may be unsupportive of “unearthing past wrongs.” In this text, we commit to reshaping the traditional narrative by applying a critical lens and including perspectives that have been historically excluded, believing this is essential for the nation’s progress.

Precolonial America

To understand the history of education in the United States, it is important to begin before European colonization. Indigenous nations had complex systems of knowledge, governance, and education that existed for thousands of years. Learning about precolonial history helps educators recognize the enduring contributions of Indigenous peoples and appreciate the diverse foundations of education in North America.

In 1491, it is estimated that there were 2,000 distinct indigenous languages and approximately sixty million people living in the territorial US. Many of these languages still exist today and carry clues of cultural, historical and traditional knowledge. The following video gives you a brief history of these complex and sophisticated communities which populated the Americas:

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Much of what we know of these early communities comes from creation stories and archaeological evidence. Indigenous peoples used agriculture, water management, deforestation practices, controlled burning, and urban development thousands of years before the arrival of Columbus. These practices were driven by a need for shelter, food and clothing for a growing population. Clearly, there were diverse systems of education to pass along such knowledge and ways of knowing. The following film provides more perspective on these innovative practices:

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While oral tradition was the standard across the Americas, the Maya developed a sophisticated and hierarchical educational system tailored specifically for the ruling elite and priesthood. This exclusive curriculum focused on advanced disciplines such as law, history, military strategy, and complex mathematics—including the revolutionary use of the concept of zero and a base-20 system. Their mastery of astronomy allowed for the creation of highly accurate calendars, while their development of the only complete writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas provides modern archaeologists with a detailed record of their civilization. In contrast to this formal elite training, the majority of the population received a practical, informal education centered on vocational skills within their homes and communities.

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In most indigenous communities, storytelling was central to their education or transfer of knowledge. Stories were passed on from generation to generation.  In the following video, Larry Cesspooch tells some of these stories and shares the oral history of the Ute people that was passed down to him by his grandparents:

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For educators today, Indigenous approaches to teaching remind us that learning extends beyond textbooks and written records. Storytelling, observation, community participation, and oral traditions continue to be valuable ways of knowing and teaching. By recognizing and incorporating multiple forms of knowledge, teachers can create more inclusive learning environments that honor the diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences of their students.

North America in the 17th Century

Public education, as we know it today, did not exist in the colonies. In the First Charter of Virginia in 1606, King James I set forth a religious mission for investors and colonizers to disseminate the “Christian Religion” among the Indigenous population, which he described as “Infidels and Savages.” His colonial and educational mission would impact settlement and education in North America for centuries.

Understanding the educational goals of early colonizers helps teachers recognize how schools have historically been used to transmit particular cultural, religious, and political values. Examining this history encourages educators to reflect on whose knowledge is centered in the curriculum and how they can create learning environments that honor multiple perspectives and ways of knowing.

Puritan Massachusetts

Puritans in Massachusetts believed educating children in religion and rules from a young age would increase their chances of survival or, if they did die, increase their chances of religious salvation. Puritans in Massachusetts established the first compulsory education law in the New World through the Act of 1642, which required parents and apprenticeship masters to educate their children and apprentices in the principles of Puritan religion and the laws of the commonwealth. The Law of 1647, also referred to as the Old Deluder Satan Act, required towns of fifty or more families to hire a schoolmaster to teach children basic literacy. Because of similar religious beliefs and the physical proximity of families’ residences, formal schooling developed quickly in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania followed in Massachusetts’ footsteps, passing similar laws and ordinances between the mid- and late-seventeenth century (Cremin, 1972).

During this time, children learned to read at home using the Holy Scriptures and catechisms (small books that summarized key religious principles) as educational texts. The primers that were used “contained simple verses, songs, and stories designed to teach at once the skills of literacy and the virtues of Christian living” (McClellan, 1999, p. 3).

The importance of faith, prayer, humility, rewards of virtue, honesty, obedience, thrift, proverbs, religious stories, the fear of death, and the importance of hard work served as major moral principles featured throughout the texts. When Indigenous people were depicted or mentioned in texts, they were portrayed as “savages and infidels,” needing salvation through English cultural norms. In light of what we now know of the genocide of native peoples, the irony of who was performing the savagery suggests a need for re-examination.

Another form of education occurred in Dame schools. Dame schools were small private schools for young children run by women. Where available, some parents sent their children to a neighboring housewife who taught them basic literacy skills, including reading, numbers, and writing. Because families paid for their children to attend Dame schools, this form of education was mainly available to middle-class families. Teaching aids and texts included Scripture, hornbooks, catechisms, and

primers (Urban & Wagoner, 2009).

More expensive than Dame schools, Latin grammar schools were also available. The Latin grammar schools were originally designed for only sons of certain social classes who were destined for leadership positions in church, state, or courts. The first Latin grammar school was established in Boston in 1635 to teach boys subjects like classical literature, reading, writing, and math at what we would consider the high school level today, in preparation to attend Harvard University (Powell, 2019).

After the American Revolution, this new country was establishing its systems and identity. Many key Founders believed public education was a prerequisite to a democratic society because citizens needed the knowledge and skills to participate in civic life, make informed decisions, and hold their government accountable. Two groups had distinct post-revolutionary plans for education and schooling, both of which were intended to serve as part of the founding process: Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.

Federalist

“History has its eyes on you.”- from the musical “Hamilton”

Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and John Adams, among other Federalists, focused on building a new nation and a new national identity by following the new Constitution, which consolidated power in a new federal government. The Federalists supported mass schooling for nationalistic purposes, such as preserving order, morality, and a nationalistic character, but opposed tax-supported schooling, viewing it as unnecessary in a society where elites rule.

As a Federalist, Noah Webster believed education should teach morality. Noah Webster was one of the great advocates for mass schooling to teach children not just “the usual branches of learning,” but also “submission to superiors and to laws [and] moral or social duties.” Smoothing out the “rough manners” of frontier folk was very important to Webster. Furthermore, Webster placed great responsibility on “women in forming the dispositions of youth” in order to “control…the manners of a nation” and that which “is useful” to an orderly republic (Webster, 1965, 67, 69-77). Webster’s treatise on education and his spellers (like his 1783 American Spelling Book) were intended to develop a literate and nationalistic character to shape useful, virtuous, and law-abiding citizens with strong attachments to Federalist America.

Anti-Federalists

Anti-Federalists, on the other hand, were opposed to a strong central government, preferring instead state and local forms of government. The Anti-Federalists believed that the success of a republican government depended on small geographical areas, spaces small enough for individuals to know one another and to deliberate collectively on matters of public concern. Anti-Federalists feared concentrated power.

As an Anti-Federalist, Thomas Jefferson believed education should be locally controlled. An aristocrat whose genteel lifestyle was bolstered by his violent oppression of enslaved people, Jefferson put forth proposals to educate all White citizens in the state of Virginia. Jefferson proposed a system of tiered schooling. The three tiers were primary schools, grammar schools, and the College of William and Mary. The foundation of his tiered schooling plan included three years of tax-supported schooling for all White children with limited options for a few poor children to advance at public expense to higher levels of education. While he suggested very limited educational opportunities for women, no other key Founder advocated giving high-achieving scholars from poor families a free education. Religion was not a core curricular area in the primary and grammar schools. However, his plans were viewed as too radical by his aristocratic peers, and they correspondingly rejected his state education proposals.

Early National Era (1789-1837)

During the early-to mid-nineteenth century, the United States was expanding westward, and urbanization and immigration intensified. This period of history was defined by the emergence of the common school movement and normal schools, though conflicts over the organization and control of education continued. This period also saw the advent of higher education. Understanding this era helps educators recognize the origins of many features of today’s schooling system, including public schools, teacher preparation programs, and debates about who should have access to education. It also invites reflection on how educational institutions have both expanded opportunities and reinforced inequities over time.

The Common School Movement

Horace Mann established the common school movement and also advocated for normal schools to prepare teachers. He was Massachusetts’s first Secretary of Education and Whig (formerly Federalist) politician, and was the leader of the common school movement, which began in the New England states and then expanded into New York, Pennsylvania, and then into westward states.

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Common schools were elementary schools where all students–not just wealthy boys–could attend for free. Common schools were radical in their status as tax-supported free schooling, but their conservative-leaning curriculum addressed traditional values and political allegiance. Schooling offered increasing opportunities for children, especially those from working-class families, by teaching basic values including honesty, punctuality, inner behavioral restraints, obedience to authority, hard work, cleanliness, and respect for law, private property, and representative government (Urban & Wagoner, 2009).

The Development of Normal Schools

With the rise of common schools, Horace Mann then turned to how female teachers would be educated. For Mann, the answer was to create teacher training institutions originally referred to as normal schools. A French institution dating back to the sixteenth century, école normale was the term used to identify a model or ideal teaching institute. Once adopted in the United States, the institution was simply called a normal school.

Catherine Beecher, the first well-known teacher, became an instructor at a normal school to prepare other teachers. She played a significant role in influencing women to join the profession in large numbers, and made it acceptable for women to leave home and travel afar to become teachers, especially in the western territories of the growing nation.

The first normal school in America was established in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1839 (now Framingham State University). They were primarily used to train primary school teachers, as middle and high schools did not yet exist. The curriculum included academic subjects, classroom management and school governance, and the practice of teaching. Teacher credentialing began and was regulated by state governments. Moreover, this contributed to the professionalization of teaching, and normal schools eventually became colleges or schools of education or full-fledged liberal arts and research institutes. Catherine Beecher was the first well-known teacher of the time and one of the normal schools’ first teachers.

Administrators and policymakers began to see an opportunity in hiring women, mainly because they could justify paying them less than men, and because they were perceived to be gifted at working with children. As men were exiting the profession, more women were hired for less money to educate the growing ranks of students as common schools spread westward. Furthermore, once the profession was feminized, teaching became perceived as a missionary calling rather than an academic pursuit. While male policymakers insisted women were better nurturers and more suited to teaching morality and correct behavior in children, framing the discourse of teaching around a calling helped rationalize lower pay for women and fewer advancement possibilities.

Conflicts in the Common School Movement

The common school movement was not without its conflicts. Whigs (formerly Federalists), including Horace Mann, sought to establish state systems of schooling in order to create standardization and uniformity in curricula, classroom equipment, school organization, and professional credentialing of teachers across state schools. Democrats, however, often supported public schooling but feared centralized government, thus opposing the centralization of local schools under the common school movement. The battle between Whigs and Democrats during the nineteenth century represents one of the initial conflicts related to public schooling.

Another important conflict related to the common school movement was the clash between urban Protestants and Catholics. Typically from Protestant backgrounds, common school reformers continued to use the Bible as a common text in classrooms without considering the potential conflict this could generate in diverse communities. Horace Mann advocated using only generalized Scripture in order to prevent offending different sects. However, what appeared to Protestants as a generalization of Christian text was actually very insulting to Catholic immigrants, who were becoming the second largest group of city dwellers at the time. Protestant education leaders attempted to address this issue by reducing the religious content in the common school curriculum, but unhappy Catholic leaders created their own private parochial schools. This conflict generated a greater theoretical acceptance of the separation of church

and state doctrine in publicly-funded common schools, though in practice, common schooling continued to infuse Protestant biases for over a century.

Common schools also faced conflict in Southern states, including Jefferson’s Virginia, until after the Civil War. Planters had no interest in disturbing the status quo by educating poor Whites or enslaved people. Driven by Southern aristocracy, education continued to be viewed as a private family responsibility and class privilege.

The History of Enslavement: The Maafa

The Maafa is a Swahili term meaning “Great Tragedy” or “Great Disaster.” It is often used to describe the centuries-long history of enslavement, displacement, and atrocities inflicted upon African peoples through the transatlantic slave trade and its lasting consequences.

In Colonial America, education in the mid-Atlantic and southern colonies was heavily stratified and remained inaccessible to most inhabitants. Much of the early recorded history of U.S. education focuses on the experiences of White children, while the educational experiences of Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans are often marginalized or omitted. Beginning in the 1600s, millions of Africans were forcibly taken from their homelands and transported to the Americas, where their labor generated immense wealth and helped build the economic foundations of the emerging nation.

The institution of slavery meant that White landowners sent their children to private schools to train future land owners, and enslaved people were denied the right to an education. Literacy for enslaved people was outlawed and considered dangerous for White inhabitants who controlled all aspects of an evolving society.

Enslaved people have often been depicted in many American history textbooks as passive toward their owners. This misrepresentation is quite problematic and gives people across races a whitewashed, inaccurate understanding of the history of the US and our own individual heritages. African Americans escaped, committed espionage on plantations, negotiated statuses, and educated themselves behind closed doors. For enslaved people, education and knowledge represented freedom and power, and once they were emancipated, they continued their relentless quest for learning by constructing their own schools throughout the South, even with minimal resources. African Americans placed an exceptional value on literacy due to generations of bondage and denial of access to reading and writing. Below you can learn about some of these heroic educators.

It is important to note that enslaved people never stopped transferring knowledge, despite the horrific conditions of American slavery.

“In the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, the Founding Fathers enumerated the lofty goals of their radical experiment in democracy; racial justice, however, was not included in that list. Instead, they embedded protections for slavery and the transatlantic slave trade into the founding document, guaranteeing inequality for generations to come. To achieve the noble aims of the nation’s architects, we the people have to eliminate racial injustice in the present. But we cannot do that until we come to terms with racial injustice in our past, beginning with slavery”. (Hasan Kwame Jeffries, SPLC website)

While slavery continued throughout the South, segregation continued in the North. One of the first challenges to segregation occurred in Boston, Massachusetts. Benjamin Roberts attempted to enroll his five-year-old daughter, Sarah, in a segregated White school in her neighborhood, but Sarah was refused admission due to her race. Sarah attempted to enroll in a few other schools closer to her home, but she was again denied admission for the same reason. Mr. Roberts filed a lawsuit in 1849, Sarah Roberts v. City of Boston, claiming that because his daughter had to travel much farther to attend a segregated and substandard Black school, Sarah was psychologically damaged. The state courts ruled in favor of the City of Boston in 1850 because state law permitted segregated schooling. This case would be cited in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1898 and in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, both of which are pivotal to segregation cases in the US..

Post Civil War and Reconstruction (1863-1877)

Following the Civil War, significant restructuring of political, economic, social, and educational systems in the United States occurred. Political leaders considered education to be a necessary instrument in maintaining stability and unity. During this era, education was shaped by increasing influence of the federal government, the beginning of public education in the South, the Morrill Acts, and Native American boarding schools.

The Beginning of Education in the South

Following the Civil War, nearly four million formerly enslaved people were homeless, without property, and illiterate. In response, Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau (officially referred to as the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands). Supervised by northern military officers, the Freedmen’s Bureau distributed food, clothing, and medical aid to formerly enslaved people and poor Whites and created over 1,000 schools throughout the southern states. The Freedmen’s Bureau lasted only for seven years, but it represented a massive federal effort that provided some benefits.

However, African Americans were primarily responsible for the education of their people. Formerly enslaved people knew the connection between knowledge and freedom. Ignorance was itself oppressive; knowledge, on the other hand, was liberating. Literate African Americans were often teaching children and adults alike and creating their own one-room schoolhouses, even with limited resources. By 1866 in Georgia, African Americans were at least partially financing 96 of 123 evening schools and owned 57 school buildings (Anderson, 1988). The African American educational initiatives caught Northern missionaries off guard: many missionaries were astonished, and later chagrined “…to discover that many ex-slaves had established their own educational collectives and associations, staffed schools entirely with black teachers, and were unwilling to allow their educational movement to be controlled by the ‘civilized’ Yankees” (Anderson, 1988, p. 6).

The educational initiatives created by African Americans during this period continue to influence educational thought today. Educational scholar Gholdy Muhammad traced her Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy Framework to the literacy societies established by Black Americans in the nineteenth century. Her work highlights how these communities viewed education as a means of developing identity, intellect, criticality, skills, and joy—not simply literacy alone.

In addition, industrial schools were built in the South for Black Americans. Southern policymakers, northern industrialists, and philanthropic groups partnered to establish industrial schools focused on vocational or trade skills. Southern policymakers benefited because industrial schools resulted in both segregating the workforce and higher education, which aligned with their values. Northern industrialists benefited because they gained skilled laborers. Philanthropists believed they were giving Black Americans access to education and jobs.

Two African American leaders in the late nineteenth century had distinctly different perspectives on newly-developed industrial schools: Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois

Booker T. Washington advocated for the industrial schools being established for African Americans. Washington believed in giving Black people knowledge of the trades, in order to earn a living. Washington was born an enslaved person in 1856 and grew up in Virginia. He attended the Hampton Institute, whose founder, General Samuel Armstrong, emphasized that “obtaining farms or skilled jobs was far more

important to African-Americans emerging from slavery than the rights of citizenship” (Foner, 2012, p. 652-653). Washington supported this view as head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In his famous 1895 “Atlanta Compromise” speech, Washington did not support “ceaseless agitation for full equality”; rather, he suggested, “In all the things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” (Foner, 2012, p. 653). Washington feared that if demands for greater equality were imposed, it would result in a White backlash and destroy what little progress had been made. The Tuskegee Institute offered vocational training programs to help Blacks find what was considered more “respectable” careers.

W.E.B. Du Bois viewed the situation quite differently. Born free in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868, Du Bois was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He served as a professor at Atlanta University and helped establish the NAACP in 1905 to seek legal and political equality for African Americans. He opposed Washington’s pragmatic approach, considering it a form of “submission and silence on civil and political rights” (Urban & Wagoner, 2009, p. 176). He came from a very different background, lived in different circles in the North, and as a result, could envision a different future for Blacks, one that included upward mobility and higher educational aspirations. The two men are often contrasted for these different perspectives in what they felt was realistic for Black people of the time in terms of their education.

“Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States” – DuBois

The debate between Washington and Du Bois continues to influence educational discussions today. While Washington emphasized vocational preparation and economic advancement, Du Bois advocated for full citizenship, intellectual development, and educational opportunity. Contemporary scholars such as Bettina Love build on the work of abolitionist educators and activists by arguing that education should not merely prepare students to fit within existing systems, but should also empower them to challenge injustice and imagine more equitable futures. Understanding these historical perspectives helps educators reflect on the purposes of schooling and their role in advancing educational equity.

Segregated “Jim Crow” America

“After the Civil War, millions of formerly enslaved African Americans hoped to join the larger society as full and equal citizens. Although some White Americans welcomed them, others used people’s ignorance, racism, and self-interest to sustain and spread racial divisions. By 1900, new laws and old customs in the North and the South had created a segregated society that condemned Americans of color to second-class citizenship”. Separate is not Equal

Of course, southern states followed through with the requirements and drafted language supporting schools, but they created loopholes like separate and segregated schools in the “Jim Crow” era.

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Jim Crow was the White Supremacy system set up to separate and control Black citizens in all areas of civic, political, economic, legal and social life and the schools played a large role. Black schools received substantially lower funding than White schools, creating yet another form of institutionalized racism that would have long-lasting consequences for African American communities, causing a significant wealth gap that persists to this day .

The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890

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In addition to the Freedman’s Bureau, the federal government implemented two legislative acts related to In addition to the Freedman’s Bureau, the federal government implemented two legislative acts related to education. The Morrill Act of 1862 gave states 30,000 acres of land for each senator and representative it had in Congress in 1860. The income generated from the sale or lease of this land would provide financial support for at least one agricultural and mechanical (A&M) college, known as a land-grant institution (Urban & Wagoner, 2009). Land-grant institutions were designed to support the growing industrial economy. The second Morrill Act of 1890 required “land-grant institutions seeking increased federal support…to either provide equal access to the existing A&M colleges or establish separate institutions for the ‘people of color’ in their state” (Urban & Wagoner, 2009, p. 188). The Morrill Acts demonstrated how industrialization and westward expansion resulted in increasing involvement of the federal government in education policy to meet national needs.

Native American Boarding Schools: Cultural Imperialism and Genocide

Throughout history, education has been used for many purposes, including the transmission of knowledge, the preparation of citizens, and the preservation of culture. It has also been used as a tool of assimilation—the process of encouraging or forcing a group to adopt the language, values, and customs of a dominant culture. When these efforts seek to erase a group’s cultural identity, language, traditions, and ways of life, they may be described as cultural genocide. Native American boarding schools provide one of the clearest examples of how education was used as a tool of assimilation in the United States.

Using its military, the federal government created over 400 Native American boarding schools across 37 states. The first and most famous of these was the Carlisle School, founded in Pennsylvania in 1879. The federal government convinced many Native American parents that these off-reservation boarding schools would educate their children and improve their economic and social opportunities in mainstream America. The reality of these schools, however, proved quite different. Supervisors at the boarding schools destroyed children’s native clothing, cut their hair, and renamed many of them with names chosen from the Protestant Bible. The curriculum in these schools taught basic literacy and focused on industrial training; graduates of these boarding schools were to be sorted into agricultural and mechanical occupations. A total of 25 off-reservation boarding schools educating nearly 30,000 students were created in several western states and territories, as well as in the upper Great Lakes region. Fueled by ethnocentrism, the belief that their White Protestant culture was superior to other cultures, these boarding schools relied on a harsh form of assimilation, a fundamental feature of common schooling.

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Extending School Beyond the Primary Level

While high schools existed in New England towns since the establishment of the Boston Latin Grammar School in 1636, it was not until the early nineteenth century that high schools started appearing in urban areas, and they were not commonly attended until the early twentieth century. While common elementary schooling focused on teaching students morality, a differentiated curriculum in the early twentieth century high schools “reflected a new, largely economic, purpose for education” (Urban & Wagoner, 2009, p. 234). Debates arose around the high school curriculum: should it teach a classical curriculum, or focus on vocational training to meet the needs of the rapidly changing economy in the U.S.?

In 1918, the National Education Association published a report called “The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education” to establish the goals of high school education, including “health, command of fundamental processes, worthy home membership, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of leisure, and ethical character” to prepare students “for their adult lives” by “fitting [them] into appropriate social and vocational roles” (Urban & Wagoner, 2009, p. 271-272). The functionalistic nature of high school also resulted in the development of extracurricular programs including, but not limited to, “athletics,” school “newspapers, and school clubs of various kinds” in order to teach “students the importance of cooperation” and to “serve…the needs of industrial society” (Urban & Wagoner, 2009, p. 272-276). This resulted in the high school becoming a major institutional mechanism in developing the future teenager.

Changes beyond high school also occurred in the Progressive Era. It was also during this period that the educational ladder expanded to include not only a system of elementary and high schools, but also junior high schools, community colleges, and kindergartens, which had served as separate private institutions since the mid-nineteenth century. Not only were more children attending school at this time, they were attending for longer periods of time due to protections developed through progressive child labor laws, especially the Child Labor Law of 1938.

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The Progressive Era (1896–1917)

The Progressive Era was defined by reform across all aspects of society, and education was no exception. The Progressive Era fundamentally reimagined the U.S. education system, transforming it from a rigid, elitist structure into a modern, comprehensive tool for social reform. Before this era, schooling was largely characterized by rote memorization, one-room schoolhouses, and high dropout rates after elementary school. During the Progressive Era’s focus on social reform, a variety of approaches emerged focused on two main areas: administration and curriculum/pedagogy.

The administrative progressives wanted education to be as efficient as possible to meet the demands of industrialization and the economy. Efficiency involved centralizing neighborhood schools into larger urban systems, allowing more students to be educated for less money. Graded classes, specialized and differentiated subject areas, ringing bells, an orderly daily itinerary, and hierarchical management–with men serving as school board members, superintendents, and principals, and women on the bottom rung as teachers–also increased educational efficiency. Educational efficiency required preparing good workers for a rapidly changing economy. Administrative progressives adopted factory models in schools to become better at processing and testing the masses, a continued form of educational assimilation.

Similar to actual factories, factory models in education increased efficiency, which was important to administrative progressives.

Curricular or pedagogical progressives were focused on changes in how and what students were learning. Many of these progressives saw schooling as a vehicle for social justice instead of assimilation. John Dewey is often referred to as America’s philosopher and the father of progressivism in education. In Democracy and Education, Dewey (1944) theorized two types of learning: “conservative,” which reproduces the status quo through cultural transmission and socialization, and “progressive,” which frames education more organically for the purposes of experiencing “growth” and activating “potentialities” (p. 41).  For curricular and pedagogical progressives, “progressive” learning has no predetermined outcome and is always evolving, or progressing. Democratic education, Dewey believed, must build on the existing culture or status quo and free students and adults alike toward conscious positive change based on newly-discovered information, improvements in science, and democratic input from all members of the community, which added legitimacy to a society’s growth.

Dewey and like-minded progressives have often been referred to as social reconstructionists. They believed education could improve society. Dewey recognized “the ability of the schools to teach independent thinking and the ability of students to analyze social problems” (Kliebard, 1995, p. 170). Dewey did not expect the school to upend society; rather, as institutions that reached virtually all youth, he saw schooling as the most effective means of developing the habits of critical thinking, cooperative learning, and problem solving so that students could, once they became adults, carry on this same activity democratically in their attempts to improve society. The progressives were often met with contempt because such critique threatened the existing socio-political system, which conservative individuals wished to preserve.

Intelligence Testing

Intelligence Testing was introduced to education following World War I. Based on French psychologist Alfred Binet’s work on intelligence, Louis Terman developed the Binet-Terman scale of intelligence and despite his own impoverished upbringing, eschewed a framework of intelligence based on biological factors. Terman redirected Binet’s work and reduced intelligence to a single number on a scale that he termed the Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Terman  associated intelligence with ethnicity, aligning with pernicious racist and Eugenist ideas of the time, linking certain intelligences to certain groups such as Blacks, Mexicans, Native Americans, and Southern Europeans and anyone with a perceived disability or difference.  Furthermore, Terman portrayed intelligence as something fixed and hereditary, linking intelligence scores to the kind of educational or career opportunities people could access.

These tests had tremendous far-reaching impacts as they were used to sort recruits for World War I, condemning those who scored lower to the front lines and the risk of death, and assigning those who scored higher to safer desk jobs. Terman also strove to test and sort US school children, going on to create national exams to track the nation’s school children in all grades, again with far-reaching intergenerational consequences. While there have been many well-documented critiques of the cultural bias in standardized tests of intelligence (such as Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man), Terman and his colleagues wielded significant influence that still impacts and shapes schools today.

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Post World War II & Civil Rights Era (1940-1949)

In the decades following World War II, the U.S. prospered, and education saw many significant shifts, especially shifting toward equity in educational opportunities. Understanding this period helps educators recognize how struggles for civil rights, access, and educational equity have shaped many of the policies, practices, and debates that continue to influence schools today.

Ongoing Inequities and Federal Funding

The 1945 Senate committee hearings on federal aid to education highlighted ongoing inequities in schooling, as well as the fact that “education was in a state of dire need” of financial resources and more equitable funding (Ravitch, 1983, p. 5). Most school funding came from property taxes, which continued to exacerbate inequities because property values (and thus the collected taxes) are significantly lower in high-poverty communities, leading to stark differences in the per-pupil spending between affluent and low-income school districts. Other changes took place following World War II to worsen already existing inequalities. After the War, “white flight” from the inner city to suburbs resulted in highly-segregated communities, falling urban property values, and rising suburban property values. White flight contributed to greater de facto segregation, and it increased segregated schooling and enhanced inequalities in school funding.

After Russia launched Sputnik in 1957, U.S. federal support of schools increased to allow for global competition. In response to the anxiety created over the launching of the Russian satellite Sputnik, Congress passed the 1958 National Defense Education Act, which provided increased federal funding for math, science, and foreign languages in public schools. Additionally, The National School Lunch Program was passed in 1946 in order to enhance learning through better nutrition. While these examples are not exhaustive, they illustrate the piecemeal federal approach to funding public schools: if a problem was perceived as a national crisis, it was more likely to attract congressional funding.

In 1965, President Johnson worked with Congress in order to pass what became known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The ESEA served as the largest total expenditure of federal funds for the nation’s public schools in history. Aligned with Johnson’s war against poverty, the purpose of the law included increased federal funding for school districts with high levels of poor students. The law included six “Titles” (sections). Title I served as the primary legislative focus and included about 80 percent of the law’s total funding. Title I funds were distributed to poorer schools districts in an attempt to remedy the unequal funding perpetuated by reliance on property taxes. Title VII, or the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, provided funds for schools with students who were speakers of languages other than English. The other Titles provided federal funding for school libraries, textbooks and instructional materials, educational research, and funds to state departments of education to help them implement and monitor the law. This title funding resulted in the growth of state power alongside the expansion of federal power since states gained greater oversight of federal programs and mandates. If you work in a school today, you will likely hear terms such as “Title I school” or “Title programs.” These terms originated with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and refer to federal funding designed to support students in historically underfunded communities. Information gathered through programs such as free and reduced-price meals is often used to help determine funding eligibility. Understanding this history helps educators see how policy decisions continue to influence resources and opportunities available to students.

Separate is not Equal

The landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision began the process of school desegregation, which took several decades.

In 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson established the separate-but-equal doctrine. In its decision, the U.S. Supreme Court circumvented the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, which was intended to give all persons equal rights under the law. The Court strategically interpreted the clause to mean that as long as segregated public facilities were “equal,” they were constitutional.

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision ended the separate-but-equal doctrine. Prior to this ruling, segregation was mandated by law (also called de jure segregation).  The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) found five plaintiffs representing four different states (Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia) and the District of Columbia to challenge segregated primary and secondary schools. All five cases were heard under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Court ruled unanimously in 1954 to overturn Plessy. In his majority decision, Chief Justice Earl Warren made the following conclusion:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group…Any language in contrary to this finding is rejected. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. (347 U.S. 483, 1954)

Even though Brown v. Board found segregation unconstitutional, desegregation faced many challenges from White students, families, educators, and others. White Supremacists actively fought integration and used threats and ultimately force to intimidate communities of color who were trying to gain access.  The US would continue to try to undo the harm of segregated schools for many decades to come, and that work continues, even as schools have grown more segregated in practice.

After ruling segregation unconstitutional, the Court then had to consider a reasonable set of remedies in order to ensure desegregation. In 1955, The Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka II that desegregation would occur “on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed.”  This vague language, particularly the phrase “all deliberate speed,” contributed to chaos and enabled state resistance, with each state and district deciding its own approaches or avoidance thereof (Ryan, 2010).

When attempted integration efforts occurred, they occurred on white terms, determined by white school boards. Desegregation efforts resulted in Black teachers losing their jobs and the closing of their schools. Black students were integrated into White schools and were suddenly being taught by White teachers while being subjected to an all-white curriculum that didn’t include their voices or perspectives.  Black students and teachers alike experienced “cultural dissonance that exacerbated student rebelliousness, especially among African American boys.” Furthermore, “the actual implementation of integration plans and court orders remained largely in the hands of white school boards” (Fairclough, 2007, p. 396-400). Due to massive resistance to desegregation, Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in an attempt to force compliance. Following the passage of ESEA, which provided millions of federal dollars to each state, the federal government could now threaten non-compliant states (and school systems) with withholding these large sums of money annually under Title VI of the act if they did not comply with the mandate to desegregate schools.

Video 2.12

 QR -Video 2.12

As you saw in the video above, thousands of Black teachers and administrators were fired.

• Why do you think such a decision was made, and what impact did it have on Black children and desegregation efforts?
• As you reflect, consider how the loss of thousands of Black educators may have contributed to the underrepresentation of teachers and school leaders of color that continues in many schools today.
• What does this example teach us about the long-term impact of educational policies and decisions?

Busing children to different schools not in their neighborhoods was one attempt to increase racial diversity in schools.

Many urban school systems began drawing plans to bus White and Non-White children to schools across neighborhoods in order to increase racial diversity in all of a district’s schools (i.e., Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 1971). However, in 1974 in Milliken v. Bradley, the U.S. Supreme Court decided schools were not responsible for desegregation across district lines if their own policies had not explicitly caused the segregation. President Nixon, who opposed inter-district busing, argued that in order to protect suburban schools, inner city schools should be given additional funds and resources to compensate urban school children from the harms of past segregation and the legacies of inequitable funding (LCCHR, n.d.). According to Ryan (2010), “Nixon’s compromise, broadly conceived to mean that urban schools should be helped in ways that [did] not threaten the physical, financial, or political independence of suburban schools… continues to shape nearly every modern education reform” (p. 5). The Milliken decision halted any possibility to integrate schools effectively. Due to the existence of de facto segregation, there was no way to significantly integrate students unless they crossed district boundaries.

Nixon also worked with Congress to pass the 1974 Equal Educational Opportunities Act. This legislation embodied the rights of all children to have equal educational opportunities, and it included particular consideration to Multilingual Learners. The EEOA prohibited states from denying equal educational opportunity on account of race, color, sex, or national origin. Moreover, the EEOA prohibits states from denying equal educational opportunity by the failure of an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs.

Increasing Access to Education for Minority Groups

The African American Civil Rights Movement gave hope to Mexican and Asian Americans, as well as women, people with disabilities, and to a lesser extent, Native Americans. Like African Americans, Mexican Americans utilized the courts to overturn segregated schools in the southwest, particularly in Texas and California. In fact, the earliest segregation case was filed by Mexican Americans in 1931 in Lemon Grove, California[7]. Other cases would be filed in the 1940s and 1950s, including Mendez v. Westminster[8] in 1947.

Women continued to fight for equal pay and respect in the workplace, and some success was achieved in the passage of Title IX as one of the amendments to the 1972 Higher Education Act. Title IX “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity” in “colleges, universities, and elementary and secondary schools,” as well as to “any education or training program operated by a receipt of federal financial assistance,” including intercollegiate athletic activities (The U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.).

A class action suit in San Francisco, California, led to legal rights for English Language Learners. In Lau v. Nichols (1974), parents of approximately 1,800 diverse multilingual  students alleged that their Fourteenth Amendment equal protection rights had been violated because because they could not access the language of instruction. The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the school district violated Section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination based “on race, color, or national origin” in “any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” As recipients of federal funds, schools were required to respond to the needs of English language learners effectively, whether this meant implementing bilingual education, English immersion, or some other method of instruction. The Court concluded, “There is no equality of treatment by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers and curriculum, for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.”

Children with differing educational needs due to variety of differences and disabilities had been excluded from many educational opportunities. Prior to 1972, students with special needs had no access to a public education and were largely neglected in terms of any academic development in institutions and private residences. In 1972, Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (PARC) v. Commonwealth  of Pennsylvania guaranteed the rights of disabled children to attend free public schools. Congress followed up in 1973 by enacting the Rehabilitation Act, which guaranteed civil rights for people with disabilities, including appropriate accommodations and individualized education plans to tailor education for students based on their unique needs. Providing children special educational services in least restrictive settings was required by the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act. “Least restrictive”  essentially means that students with special needs should be in the same classrooms with other students as much as possible with the least restrictions possible. The video below shows the horrific atrocities that such students used to face in state-run boarding schools.

The disability rights movement helped transform the conversation from one of access alone to one of inclusion and belonging. Disability activists advocated not only for the right to attend public schools, but also for the right to participate fully in school and society. These efforts influenced educational approaches such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which encourages teachers to design instruction that is accessible to a wide range of learners from the beginning rather than making accommodations after barriers arise. Many educators have found that strategies designed to support students with disabilities ultimately benefit all learners.

One example of disability rights activism is the documentary Crip Camp, which highlights how young people with disabilities organized and advocated for greater civil rights and accessibility. Their efforts contributed to broader disability justice movements and continue to shape conversations about equity, inclusion, and educational access today.

The 1980s and Beyond

In the 1980s and beyond, education saw increasing federal supervision and support, though ultimate control of education still remained with individual states. In this period, the Department of Education was established, and the A Nation at Risk report led to standards-based reforms like No Child Left Behind,.

Establishing the Department of Education

While the federal government has no constitutional authority over public education, its power and influence over schooling reached a pinnacle after the 1980s. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter created the federal Department of Education.  The Department of Education does not establish curriculum or operate local schools. Instead, it administers federal education programs, distributes funding, collects educational data, supports research, and helps enforce federal laws. Through its Office for Civil Rights, the Department investigates complaints related to discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, and age. It also plays a key role in implementing laws related to students with disabilities, English learners, and students from low-income communities. Ronald Reagan, who succeeded Carter, tried and failed to abolish it. Reagan’s neo-conservative followers largely consisted of traditionalists and evangelicals. The traditionalists believed moral standards and respect for authority had been declining since the 1960s, while evangelicals (also known as the Religious Right) were concerned by increasing U.S. secularism and materialism (Foner, 2012). For example, in Engel v. Vitale (1962), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that directed prayer in public schools was a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which forbids the state (public schools and their employees) from endorsing or favoring a religion. While the Religious Right saw this decision as taking God out of America’s public schools, the Court viewed separation of church and state as necessary to protect religious freedoms from government intrusion.

A Nation at Risk and Standards-Based Reform

In 1981, Reagan created the National Commission on Excellence in Education to address the perceived problems of educational decline. In 1983, the commission’s 71-page report, A Nation at Risk, raised an alarm by famously describing the “rising tide of mediocrity” threatening U.S. schools. The authors of the report, who were primarily from the corporate world, declared, “American students never excelled in international comparisons of student achievement and that this failure reflected systematic weaknesses in our schools and lack of talent and motivation among American educators” (Berliner & Biddle, 1995, p. 3). However, critics considered A Nation at Risk “sensational” (Urban & Wagoner, 2009, p. 402), containing numerous claims that were uncorroborated or contained misleading generalizations as a pretense for a larger political agenda intended to discredit public schools and their teachers.

Developing the perception that America’s schools were in crisis, A Nation at Risk justified a top-down, punitive approach to school reform. While state-by-state standards-based reform had been underway for several years, A Nation at Risk inspired new theories about ‘systemic’ reform, which emphasized renewing academic focus in schools, holding teachers accountable for educational outcomes, measured by students’ academic achievement, and aligning teacher preparation and pedagogical practice with content standards, curriculum, classroom practice, and performance standards” (DeBray, 2006, p. xi).

President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act Jan. 8, 2002, at Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio.

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001) was an example of standards-based reform. As a bipartisan-passed reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it was “the first initiative to truly bring the federal government as a regulator into American public education” (Fabricant & Fine, 2012, p. 13). Previously, the federal government’s control of schools typically extended only to funding; now, NCLB would hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for passing standardized tests given annually in math and reading in grades 3-12. The law also required states to test English language learners for oral, written, and reading proficiency in English each year. Often unacknowledged, this bipartisan bill was intended to address inequities in US schools and while the implementation was far from perfect, certain aspects remain:

1. Accountability for student performance on biased standardized tests; public characterization of schools as succeeding or failing based on those scores
2. Heightened communication with parents and the community at large
3. Data-driven decision making  to guide school improvement (looking at relationship between academic achievement and race)
4.  Enhanced preparation of educators; requirements for teachers to be “highly qualified” in their content areas (qualified math teachers are teaching math)

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was originally enacted to promote equity by addressing poverty in U.S. schools. However, historically, parents often lacked information about school performance. The federal government, through ESEA and subsequent reauthorizations, played a critical role in checking local and state control to ensure standards are met. Specifically, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) sought to change this by demanding transparency. Initially, NCLB received strong progressive support because its promise of setting uniform standards and expectations was seen as a vital way to raise achievement in schools primarily serving students of color and low-income families.

However, NCLB’s acute focus on the results of narrow standardized tests resulted in teachers ‘teaching to the test’ using uniform curricula that have little or no connection to an increasingly diverse student population.  Not only did NCLB publicize school performance on standardized tests, it punished schools that performed poorly. Schools that failed to meet state-defined standards for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for two or more consecutive years could be publicly labeled as schools “in need of improvement,” requiring the provision of free tutoring, giving parents the right to transfer their children to better schools, and eventually mandating more severe organizational changes such as restructuring or staff replacement. The punitive nature of the law harmed many students, teachers, and administrators. Madaus et al. (2009) asserted that as a result of changes arising from NCLB, testing “is now woven into the fabric of our nation’s culture and psyche,” which is evidenced by the fact that even “the valuation of homes in a community can increase or decrease based on [school] rankings” based on test scores (p. 4-5). NCLB is based on a theory of action that assumes that uniformity, standardization, centralization, and punitive measures can compel learning and decrease achievement gaps. The assumption that all children learn uniformly in all respects reveals a lack of understanding of the complexity of the learning process and the various demographic differences among children in a diverse society, including cultural, language, and ability differences.​​

Post No Child Left Behind ( 2009- present)

The current U.S. education system is primarily defined by a shift in federal policy toward greater state and local control following the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in late 2015, which fully took effect in 2017. Signed by President Obama, ESSA replaced the highly prescriptive, accountability-focused No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). While ESSA maintained annual standardized testing, it granted states significant flexibility in designing their own accountability systems, setting goals, and determining how to intervene in struggling schools. States were required to use a multiple-measure accountability system (e.g., test scores, graduation rates, school climate, and student growth) rather than relying almost exclusively on test scores, which was the core failure of NCLB.

By specifically tying federal funds to standardized assessments, standardized curricula, and accountability measures, along with requiring states and state education agencies to devote extraordinary resources toward fulfilling these mandates through oversight, since 2001 the federal government has more actively controlled America’s public schools than ever before. Increased federal influence illustrates the underlying belief that if the U.S. is going to maintain economic superiority and global competitiveness, public schooling must become a national responsibility.

The Trump Administration

The post-Obama era has seen an intensified focus on educational themes outside of federal compliance, including the expansion of school choice (charter schools and vouchers), especially under the Trump administration, and a heightened public debate over curriculum content, often referred to as “culture wars.” Issues such as the teaching of race and history (“critical race theory”), LGBTQ+ inclusion, and parental rights have become major flashpoints, increasing pressure on local school boards and educators. These tensions reflect the broader political polarization in the country, often overriding consensus on evidence-based instructional reforms. This decentralization of accountability from the federal level has led to a more varied and complex national landscape.

Most recently, the Trump administration has initiated sweeping changes aimed at drastically reducing the federal government’s role in education and reorienting policy toward parental choice, workforce development, and conservative cultural priorities. A key action has been the effort to dismantle the Department of Education itself, through executive orders and interagency agreements that transfer control and administrative functions for major programs, including K-12 and postsecondary education, to other federal agencies like the Departments of Labor and Interior.

In higher education, a central focus has been the aggressive crackdown on what the administration terms “woke” policies, leading to the elimination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across federal agencies and a concerted campaign against colleges using race or sex in admissions and hiring. These actions, coupled with significant staff and budget cuts to the Department of Education, particularly within the Office for Civil Rights, and programs such as Bilingual Education have signaled a profound shift away from federal oversight on civil rights and equity, prioritizing deregulation and the devolution of educational authority to states and parents.

Conclusion

Education in the United States has a complicated past entrenched in religious, economic, national, and international concerns. In Colonial America, Puritans in Massachusetts expected that education would teach children the ways of religion and laws, vital to their own survival in a new world. Meanwhile, the Middle and Southern Colonies viewed education as a commodity for the wealthy families who could afford it, and a way to perpetuate their economic slavery-based economic system. After the American Revolution, Federalists and Anti-Federalists had different perceptions of how schools should be organized to support our newly-established independent nation. In the Early National Era, common schools, normal schools, and higher education grew as education became more widely established. Many groups were excluded from the early educational system due to racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, to name a few, reflecting the dominant narrative of the times which was White-centered, English-speaking, Protestant, patriarchal and ableist.

Following the Civil War, the federal government became increasingly involved in education, including the temporary creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau and subsequent federal funding of agricultural and mechanical colleges with the passage of the Morrill Acts.

In the Progressive Era, efforts to maximize the efficiency of educational systems and to utilize education as a venue for social reform prevailed. At the same time, Black communities, Indigenous peoples, immigrants, women, and other marginalized groups continued to advocate for greater educational access and opportunity. After World War II, equitable access to education became a primary focus as civil rights activists, disability advocates, women’s rights advocates, and other community leaders challenged institutional discrimination and fought to expand educational opportunities. Their efforts helped dismantle “separate-but-equal” doctrines and reshape schools for non-White students, students with disabilities, women, English Learners, and other historically excluded groups.

The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act provided federal funds to public schools, while states and local school districts continued to exercise considerable discretion over curriculum, assessments, and teacher certification. In the 1980s and beyond, increased pressures for standardization and accountability resulted in standards-based reform, including the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. More recently, education has been leveraged to support all of a students’ developmental needs, not just academic. The tension between federal and local control of education remains a political seesaw, with the balance of power often shifting based on the priorities of the current presidential administration.

Our public schools have always had to contend with moral, economic, political, religious and social conflict. According to Britzman (as quoted by Kelle, 1996), “the context of teaching is political, it is an ideological context that privileges the interests, values, and practices necessary to maintain the status quo.” Teaching is by no means “innocent of ideology,” she declares. Rather, the context of education tends to preserve “the institutional values of compliance to authority, social conformity, efficiency, standardization, competition, and the objectification of knowledge” (p. 66-67).

It should be no surprise then that contemporary debates over public education continue to reflect our deepest ideological differences. As Tyack and Cuban (1995) have noted in their historical study of school reform, the nation’s perception toward schooling often “shift [s]… from panacea to scapegoat” (p. 14). As long as we task the classroom with solving the nation’s most complex social and economic anxieties, the pendulum will continue to swing. The ‘panacea’ of one generation inevitably becomes the ‘scapegoat’ of the next, leaving the fundamental structure of American education in a state of perpetual, yet often circular, evolution.”

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Images

2.1 – “Government & Heritage Library, State Library of NCFollow Old Pomona Rural School, Morehead Township, Guilford County” by Flickr is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.2 – “Alphabet from New England Primer, 1721” by Picryl is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.3 – “The Indians Marching Upon a Visit Onto a Feast Lacenta his Lady and Attendants” by Getarchive is in the Public Domain, CC0

2.4 – “Noah Webster” by Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.5 – “Thomas Jefferson” by Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.6 – “Horace Mann” by Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.7 – “Catherine Beecher” by Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.8 – “Common School 32, Trout Creek, NY” by Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.9 – “Booker T. Washington” by Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.10 – “W.E.B. Du Bois” by James E. Purdy, 1907, Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.11 – ” Portrait photo of Havasupai Indian school, Cataract Canyon” by GetArchive is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.12 – “Colonizing the Future” by Françoise Foliot , Mronline is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.13 – “Brown Vs. Board Mural “ by Joe Shlabotnik, Flickr is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.14 – “Separate Schools”Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.15 – “School Bus” by Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.16 – “President George W. Bush Signs No Child Left Behind Act” by Getarchive is in the Public Domain

Videos

2.1 – “1491: What Was Life Really Like For The Early Indigenous Americans? | 1491 | Chronicle” by Chronicle – Medieval History Documentaries is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.2 – “Native American societies before contact | Period 1: 1491-1607 | AP US History” by Khan Academy is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

2.3 – “Introduction to Indigenous Knowledge” by EP 8 of Crash course Native American History is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.4 – “Ancient Maya 101” by National Geographic is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.5 – “Ute Wisdom, Language and Creation Story” by Larry Cesspooch, TEDxYouth is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.6 – “CodedSpirituals PBS Learning Current” by Ginger Jantz, Youtube is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.7 – “The Origins of the American Public Education System: Horace Mann & the Prussian Model of Obedience” by Police State USA, Youtube is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.8 – “Radical Republicans From PBS’s Reconstruction: The 2nd Civil War” by Clinton Poskozim, Youtube is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.9 – “Origins of the Jim Crow Era – One Minute History” by Choices Program, Youtube is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.10 – “The Legacy and the Promise: 150 Years of Land-Grant Universities” by Penn State Outreach, Youtube is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.11 – “Interior secretary addresses child deaths at Native American boarding schools” by CBS News, YouTube is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.12 – “Child Labor Reform in the Progressive Era” by NBC News Learn, YouTube is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.13 – “Progressive Education in the 1940s” by Daniel JB Mitchell, YouTube is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.14- Lewis Terman IQ Testing and Eugenics by UWaterlooPsych380  Youtube website . YouTube is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2.15 – “The Unintended Consequences of Brown v. Board of Education” by KUFMS, YouTube is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

2.16 – “Special Education: The 50-Year Fight for the Right to Learn” by RetroReport, YouTube is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0