Educ 300:
Education Reform — Past and Present
Trinity College
Spring 2002
T & R 11:20-12:35pm McCook 307
http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/educ
Jack Dougherty, Asst Prof of Educational Studies
Office: McCook 302, 297-2296
Hours: T & R 1:15-3:30pm, and by appointment
Email: jack.dougherty@trincoll.edu
Introduction:
How do we explain the rise and
decline of school reform movements? How do we evaluate their level of
“success” from different sources of evidence? Drawing upon primary
source materials and historical interpretations, this course examines a broad
array of education reform movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the
present, analyzing social, material, political, and ideological contexts. This
intermediate-level seminar explores a topic common to all branches of
educational studies from both theoretical and comparative perspectives.
Prerequisite: Ed 200 or permission of instructor
Readings available at the bookstore:
Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic. (Hill and Wang, 1983). ISBN 8090-0154-3
James Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education (Oxford, 2001). 0-19-512716-1
Constance Curry, Silver Rights (Harcourt Brace, 1995). ISBN 015-600479-8
OR
David Cecelski, Along Freedom Road (UNC Press, 1994) ISBN 08078-4437-3
Additional readings will be made available in class and/or on Blackboard.
Assessment:
Focus Papers:
Use web browser to access Blackboard for this class (http://my.trincoll.edu)
If question is assigned to you, write a one-page response based on readings
Post your response at 9pm on the evening before class meets
Print copy for yourself and be prepared to discuss in class
3 Focus Papers @ 10 points = 30%
Midterm Exam 24-hour open-book take-home (February 28-March 1) 15%
Research Paper Proposal
on historical or policy topic, following guidelines to be distributed
due March 14 at beginning of class 10%
Team Presentation: Policy Analysis Case Study (evaluated by classmates) 10%
Research Paper Final Draft (suggested length 10 pages, due April 30, 3pm) 25%
Final Exam 2-hour open-book take-home on Part II (dates TBA) 10%
Be advised that adequate work earns a C, good work earns a B, and outstanding work earns an A in this class. Students are expected to engage in academic honesty in all forms of work for this course. If this is unclear to you, ask me for clarification. The penalty for overdue assignments will be 10% for every 12-hour period beyond the deadline, with exceptions granted only for documented medical or family emergencies.
Please notify me during the first week of the course if you require any special accommodations.
Case Studies for Policy Analysis Teams, in Part II:
1) The “No Child Left Behind” Act, recently approved by US Congress and President Bush, requires increased state-level testing and accountability to close the gap between rich and poor students
2) Gov. John Rowland recently proposed state legislation for private school vouchers, with support from organizations based at Trinity, such as the Yankee Institute
3) “Universal Pre-Kindergarten” supporters, at the forefront of a growing national movement, call for publicly-funded early childhood education for four-year-olds
4) Advocates of Hartford-area magnet schools (at the Learning Corridor and elsewhere) seek additional funding and wider levels of student participation
5) Prominent institutions of higher education, such as the University of California, propose to replace the SAT with different admissions decision tools
6) Faced with critical teacher shortages, both the Hartford Public Schools and the State of Connecticut launch “alternate route” teacher certification programs
Part I: Education Reform in the Past
Tues Jan 15 Syllabus, Blackboard, and the Common-school Movement
During Part I, we examine school reform during four different historical periods:
•
the common-school movement of the mid-nineteenth century (1830s-70s)
• Progressive-era school reform (1890s-1920s)
• struggles between equity and excellence movements from 1950s-80s
• the evolving federal role in education from 1954 to the present
We ask four major questions*:
1) What is the purpose of schooling, as seen through the eyes of each reform?
2) How do we define the “success” of a particular reform movement?
- by its degree of faithfulness to the original design?
- by its effectiveness in meeting preset outcomes?
- by the longevity of the reform itself?
3) How do we explain the rise and decline of particular reform movements?
- links between schooling and the broader social and material context?
the ideological and political context?
4) How can we better understand school reform movements through divergent historical source materials and contested historical interpretations?
Distinguish between historical sources versus historical interpretations
• Analyze historical sources (aka primary sources) by asking the standard who/what/when/where/why questions, plus these:
Who created this source, and what was his/her intent and audience?
What does the source reveal (or obscure) about the context of its time?
How is language in this source used differently than in our own time?
What does this type of source material (such as a photograph, diary, newspaper, interview, school text) reveal that a different type may not?
• Analyze historical interpretations (aka secondary sources) by asking the standard who/what/when/where/why questions, plus these:
What is the author’s argument (or thesis, or claim)?
What parts of the interpretation should be read closely? Or broadly?
What evidence is most persuasive? Least persuasive? Or overlooked?
How does this interpretation compare to others we have studied?
What does the author’s interpretation tell us about the context of the period in which it was created?
In Class: Post sample sentence on Ed 300 Blackboard
Indicate Preferences for Policy Analysis Topics in Part II of course
*Drawn partly from David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 1995).
SPECIAL
LOCATION: Watkinson Library (basement of main library)
In this workshop, we analyze 19th-century common school textbooks from the Henry Barnard Collection, Watkinson Library, Trinity College. Selections include:
Additional Sources:
Ruth
Elson, Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth
Century. (Lincoln, 1964).
Stanley Lindberg, The Annotated McGuffey. (New York, 1976).
Tue Jan
22 The
Context and Ideology of Common-School Reformers
What purpose did common-school reformers envision? What changes were achieved?
How did the broader historical context shape their views and actions?
How did men’s and women’s roles as teachers change during this period?
Why did some coalitions of dissenters rise up against the common schools?
Read:
Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic. (New York: 1983), preface & chps. 4-6.
Horace Mann, "Intellectual Education as a Means of Removing Poverty and
Securing Abundance." (1842).
In Class:
Statistical Indicators of Social & Economic Change in the US, 1800-1860
Political cartoon by Thomas Nast, “The American River Ganges: The Priests
and the Children” Harper’s Weekly (September 1871)
Thur Jan 24 Common-School
Reformers, Teachers, and Dissenters
Read:
Catherine Beecher, “Remedy for Wrongs to Women” (1846).
Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, chapters 7-9.
In Class:
Statistics on Teachers Hired in Massachusetts, 1834-1860
Prudence Crandall in Connecticut
Role-playing simulation on three views of common-school reform
Additional Sources:
Nancy Hoffman, ed., Women’s “True” Profession (1981).
Tue Jan
29 The
Multiple Meanings of “Progressive” Education
What did “Progressive” education mean to different constituents?
How did their ideologies and surrounding contexts influence their thinking?
How and why have historians interpreted this period in different ways?
Which historical interpretations of this period are the most persuasive accounts?
Read:
“High School Curriculum proposed by Cmte. of Ten”, table II (1893),
reprinted from George Willis, ed., The American Curriculum, (1993).
National Center for Educational Statistics, 120 Years of American Education,
pp. 25-32. (http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=93442)
John Dewey, The School and Society (1900), pp. 3-29.
Jane Addams, “Educational Methods” (1902) and “The Humanizing Tendency
of Industrial Education” (1904).
Ellwood P. Cubberley, "The Organization of School Boards." (1916).
In Class:
Archival Photographs of Dewey’s Lab School, University of Chicago
http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/photo_album/1900s/
Thu Jan 31 Progressive Reform: Intelligence Testing and “The Gary Plan”
Read:
Robert Yerkes, "The Mental Rating of School Children." (1919).
Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (1981), example of Beta test
“The Assessment Culture,” Education Week, Lessons of a Century (1999) http://www.edweek.org/sreports/century6.htm
read “Made to Measure”
read “Pioneers of Modern Testing” [Thorndike, Terman, Yerkes]
Franklin Bobbitt, “The Elimination of Waste in Education” (1912).
Margaret Haley, “The Factory System” (1924).
John and Evelyn Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow [on Gary, Indiana]. (1915).
Additional Sources:
Nicholas
Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American
Meritocracy. (New York, 1999).
Tue Feb 5 African-American Education at the Turn of the Century
How were Washington’s and DuBois’s educational views shaped by their contexts?
How did African-American students actually experience these reforms?
Read:
Robert Margo, Race and Schooling in the South (1990), selected data tables.
biographical summaries of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois
Booker T. Washington, “Industrial Education for the Negro” (1903).
http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/wash_b04.htm
W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth” (1903).
http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/dubo_b05.htm
and“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” Souls of Black Folk (1903)
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/text/1642d-WEB.html
James Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, (1988), chp. 2 excerpts
Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial Institute, Catalogue 1913-14.
[see Blackboard – Course Documents]
Additional Sources:
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1900). Full text online at
http://docsouth.unc.edu/washington/washing.html
Booker T. Washington Papers, photos of Tuskegee Institute, 1902 & ‘06
begins at: http://www.historycoop.org/btw/gallery/g30.html
How did various teachers and students experience Progressive-era school reform?
Did educational policy influence classroom-level instructional practice?
Read:
David
Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the
Boarding School Experience. (Kansas, 1995), pp. 97-112.
Carlisle Indian Industrial School (1879-1918) website http://home.epix.net/~landis/index.html
read “Homepage” and “History”
Larry Cuban, “Part I: Progressivism and Classroom Practice, 1890-1940”, in
How Teachers Taught. (New York, 1984).
Tue Feb 12
Conflicting Historical Interpretations of Progressive Education
How have different historians interpreted the Progressive education movement?
How have these historians’ viewpoints shaped by the context in which they wrote?
Read:
Lawrence Cremin, Transformation of the School. (1961), preface, pp. 135-142.
David Tyack, The One Best System (1974), pp. 126-9, 182-91.
S. Bowles & H. Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America (1976), p.180-1, 191-5.
Diane Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade (1983), pp. 43-48.
Thur Feb
14 African-American
Strategies Leading up to Brown v. Board
How did black school reform strategies evolve in the years leading up to Brown?
How did the US Supreme Court justify the overturning of Plessy v Ferguson?
Read:
James T. Patterson, Brown v Board of Education (New York, 2001),
preface and chapters 1-3.
W.E.B.
DuBois, “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?” Journal of Negro
Education 4 (1935): 328-335. [see Blackboard – Course Documents]
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, (1954).
In Class:
Separate But Equal, excerpt from fictionalized video (1991).
“Punching-American Style” cartoon, Milwaukee Sentinel, May 21, 1954
No Class – continue reading Patterson
Thur Feb 21 Black
and White Responses in the Years after Brown
Read:
Patterson, Brown v Board, chapters 4-7
“Their Day in Court: Selected US Supreme Court Rulings affecting School Segregation,” adopted from Education Week, Lessons of a Century, (1999)
http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-18/28cases.h18
In Class:
Eyes on the Prize, “Fighting back (1957-1962),” [excerpts from the Little Rock Crisis of 1957], video by Blackside, Inc., (1986). VID 0272 part 2.
How did two different African-American communities in the South experience school desegregation in the late 1960s?
Read:
Constance Curry, Silver Rights (1995) [Sunflower County, Mississippi]
David Cecelski, Along Freedom Road (1994) [Hyde County, North Carolina]
Thur Feb 28 History
and Policy in the post-Brown era
Read:
Patterson, Brown v Board, chapters 8-10 and appendix II
Robert L. Carter, “A Reassessment of Brown v Board,” in Derrick Bell, ed.,
Shades of Brown: New Perspectives on School Desegregation (NY, 1980).
In Class:
Overview of Historical Unit
Distribute 24-hour take-home midterm, due Fri March 1st at noon
Additional Sources:
Gary Orfield and John T. Yun, “Resegregation in American Schools,” The
Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 1999
http://www.law.harvard.edu/civilrights/publications/resegregation99.html
Read:
Educ 300 Research Proposal Guidelines
In Class:
Brainstorming on appropriate research questions for Ed 300 papers
Research Tools for Educational Studies website
Recommended: Schedule time to meet with professor about proposals
Note:
Be sure to visit Watkinson Library to examine Trinity 1960s source materials
prior to the next class
Thur March 7 Higher Education Reform: Trinity College in the 1960s
What factors sparked the Black issues protests and coeducation movement in 1968?
How do different types of sources portray – or obscure – the history of these events?
Read: [see Blackboard – Course Documents]
newspaper clippings on Trinity Students’ Lock-In, April 1968
Dean of Faculty Robert Fuller, Memo to President Lockwood, “The Admission
of Women Undergraduates to Trinity College,” 30 September 1968
“Coeducation: The First 20 Years,” Trinity Reporter (Fall 1990), pp. 11-31.
Selected Admissions Statistics, Trinity College, 1967 to present
Compare with other sources at Trinity College Archives in Watkinson Library:
Tripod [student newspaper], Spring 1968 to Fall 1969
Bulletin [course catalog], 1966-72
Trinity Handbook [information and policies on student life], 1967-68 to 71-72
Trinity Ivy [student yearbook], 1967-1974
President Theodore Lockwood [1968-81], oral history with Peter Knapp, 1981
Prof. Noreen Channels, “Survey of Trinity College Alumnae,” Spring 1990
Keith Miles, “A Statistical Analysis of the Trinity College Student Body with
Specific Reference to the Demonstration of April 22, 1968.” (1968).
Additional Sources:
Peter Knapp, Trinity College Archivist, phone 297-2269
Peter
Knapp with Anne Knapp, “Chapter 6: Currents of Change,” Trinity
College in the Twentieth Century (Hartford, 2000).
Helen
Lefkowitz Horowitz, Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the
End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present. (Chicago, 1987).
Tue March 12
Equity v. Excellence – Critiques of Public Schools, 1950s-70s
On what grounds did different critics base their charges against public schooling?
Read:
“1950s: Progressives Under Fire” and
“1960s: New Progressives,” in Education Week: Lessons of a Century (1999).
http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-18/32excerpts.h18
“Famous Educator’s Plan” [James B. Conant’s Comprehensive High School],
Life Magazine (14 April 1968): 120-121.
In Class:
Blackboard Jungle, video directed by Richard Brooks (1955). VID 1954
Images from the “Crisis in Education” series, Life Magazine (1958).
High School, video documentary by Frederick Wiseman (1968). VID 2583
Additional Sources:
Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education,” in Robert Solo, ed.,
Economics and the Public Interest. (New Brunswick, 1955). http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/fried1.htm
Daniel Perlstein, “Imagined Authority: Blackboard Jungle and the Project of
Educational Liberalism.” Paedogogica Historica 36 (2000): 407-424.
David Hill, “High School Reunion” [on F. Wiseman films], Education Week
(7 Sept 1994). http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=01wisema.h14
Read:
National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation At Risk. (1983)
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html
see “Introduction” and “A Nation At Risk”
Erik Robelen, “ESEA to Boost Federal Role in Education,” and
“An ESEA Primer” Education Week (9 January 2002).
http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=16esea.h21
In Class:
Selected Examples of Federal Involvement in Education, 1954-present
The Merrow Report, In Schools We Trust, videotape (1997).
Notes: Research proposals DUE at the beginning of class
Part II: Education Reform in the Present
During Part II, we draw insights from conceptual readings in policy analysis in order to better understand struggles in contemporary education reform movements.
What influence does centralized or decentralized policy have on classroom practice?
Read:
Richard Elmore, “School Decentralization: Who Gains? Who Loses?” in Jane
Hannaway and Martin Carnoy, eds., Decentralization
and School
Improvement (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993), pp. 33-53.
David K. Cohen and James P. Spillane, “Policy and Practice: The Relations
between
Governance and Instruction,” in Susan Fuhrman, ed., Designing
Coherent Educational Policy. (San Francisco, 1993), pp. 35-95.
Questions for Policy Analysis Case Studies:
1) Policy Actors:
Which individuals and institutions are involved in (or affected by) the policy issue?
2) Problem/Goal Definition:
How do the actors articulate the policy problems they face, or goals they strive for?
3) Organizational Context:
What is the scope and scale of the arena for this policy issue?
(i.e., classroom, grade level, department, school/college, community/neighborhood, school district, municipality, region, state, nation, etc.)
What patterns and relationships exist among different organizational levels of the policymaking process, as well as the educational institutions?
4) Historical Context:
How are the origins of the policy case related to the broader historical context?
What prior relationship do actors have with this policy issue, or with one another?
5) Ideological Context:
What kind of discourse (or “policy talk”) do the actors draw upon?
What theories or assumptions do they hold to explain how policy changes practice?
6) Political Resources:
What forms of power and influence are available to different actors? (i.e., money, authority, resistance, research, networks, symbols, votes, voice, choice, and exit)
7) Policy Instruments:
What mechanisms have been chosen to translate policy goals into concrete actions? (i.e. mandates, inducements, capacity-building, system-changing)
8) Outcome Evaluation:
How do actors determine whether or not the outcomes meet their policy goals?
Thur March 28 Policy Instruments
Under what conditions are different instruments likely to produce intended effects?
How can good educational practices be “scaled up” to reach more students?
Read:
Lorraine McDonnell and Richard Elmore, “Getting the Job Done: Alternative
Policy Instruments.” Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis 9 (Summer
1987): 133-152.
Additional Source:
Richard
Elmore, “Getting to Scale with Good Educational Practice,” Harvard
Educational Review 66 (Spring 1996): 1-26.
Tue April
2 Team
Planning for Policy Analysis Case Studies
In Class:
Planning time for teams; rotate through professor for feedback.
Case
2: Rowland’s Voucher Plan
Including at least one source to be assigned by each team
Case
4: Magnet school funding
Including at least one source to be assigned by each team
Case
6: Alternate Route Certif.
Including at least one source to be assigned by each team
Read:
Sample Ed 300 paper from previous semester, to be assigned to groups
Read:
First 2-3 pages of Ed 300 paper, written by classmates in your group
In Class:
Brief presentations of papers-in-progress
Professor’s wrap-up; Prep for Final Exam; Course Evaluations
Finals Week (May 1-7th)
2-hour open-book take-home final exam on Part II, dates TBA