ED 300: Education Reform – Past and Present

Trinity College

Spring 2001

M 1:15-3:55 McCook 225

http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/educ

Jack Dougherty, Asst Prof of Educational Studies

Office: McCook 302, 297-2296

Hours: TR 11:15-Noon, 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. (NY: Hill and Wang, 1983). ISBN 8090-0154-3

Lessons of a Century: A Nation's Schools Come of Age, by the staff of Education Week. (Bethesda, MD: Editorial Projects in Education, 2000). ISBN 0967479509

Constance Curry, Silver Rights (NY: Harcourt Brace, 1995). ISBN 015-600479-8

OR

David Cecelski, Along Freedom Road (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1994)

ISBN 08078-4437-3

Thomas Good and Jennifer Braden, The Great School Debate: Choice, Vouchers, and Charters (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000). ISBN 0805835512

Quality Counts 2001: A Better Balance, special issue of Education Week (January 11, 2001). To be distributed in class during Part II.

Additional readings will be made available to you in class. A syllabus update, with more details on Part II of the course, will be distributed in February.

How to succeed in class:

• Attend each class session on time, participate regularly in discussions, and bring relevant readings and notes with you. Exceptions will be made only for documented medical or family emergencies; unexcused absences will result in the reduction of your final evaluation by 5% for each occurrence. Late papers will result in a deduction of 20% for each day.

• Take the initiative in raising questions and new ideas in class. If you need to discuss an issue with Jack after class, send an email or call (x2296) for appointment.

• Plan ahead and post writing assignments on Blackboard (the new CourseInfo). Brief assignments will be given one week in advance and are due on SUNDAY 9pm on the day BEFORE class. Suggested length is 1 single-spaced page (300-500 words).

1. 1. Use web browser to access Blackboard (http://my.trincoll.edu) and our seminar
   2. Click on "Communication" then "Discussion Board"
   3. Click on the appropriate forum (such as "Practice for posting papers")
   4. To post a paper, click on "Start New Thread", fill in the subject line with your name ("Pat’s paper on Horace Mann"), then copy and paste your paper from your word processor to the message field. Click "Submit".
   5. If quoting or paraphrasing a source, write a simple in-line citation, such as:
   6. Student protests in the 1800s were seen as a "pattern of upper-class behavior" (Novak, p. 34).
   7. If you experience technical problems, then do it the old-fashioned way: print a copy and bring it directly to Jack’s office.
   8. To read other posted papers, click on its subject line. Written responses to other papers are welcome, but optional.
   9. ALWAYS print a copy of your own posting and bring it to class, since you may be called upon to explain what you wrote.

• When studying for an exam, collaborate with your classmates to anticipate the questions, both large and small, and to test out how you would respond in writing.

Evaluation:

Blackboard writing assignments (4 x 5%) 20 %

Exam #1 (first half of course, open book, short essay) 20 %

Paper proposal #1 10 %

Paper proposal #2 10 %

Oral presentation of paper-in-progress 5 %

Final paper 25 %

Exam #2 (second half of course, open book, short essay) 10 %

Total 100 %

Be advised that adequate work earns a C, good work earns a B, and outstanding work earns an A in this class. The penalty for overdue assignments will be 20% per day, with exceptions granted only for documented medical or family emergencies. 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.

Part I: Education Reform in the Past

Jan 15 Course introduction

During the first half of the course, we examine school reform movements 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 in the 1950s and 60s

• responses to the "Nation At Risk" crisis from the 1980s 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 source materials and historical interpretations

*Questions drawn in part from David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 1995).

Jan 22 Creating Common Schools of the mid-19th Century

What was the common-school movement and why did it happen?

How did its supporters articulate their vision of reform?

Why did their opponents object?

NOTE: Class will begin at Watkinson Library (special collections room in basement of main library) at 1:15 PM sharp!

Historical interpretation:

Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, skim preface & ch 1-3; read chapters 4-9.

Lessons of a Century, "Public Foundation" pp. 14.

Historical source materials:

19th-century common school textbooks from the Henry Barnard Collection, Watkinson Library, Trinity College

Horace Mann, "Intellectual Education as a Means of Removing Poverty and Securing Abundance." (1842).

Catherine Beecher, "Remedy for Wrongs to Women" (1846).

Class simulation:

Three views on common schooling

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?

Contested visions of Progressive schooling:

Historical source materials:

"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.

Archival Photographs of Dewey’s Lab School, University of Chicago

http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/photo_album/1900s/

Jane Addams, "Educational Methods" (1902) and "The Humanizing Tendency of Industrial Education" (1904).

Ellwood P. Cubberley, "The Organization of School Boards." (1916).

Robert Yerkes, "The Mental Rating of School Children." (1919).

Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (1981), example of Beta test

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).

Conflicting historical interpretations of progressive education

Historical interpretations:

Lawrence Cremin, The Transformation of the School. (1961), preface & pages 135-142.

David Tyack, The One Best System (1974), pp. 126-9, 182-91.

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America. (1976), pp. 180-1, 191-95.

Diane Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade (1983), pp. 43-48.

Overview

Lessons of a Century, chapter 4, especially "Tugging at Tradition" and "Dewey"

and chapter 6, especially "Made to Measure" and "Pioneers of Modern Testing"

Feb 5 Views from the Classroom at the Turn of the Century

How did various groups of teachers and students experience Progressive-era school reform? How did educational policy influence classroom-level instructional practice?

Historical interpretation:

Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught. (1984), pp. 1-40.

Larry Cuban, Teachers and Machines (1986), photograph from preface.

James Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, (1988), chp. 2 excerpts.

David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience. (U Press of Kansas, 1995), pp. 97-112.

Lessons of a Century, chapter 8, especially "Uncommon Values" (pp. 204-213).

Leonard Covello, The Heart is the Teacher, excerpts (1958).

Historical source materials:

Robert Margo, Race and Schooling in the South (1990), selected data tables.

Booker T. Washington, "Industrial Education for the Negro" (1903).

http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/wash_b04.htm

W.E.B. DuBois, "The Talented Tenth" (1903) and "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" (1903).

http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/dubo_b05.htm

Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial Institute, Catalogue 1913-14.

Feb 12 Equity and Excellence in the 1950s and 60s

How were tensions between "equity" and "excellence" expressed at this time?

What role did demographic and cultural changes play in these struggles?

How do historians interpret school desegregation in different ways?

Civil rights and Sputnik in historical context

Historical interpretation:

Separate But Equal, video excerpts (1991).

Lessons of a Century, ch. 3, especially "In Black and White" and "Doll Man"; also "Hollywood Goes to School" (pp. 48-49) and "The Race to Space (pp. 132-134)

Historical source materials:

Brown v Board of Education, excerpts (1954).

Eyes on the Prize, video excerpts from the Little Rock Crisis of 1957.

Blackboard Jungle, video excerpts, (1955). VID 1954

Life Magazine, "Crisis in Education." (1958).

James Bryant Conant, The American High School Today (1959), pp. ix — 17.

Two different historical interpretations of school desegregation

Curry, Silver Rights [on Sunflower County, Mississippi] __________

OR

Cecelski, Along Freedom Road [on Hyde County, North Carolina] __________

Feb 19 Trinity Day - No Class

Paper proposal #1 due to be posted by Sunday 9pm

The final assignment for the course is a research paper, which may be either an historical analysis of a past education reform movement OR a policy analysis of a contemporary education reform movement.

Paper proposal #1 is a 2-page document which includes:

• Research question and its significance
• Working thesis (in other words, what you think you’re arguing)
• Annotated list of sources being considered [with full citations]

Starting points for ideas and sources:

Feb 26 The 1980s "Nation At Risk" Crisis and its aftermath

In what ways have present-day reform movements been created in response to movements from the past?

Historical source materials:

High School I, film produced by Frederick Wiseman (1968). VID 2583

US Department of Education, A Nation At Risk, excerpts (1983).

http://www.goalline.org/Goal%20Line/NatAtRisk.html

Historical interpretation:

In Schools We Trust, Merrow Report video documentary. http://www.pbs.org/merrow/tv/trust/index.html

Exam #1 1 hour, in-class, open book, short essays

Part 2: Education Reform in the Present

During the second half of the course, we examine a variety of contemporary education reform movements through the lenses of policy analysis. Also, I will be inviting guests to class to be interviewed by groups of students, so a syllabus revision will be distributed in February to clarify any date changes. The order of weekly topics and reading assignments may change; deadlines for written assignments will NOT be changed as a result of this revision.

Mar 5 The Language of Educational Policy Analysis

Concepts:

Decentralization and centralization of school governance

Weak links between educational policy and instructional practice

Challenges of policy implementation

Policy instruments: mandates, inducements, capacity-building, system-changing

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 Review of Research in Education 18 (Washington, DC: AERA, 1992), pp. 3-49. (also in Susan Fuhrman, Designing Coherent Ed Policy)

Lorraine McDonnell and Richard Elmore, "Getting the Job Done: Alternative Policy Instruments." Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis 9 (Summer 1987): 133-152.

Paper Proposal #2 due to be posted by Sunday 9pm

Mar 12 Choices and Charters

Read:

Thomas Good and Jennifer Braden, The Great School Debate: Choice, Vouchers, and Charters (2000).

Paul Peterson and Bryan Hassel, eds., Learning from School Choice (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1998), chapter to be determined.

Mar 19 Trinity vacation - no class

Mar 26 Money, Magnets, and Access

Read:

Excerpts from Sheff v O’Neill and Abbott v Burke court decisions

Lessons of a Century, "Echoes of the Coleman Report," p77

Apr 2 Standards, Accountability, & Whole-School Reform

Quality Counts 2001: A Better Balance, special issue of Education Week, sections to be determined.

Apr 9 Teacher Certification Policy and "New Unionism"

Lessons of a Century, chapter 7, especially "The Not-Quite Profession" and "Educating the Educators" (pp. 180-193)

additional readings on alternate route certification, Teach For America, and teacher unions

Apr 16 Group meetings with Jack to discuss papers-in-progress

Apr 23 Oral presentations of papers-in-progress

(class will be split into two different sessions; students will attend one)

Final paper due Wednesday, April 25th at 3pm

Exam #2 (second half of course, open book, short essays) on Wed, May 2^nd, 12 noon