Product Description: The essays speak to historians, educational researchers, policy makers and others seeking fresh perspectives on questions related to the historical development of schooling in the United States.

In this update to his landmark publication, William J. Reese offers a comprehensive examination of the trends, theories, and practices that have shaped America’s public schools over the last two centuries. Reese approaches this subject along two main lines of inquiry―education as a means for reforming society and ongoing reform within the schools themselves. He explores the roots of contemporary educational policies and places modern battles over curriculum, pedagogy, race relations, and academic standards in historical perspective.A thoroughly revised epilogue outlines the significant challenges to public school education within the last five years. Reese analyzes the shortcomings of "No Child Left Behind" and the continued disjuncture between actual school performance and the expectations of government officials. He discusses the intrusive role of corporations, economic models for enticing better teacher performance, the continued impact of conservatism, and the growth of home schooling and charter schools. Informed by a breadth of historical scholarship and based squarely on primary sources, this volume remains the standard text for future teachers and scholars of education.

Product Description: Now published by Teachers College Press, this classic text includes a new Introduction by Jeffrey Mirel as well as new photographs and references that bring the book up to date. Power and the Promise of School Reform remains the foremost volume to examine how grass-roots movements operated during the early twentieth century to shape urban education in the United States...read more

Product Description: This engrossing book tells the story of American high schools in the nineteenth century. William Reese analyzes the social changes and political debates that shaped these institutions across the nation-from the first public high school, established in Massachusetts in 1821, to the 1880s, by which time a majority of secondary students in the North were enrolled in high schools...read more

Product Description: ""This anthology is important for historians of education, but... it has a larger purpose. Public schools have 'remained a faithful barometer of the major economic, political and social changes that swept across the nation.' Social historians can learn much from this well-written anthology...read more