In this book, an eminent educational historian examines some important aspects of American schooling over the past centuries, illuminating the relation between education and other broad changes in American society and providing a historical perspective for contemporary efforts at school reform. Maris Vinovskis critically reviews and integrates recent work in educational history and provides new research on neglected topics. He discusses such issues as: the gradual shift from the family to the public schools in the responsibility for educating the young; the rise and fall of infant schools between 1840 and 1860; the crisis in the teaching of morality in the public schools of the mid-nineteenth century; early efforts to provide schooling for impoverished children; and the evolution of the belief that education improves individual economic and social mobility. He also studies school attendance and discovers that a much higher percentage of children may have attended public high schools in the nineteenth century than has been assumed, investigates when the practice of placing children in grades according to their age became widespread, and assesses whether different age groups in previous eras varied in their support for schooling--as they seem to be doing now.

Americans believe economic opportunity is as fundamental a right as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. More concerned about a level playing field for all, they worry less about the growing income and wealth disparity in our country. Creating an Opportunity Society examines economic opportunity in the United States and explores how to create more of it, particularly for those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill propose a concrete agenda for increasing opportunity that is cost effective, consistent with American values, and focuses on improving the lives of the young and the disadvantaged. They emphasize individual responsibility as an indispensable basis for successful policies and programs. The authors recommend a three-pronged approach to create more opportunity in America: • Increase education for children and youth at the preschool, K–12, and postsecondary levels • Encourage and support work among adults • Reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births while increasing the share of children reared by their married parents With concern for the federal deficit in mind, Haskins and Sawhill argue for reallocating existing resources, especially from the affluent elderly to disadvantaged children and their families. The authors are optimistic that a judicious use of the nation's resources can level the playing field and produce more opportunity for all. Creating an Opportunity Society offers the most complete summary available of the facts and the factors that contribute to economic opportunity. It looks at the poor, the middle class, and the rich, providing deep background data on how each group has fared in recent decades. Unfortunately, only the rich have made substantial progress, making this book a timely guide forward for anyone interested in what we can do as a society to improve the prospects for our less-advantaged families and fellow citizens.

A theoretical framework for analyzing the complex relationship of education, growth, and income distribution. The dominant role played by the state in the financing, regulation, and provision of primary and secondary education reflects the widely-held belief that education is necessary for personal and societal well-being. The economic organization of education depends on political as well as market mechanisms to resolve issues that arise because of contrasting views on such matters as income inequality, social mobility, and diversity. This book provides the theoretical framework necessary for understanding the political economy of education—the complex relationship of education, economic growth, and income distribution—and for formulating effective policies to improve the financing and provision of education. The relatively simple models developed illustrate the use of analytical tools for understanding central policy issues. After offering a historical overview of the development of public education and a review of current econometric evidence on education, growth, and income distribution, the authors lay the theoretical groundwork for the main body of analysis. First they develop a basic static model of how political decisions determine education spending; then they extend this model dynamically. Applying this framework to a comparison of education financing under different regimes, the authors explore fiscal decentralization; individual choice between public and private schooling, including the use of education vouchers to combine public financing of education with private provision; and the social dimension of education—its role in state-building, the traditional "melting pot" that promotes cohesion in a culturally diverse society.

Contributed articles.

Early childhood care and education (ECCE) settings offer an opportunity to provide children with a solid beginning in all areas of their development. The quality and efficacy of these settings depend largely on the individuals within the ECCE workforce. Policy makers need a complete picture of ECCE teachers and caregivers in order to tackle the persistent challenges facing this workforce. The IOM and the National Research Council hosted a workshop to describe the ECCE workforce and outline its parameters. Speakers explored issues in defining and describing the workforce, the marketplace of ECCE, the effects of the workforce on children, the contextual factors that shape the workforce, and opportunities for strengthening ECCE as a profession.

Every year, the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) features a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 WDR—LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise—is the first ever devoted entirely to education. And the time is right: education has long been critical to human welfare, but it is even more so in a time of rapid economic and social change. The best way to equip children and youth for the future is to make their learning the center of all efforts to promote education. The 2018 WDR explores four main themes: First, education’s promise: education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies—both within and outside the education system. Second, the need to shine a light on learning: despite gains in access to education, recent learning assessments reveal that many young people around the world, especially those who are poor or marginalized, are leaving school unequipped with even the foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. And too often these shortcomings are hidden—so as a first step to tackling this learning crisis, it is essential to shine a light on it by assessing student learning better. Third, how to make schools work for all learners: research on areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, and school management has identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, teachers are both skilled and motivated, and other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, how to make systems work for learning: achieving learning throughout an education system requires more than just scaling up effective interventions. Countries must also overcome technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and taking an adaptive approach to reform.

Contemporary public policy assumes that the achievement gap between black and white students could be closed if only schools would do a better job. According to Richard Rothstein, "Closing the gaps between lower-class and middle-class children requires social and economic reform as well as school improvement. Unfortunately, the trend is to shift most of the burden to schools, as if they alone can eradicate poverty and inequality." In this book, Rothstein points the way toward social and economic reforms that would give all children a more equal chance to succeed in school. This book features: a summary of numerous studies linking school achievement to health care quality, nutrition, childrearing styles, housing stability, parental economic security, and more ; aA look at erroneous and misleading data that underlie commonplace claims that some schools "beat the demographic odds and therefore any school can close the achievement gap if only it adopted proper practices." ; and an analysis of how the over-emphasis of standardized tests in federal law obscures the true achievement gap and makes narrowing it more difficult.

This collection of original essays examines the history of American education as it has developed as a field since the 1970s and moves into a post-revisionist era and looks forward to possible new directions for the future. Contributors take a comprehensive approach, beginning with colonial education and spanning to modern day, while also looking at various aspects of education, from higher education, to curriculum, to the manifestation of social inequality in education. 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.