This provocative new study of the American high school examines the historical debates about curriculum policy and also traces changes in the institution itself, as evidenced by what students actually studied. Contrary to conventional accounts, the authors argue that beginning in the 1930s, American high schools shifted from institutions primarily concerned with academic and vocational education to institutions mainly focused on custodial care of adolescents. Claiming that these changes reflected educators' racial, class, and gender biases, the authors offer original suggestions for policy adjustments that may lead to greater educational equality for our ever-growing and ever more diverse population of students.

In today's high schools, education is often reduced to a means of achieving financial security, leading to an overemphasis on quantifiable measures of performance. This approach encourages academically talented students to focus on test scores and rankings rather than intellectual enrichment, and discourages students with non-academic talents from pursuing them. A Richer, Brighter Vision for American High Schools advocates instead a unifying educational aim of producing better adults, which would encompass all aspects of students' lives: intellectual, physical, moral, spiritual, social, vocational, aesthetic, and civic. Nel Noddings offers suggestions to improve high schools by increasing collegiality among students and faculty, enriching curricula with interdisciplinary themes, renewing vocational education programs, addressing parenting and homemaking, and professionalizing the teaching force. This thought-provoking book will act as an important guide for teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and policy makers.

This is the first comprehensive account of African American secondary education in the postwar era. Drawing on quantitative datasets, as well as oral history, this compelling narrative examines how African Americans narrowed the racial gap in high school completion. The authors explore regional variations in high school attendance across the United States and how intraracial factors affected attendance within racial groups. They also examine the larger social historical context, such as the national high school revolution, the civil rights movement, campaigns to expand schooling and urging youth to stay in school, and Black migration northward. Closing chapters focus on desegregation and the "urban crisis" of the 1960s and 1970s that accelerated “White flight” and funding problems for urban school systems. The conclusion summarizes these developments and briefly looks at the period since 1980, when secondary attainment levels stopped advancing for Blacks and Whites alike. Book Highlights: A comprehensive history, drawing on statistical analysis, archival research, and interviews with African Americans who attended school in the 1940s and 1950s.Lessons from the past, showing how parents and local communities played the most direct and dynamic role in the fight for access to education.Today’s major challenges, including the growth of inner-city poverty and changing family structures. John L. Rury is professor of education and (by courtesy) history at the University of Kansas. Shirley A. Hill is professor of sociology at the University of Kansas. “Based on prodigious research, The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling sets a new standard of excellence in social history and policy studies. The authors evocatively recreate the passions of the civil rights movement and centrality of public schools in the ongoing quest for justice, opportunity, and freedom.” —William J. Reese, Carl F. Kaestle WARF Professor of Educational Policy Studies and History, University of Wisconsin–Madison “This book is a rich and compelling addition to the literature on secondary education generally and on secondary education for African Americans specifically. It will set the standard for historical studies on American high schools for a long time to come.” —Jeffrey Mirel, David L. Angus Collegiate Chair of Education, Professor of History, University of Michigan “The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling fills a major gap in the history of African American educational history. This book will be on my shelf and will no doubt be on the shelves of scholars and students who study African American educational history.” —Thomas V. O'Brien, Professor and Chair, Department of Educational Studies and Research, University of Southern Mississippi “This is the only book-length account of the growth and impact of secondary education for African Americans post-1930. With a unique and original analysis, the authors frame key themes not only within the common historiographical tradition of an unfolding of 'growth and development' over time, but correctly understand that high school entailed opportunities for ‘attainment’ in a broader social sense as well.” —Michael Fultz, Professor, Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison

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.

The Aptitude Myth addresses the decline in American children’s mastery of critical school subjects. It contends that a contributing cause for this decline derives from many Americans’ ways of thinking about children’s learning: They believe that school performance is determined very largely by innate aptitude.

This timely book argues that the New Zealand educational reforms were the product of longstanding unresolved educational issues that came to a head during the profound economic and cultural crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s.

Hammack has gathered a distinguished group to assess current reform efforts in their sociological and historical context, taking into account the vision of James B. Conanat, the major proponent of the comprehensive high schools. Contributors are: Mary Erina Driscoll, Joseph P. McDonald, Jeannie Oakes, John L. Rury, Roger Shouse, Amy Suart Wells.

The case for race-conscious education policy In our unequal society, families of color fully share the dream of college but their children often attend schools that do not prepare them, and the higher education system gives the best opportunities to the most privileged. Students of color hope for college but often face a dead end. For many young people, racial inequality puts them at a disadvantage from early childhood. The Walls around Opportunity argues that colorblind policies have made college inaccessible to a large share of students of color, and reveals how policies that acknowledge racial inequalities and set racial equality goals can succeed where colorblindness has failed. Gary Orfield paints a troubling portrait of American higher education, explaining how profound racial gaps imbedded in virtually every stage of our children’s lives pose a major threat to communities of color and the nation. He describes how the 1960s and early 1970s was the only period in history to witness sustained efforts at racial equity in higher education, and how the Reagan era ushered in today’s colorblind policies, which ignore the realities of color inequality. Orfield shows how this misguided policy has resegregated public schools, exacerbated inequalities in college preparation, denied needed financial aid to families, and led to huge price increases over decades that have seen little real gain in income for most Americans. Now with a new afterword that discusses the 2023 Supreme Court decision to outlaw affirmative action in college admissions, this timely and urgent book shows that the court’s colorblind ruling is unworkable in a society where every aspect of opportunity and preparation is linked to race, and reveals the gaps in the opportunity pipeline while exploring the best ways to address them in light of this decision.

American Education: A History, Sixth Edition is a comprehensive, highly regarded history of American education from precolonial times to the present. Chronologically organized, it provides an objective overview of each major period in the development of American education, setting the discussion against the broader backdrop of national and world events. In addition to its in-depth exploration of Native American traditions (including education) prior to colonization, it also offers strong, ongoing coverage of minorities and women. This much-anticipated sixth edition brings heightened attention to the history of education of individuals with disabilities, of classroom pedagogy and technology, of teachers and teacher leaders, and of educational developments and controversies of the twenty-first century.

Gilbert Patten, writing as Burt L. Standish, made a career of generating serialized twenty-thousand-word stories featuring his fictional creation Frank Merriwell, a student athlete at Yale University who inspired others to emulate his example of manly boyhood. Patten and his publisher, Street and Smith, initially had only a general idea about what would constitute Merriwell’s adventures and who would want to read about them when they introduced the hero in the dime novel Tip Top Weekly in 1896, but over the years what took shape was a story line that capitalized on middle-class fears about the insidious influence of modern life on the nation’s boys. Merriwell came to symbolize the Progressive Era debate about how sport and school made boys into men. The saga featured the attractive Merriwell distinguishing between “good” and “bad” girls and focused on his squeaky-clean adventures in physical development and mentorship. By the serial’s conclusion, Merriwell had opened a school for “weak and wayward boys” that made him into a figure who taught readers how to approximate his example. In Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood, Anderson treats Tip Top Weekly as a historical artifact, supplementing his reading of its text, illustrations, reader letters, and advertisements with his use of editorial correspondence, memoirs, trade journals, and legal documents. Anderson blends social and cultural history, with the history of business, gender, and sport, along with a general examination of childhood and youth in this fascinating study of how a fictional character was used to promote a homogeneous “normal” American boyhood rooted in an assumed pecking order of class, race, and gender.