Newark, New Jersey has been at the forefront of school reform from the civil rights era through more recent efforts to resist neoliberal school reform approaches during the 2010s. Drawing on interviews with activists, policymakers, and school reformers, this paper documents the history of community organizing as a strategy to improve conditions in…

Schools serve both to connect and separate people within society. Therefore, the landscape of school reform presents an opportunity to explicate the opposing forces of connectedness and competition that are entrenched in twenty-first century society. It can serve as a laboratory in which to study foundational social issues. This study is an…

Despite pessimistic appraisals, the movement for community control has already made significant inroads, and is likely to become one of the most successful educational reform movements'' in history. (DM)

Identifies key ideas in the new plans for urban community control of schools that have already played a role in the controversies of the earlier era of progressive education. Suggests that those ideas, when combined with local and decentralized control of school organization, produce new dilemmas for professional educators in the present era.…

A detailed and critical review of an anthology edited by Nathan Wright entitled What Black Educators Are Saying.'' (JM)

"Politics" is used in a broad sense to refer to the social, economic, political, and civil forces that impinge on the publicly financed school system. These forces are generated both from outside and inside the educational system. It is the author's view that the big cities and the school systems of most of these cities are in just enough trouble…

The Annenberg Rural Challenge is a national effort to revitalize rural communities and schools and their long-standing values of community, democracy, and care for the natural environment. This collection of five essays presents a number of themes that are central to the Rural Challenge's philosophy. "Bringing It All Back Home: Reclaiming the…

The factory model of organization that resulted from the ascension of industry and economic expansion between 1897 and 1921 was applied to education as well as business. National recommendations aimed to standardize rural education, but local application of these unilateral templates reflected local rural cultures. Examples discussed are…

Outlined is an approach to educational history of the 1960s which incorporates the linkage between social, political, and contemporary educational history. The key theme cited is the interaction between the Black equal education struggle, the state structure, and the enactment of state-sponsored reforms that shaped popular protest patterns. (IAH)

This book is an interpretive history of the organizational revolution that took place in American schooling during the 19th century, its politics and ideology. It attempts to assess how the schools shaped, and were shaped by, the transformation of the United States into an urban-industrial nation. It looks at the shift from village school to urban…

Contents of this book include: (1) "New Models: The Need for School Reform," James W. Guthrie--a survey of some of the past successes of our educational system, an attempt to assess present public opinion about it, and an analysis of some possible explanations for its apparent inability to perform satisfactory; (2) "National Assessment: A History…

The author asks how much freedom will American Indian people have when considering educational designs for their children? The amount of freedom built into legislation will continue to be limited; but it is possible that they will restrict themselves more than legislation or that regulations will restrict them. (JHZ)

It is time to reevaluate the myths of the nineteenth century and the structures they created pertaining to education. There is a need to utilize new power relationships to creatively build a pluralistic educational system. It must be recognized that conflict can lead to collaboration if respect is present, whereas collaboration which ignores…

This book documents the debate among the Inuit of Nunavik (northern Quebec) over the purposes, strengths, and weaknesses of public schools in their 14 arctic communities. The book begins with a summary of the history of education in Nunavik, including traditional Inuit methods and purposes of education. The 14 communities comprise the Kativik…

Between 1870 and 1930, a "second great transformation" in the Northeast and Midwest was characterized by centralization of the economy, expansion of state power and professional expertise, and a rising urban consumer culture. Communities in the rural North faced a number of challenges: diminishing local control over schools and roads,…