This article examines the American Montessori movement from its failed introduction in the United States in 1911, to its rebirth in 1960, to its current resurgence as a time-tested alternative to traditional public schooling. Montessori pedagogy is situated in an international context, exploring both the manner by which an essentially twentieth-century European import was transformed into a predominantly twenty-first-century American export and the impact of a continually changing American educational landscape on the movement.

This article analyzes the policies and rhetoric surrounding the use of German-language instruction before and during the World War I era, highlighting contemporary implications for the education of minority language speakers.

This article elucidates an intellectual trend in the historical and contemporary scholarship on Black schooling. Led primarily, but not exclusively, by African American scholars, this trend offered a counternarrative to the representation of predominantly Black schools before and after the passage of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and noted the significant role of Black schools for African American people. The paper situates this counternarrative within a chronological context, which provides the reader with a sequential understanding of how this body of research began to offer a different view of Black schools.

This article focuses on the public and Catholic school discourse that accompanied the introduction of IQ testing in the early 20th century. It analyzes the nature of the discourse among educational researchers, administrators, and teachers in two parallel educational settings and examines the way that public and Catholic school educators responded to IQ testing.

This essay tells the forgotten story of the founding of essentialism. After a brief biographical description of the career of William Bagley, the paper describes in detail how essentialism came to be and why it matters. Then, the work connects the principles of essentialism to contemporary debates in teaching, teacher education, and curriculum.

This article discusses the career of Mabel Carney, head of the Department of Rural Education at Teachers College from 1918 to 1941.

In this article, I use perspectives gained from 18 years of experience as an urban public school parent between 1978 and 1996 to provide insights into Brown at 50.

This paper explores the twisting and complicated history of school desegregation in Kansas City, Missouri, as an example of how illusive meaningful racial integration was and still is in urban America.

This article examines the origins of the National Parent-Teacher Association and questions its current image as a white, middle-class women’s association.

This paper presents detailed accounts and analyzes the practice of the preparation of teachers in a progressive program during the 1930’s in New York, at Bank Street College of Education. Mostly, these accounts are grounded in the participants’ perspectives, providing data about how this progressive teacher education program was experienced, and in particular on Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s teaching based on data especially composed to describe two courses: (1)"Environment" (a mix of what today can be called social foundations and social studies methods), and (2)"Language" (mostly, about the writing process). Also, data from other course syllabi taught by other faculty is discussed.

This paper compares the problem of social maladjustment addressed during the child guidance movement of the 1920s and 1930s with the issue of minority overrepresentation revealed in the late 1960s and persisting to the present.

This essay traces the development of research and development techniques perfected by scientists during World War II and examines how they were imported from the military research programs to the field of education by a select group of physicists centered around Jerrold Zacharias at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the context of the current standards-based reform movement, the authors explore the “mismatch” between the structure of schools and the social, cultural, or economic backgrounds of students identified as problems over the past century and a half.

Using archival and secondary sources, the author examines the early history of state student assessment in the United States.

A discussion with Diane Ravitch on her book Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform

The author considers citizen action as an explanation for the decline of the traditional curriculum and the rise of a more practical differentiated curriculum in U.S. schools during the first half of the twentieth century.

This article follows the rise of the visiting teacher movement and considers the lessons for current efforts to develop school-linked social services.

This article presents Macaulay’s views as expressed in her noteworthy work Letters on Education, printed originally in 1787 and in revised form in 1790.

This article reviews positions of scientists, educators and publicists who resisted eugenics and determinism. The nature nurture controversy is discussed, as well as the impact of eugenics on American classrooms. Specific attention is given to four resisters: Dewey, Bagley, Jennings, and Lippmann.

The case of Faith Christian School is only one of a number of recent legislative and judicial battles over the issue of state control of private education. The case is discussed in detail and then the fundamental issues it raises are considered.

School responses to Black migrant youth

A review is presented of the differences between Matthew Arnold's and Thomas Huxley's views on liberal education.

The fact that most elementary school teachers are female provides a key to understanding why there are often attempts by state bureaucrats, industry, and academics to control the curricular and teaching practices in classrooms. It also explains why these externally derived controls are often transformed by teachers once they are in their classrooms.

The current education reform movement reveals a retreat from democracy towards a commitment to technological advancement. The dangers inherent in this trend, where schools are turned into industrial and cultural instruments rather than developers of new political visions, are discussed.

Metaphors used commonly in education do not adequately define school problems or help in reform. A new metaphor of the school as a knowledge work organization is offered with a description of teacher and student roles.

The recent death of R. Buckminster Fuller was ample cause for students of religious and educational policy to pause and reflect. This man, widely regarded as an inventor, writer, architect, and social planner, had an influential and loyal following. His personal charm and enthusiasm for the potential lurking in the human mind to overcome old obstacles and create bold futures was a needed antidote to the cynicism and moral paralysis characteristic of much of our present age. It is thus with great respect and a tinge of remorse that the following bit of critical commentary is presented in testimony to Fuller’s life and death.

This article explores child and youth organizations created as a Socialist supplement to formal schooling in the early twentieth century. An examination of the Socialist party's views of educational policies is given.

Educational materials such as textbooks often reflect and define a culture through the use of symbols and metaphors. The use of visual metaphors in frontispieces of reading and spelling texts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries show the emergence of a patriotic iconography.

This article discusses the development of the "individual" in America from John Dewey's and Josiah Royce's philosophical perspectives. Also outlined is America's changing role in the world.

The educational background and achievements of Benjamin Elijah Mays are related to illustrate points about the education of Black students. Such students need encouragement from teachers, a student-centered curriculum, and sometimes more time to perform well in college than classmates who are not educationally disadvantaged.