Essentials of American Education Chapter 6: Using Recent History to Improve Student Learning

Introduction History was regarded as the:  Voice of memory  Witness to experience  Vision of destiny  Story of the decline and fall of previous regimes and hence the lessons of corruption that were to be avoided

Learner Outcomes for Chapter 6 After reading and studying Chapter 6, you will be able to: 1.Decide, explain, and defend the degree to which you believe it is possible to know, understand, and profit from the history of education 2.List and detail several of the most important improvements that have been made in the American educational system over the past half century 3.Explain important educational contributions that have been made during the last half century by private schools, the federal government, researchers, teacher organizations, teacher educators, and other groups that have helped to improve U.S. schools 4.List and explain several of the major ideas regarding the history of U.S. education 5.Explain why a knowledge of the history of education is important to educators and how it might be used to improve student learning today

Major Historical Ideas presented in Chapter 6 1.There has been phenomenal growth in both the size and complexity of U.S. educational establishments in the last half century 2.The current information age has placed tremendous new demands and expectation on our schools and teachers 3.Providing excellent equal educational opportunities to all students continues to be a major, yet unrealized challenge to our society and to our schools 4.An understanding of the history of education is of very practical value in helping contemporary educators to improve student learning

THE RAPID GROWTH OF THE EDUCATIONAL ENTERPRISE The single most dramatic change in education over the past half century is the expansion in size of the educational enterprise. Enrollment Growth  Total # of students in US public schools nearly doubled from Need for more Schools  Cities and suburbs  Increased use of temporary mobile classrooms  Larger classes  Split scheduling  Classes held in gym, hallways, storage closets Need for More Teachers  States lowered teacher certifications requirements  Increased # of students and teachers cost more $

SCHOOL DISTRICT CONSOLIDATION A notable administrative trend of this period # of separate school districts was reduced from 177,000 in 1940 to 16,000 in 1980 One Room Schools  School consolidation had educational advantages  necessitated the busing of more students over greater distances DeWalt study  Private one-room school made a modest comeback in 1980’s  attributes growth to Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972)  upheld Amish parents’ rights to educate their own children Growth of Busing  # and % of students bused increased from  Estimated 60% of all students are bused to school by about 450,000 school buses

Bigger School Budgets  approx. material cost of public education was:  $2 billion in 1940  $5 billion in 1950  $15 billion in 1960  $40 billion in 1970  $97 billion in 1980  $208 billion in 1990

GROWTH OF PROGRAMS Circular Growth  result of an accumulation of many smaller events  Example: 1942 the Progressive Education Association’s Eight- Year Study ( ) of thirty high schools  helped to create a climate that was more hospitable to experimentation with school curricula and teaching methodologies  Example: publications on goals of US education (1938, 1944, 1952)  helped to broaden schools curricular offerings

 Example: 1958 National Defense Education Act (NDEA)  passed by Congress after Soviet Union launch of Sputnik  government had called on schools for help with this “national defense program”  more federal funding to improve science, math, engineering, foreign language, guidance in schools  curricula emerged: SMSG math, BSCS biology, PSCS physics  1940 curriculum was narrow and was designed primarily for college- bound students  today’s curricula is broader and designed for students of all abilities

Growth of Special Education Programs  teachers had little or no training  programs did not exist historically  tried to accommodate as best possible  PL (mid twentieth century)  programs began to emerge  teachers trained to work with visual impairments, hearing- impaired, behavior disorders, etc.  # of students  310,000 special ed students in 1940  4,641,00 in 1990

Asian American Education  WW2 brought about much discrimination against Japanese Americans  Struggled:  to learn English  receive an education  find suitable jobs  Have not received equal educational and employment opportunities  Chinese Exclusion Act  passed by US gov’t  attempted to limit the number of Chinese immigrants

Hispanic American Education  # of students has increased dramatically over the past 50 years  Earliest formal schools in North America were started by Spanish missionaries in Mexico and Southwest USA  Hispanic Americans have made significant contributions to education  Cordero- self-taught free black Hispanic  est. early school in Puerto Rico (1810)  helped black children learn who were originally denied formal education b/c of skin color  rich white parents’ children attended the school also

 Sanchez- began teaching at 16  taught in 1-room schools  Attended college whenever possible  earned master’s, doctorate  Hispanic American education did not develop as quickly or as well for the majority population  Hispanics have not been afforded equal educational opportunities  Southern and Southwestern USA now have big # of Hispanic American students