The Struggle for Public Education: Ten Themes in American Educational History

The great pendulum of educational reform recently has begun its inexorable swing toward a new understanding of education. The thirty-year dominance of the authoritarian approach, complete with standardized assessments, distended bureaucracies and school consolidation based on the business model, appears to be over. Capped by the recent departure of the No Child Left behind Act and replaced with a new congressional authorization – the Every Child Achieves Act – we are witnessing a distinct m...