This book explores the efforts of educational reformers who sought to link secondary and higher education in the decades after 1870. Through various state, regional, and national initiatives, these reformers created a hierarchical system, laid the foundation for a growing standardization in education, and influenced who would have access to college. Neither higher education nor the secondary branches dominated the other in creating this educational system. Rather, through debate, argument, and accommodation, the two levels mutually shaped each other in a time of significant political and economic change. Reformers today wrestle with this legacy as they continue to forge connections between the two educational levels.

This book explores the efforts of educational reformers who sought to link secondary and higher education in the decades after 1870. Through various state, regional, and national initiatives, these reformers created a hierarchical system, laid the foundation for a growing standardization in education, and influenced who would have access to college. Neither higher education nor the secondary branches dominated the other in creating this educational system. Rather, through debate, argument, and accommodation, the two levels mutually shaped each other in a time of significant political and economic change. Reformers today wrestle with this legacy as they continue to forge connections between the two educational levels.

"Prepared by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educatioanl and Psychological Testing of the American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association and National Council on Measurement in Education"--T.p. verso.

In The Allure of Order, Mehta recounts a century of attempts at revitalizing public education, and puts forward a truly new agenda to reach this elusive goal. Over and over again, outsiders have been fascinated by the promise of scientific management and have attempted to apply principles of rational administration from above. What we want, Mehta argues, is the opposite approach which characterizes top-performing educational nations: attract strong candidates into teaching, develop relevant and usable knowledge, train teachers extensively in that knowledge, and support these efforts through a strong welfare state.

We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests and standardized curricula-now adopted by all fifty states-as our national surrogates for trust. Legendary school founder and reformer Deborah Meier believes fiercely that schools have to win our faith by showing they can do their job. But she argues just as fiercely that standardized testing is precisely the wrong way to that end. The tests themselves, she argues, cannot give the results they claim. And in the meantime, they undermine the kind of education we actually want. In this multilayered exploration of trust and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she and her colleagues have created in Boston and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers-and students and parents-to use their own judgment. Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial and complicated trust between parents and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race and class complicate trust at all levels; and how we can begin to 'scale up' from the kinds of successes she has created.

Yong Zhao, a distinguished professor at Michigan State University who was born and raised in China, offers a compelling argument for what schools can--and must--do to meet the challenges and opportunities brought about by globalization and technology.

How the Common Core standardizes our kids’ education—and how it threatens our democracy. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is one of the most controversial pieces of education policy to emerge in decades. Detailing what and when K–12 students should be taught, it has led to expensive reforms and displaced other valuable ways to educate children. In this nuanced and provocative book, Nicholas Tampio argues that, though national standards can raise the education bar for some students, the democratic costs outweigh the benefits. To make his case, Tampio describes the history, philosophy, content, and controversy surrounding the Common Core standards for English language arts and math. He also explains and critiques the Next Generation Science Standards, the Advanced Placement US History curriculum framework, and the National Sexuality Education Standards. Though each set of standards has admirable elements, Tampio asserts that democracies should disperse education authority rather than entrust one political or pedagogical faction to decide the country’s entire philosophy of education. Ultimately, this lively and accessible book presents a compelling case that the greater threat to democratic education comes from centralized government control rather than from local education authorities.