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The State of Curriculum

At the dawn of the century, Highland Springs Elementary School was akin to thousands of other one-room schoolhouses that dotted the American landscape. Inside the roughly hewn structure near Richmond, Va., a lone teacher toiled in relative isolation to provide basic lessons to more than two dozen students. She supplemented her own meager education with textbooks and the state course of study.

In the state capital to the west, Virginia's leaders, like many of their counterparts throughout the nation, were engaged in a passionate debate over the prospects for universal schooling, as they set out to redefine education for a new era.

Like the sunlight that sneaked through cracks in Highland Springs' wood siding, the modern conceptions that were emerging over what and how to teach a rapidly growing student population were barely brightening the daily...