Lessons of a Century
Americans in the 20th century made tremendous efforts to create, in the words of Noah Webster, “a system of education that should embrace every part of the community."In January 1999, Education Week began a yearlong series chronicling the successes and setbacks in those efforts over the past 100 years. Lessons of a Century appeared in 10 monthly installments, both in the print edition and on the World Wide Web. The series, now complete, examines all aspects of the educational landscape--people, trends, historical milestones, enduring controversies--with an emphasis on their continuing relevance. Essays by leading scholars and other observers offer additional perspective.You can read all 10 parts here as they originally appeared in Education Week on the Web by choosing selections on this page, or you can order the softbound book from our Products & Services Special Reports page.
Assessment
Made to Measure
Come every spring, Texas students from the 3rd to the 10th grades take the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills.
Assessment
Pioneers of Modern Testing
Three pioneers of the testing field: Thorndike, Terman, and Yerkes.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Making America Smarter
Standards, tests, and accountability programs are today's favored tools for raising overall academic achievement. Testing policies are also meant to increase equity, to give poor and minority students a fairer chance by making expectations clear and providing instruction geared to them. In practice, though, it is proving hard to meet the twin goals of equity and higher achievement. This is because our schools are trapped in a set of beliefs about the nature of ability and aptitude that makes it hard to evoke effective academic effort from students and educators.
Assessment
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.
College & Workforce Readiness
Debating the Direction of Vocational Education
In The New Republic, a pundit argues that "vocational education is, irreducibly and without unnecessary mystification, education for the pursuit of an occupation."
School & District Management
The Legacy of an Influential Yet Often Forgotten Study
Boxes of tarnished trophies and other long-forgotten memorabilia symbolizing East High School's earliest sports triumphs lie in storage, replaced in school display cases by the honors bestowed on more recent generations. Even fewer traces of the Denver school's academic legacy endure.
Science
The Race to Space Rocketed NSF Into Classrooms
On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I--the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth--and with it a campaign to change K-12 curriculum in the United States.
Science
Scopes and the Clash Over Science
In some ways, the Scopes trial was about a lot more than the teaching of evolution in public schools. And in some ways, it ended up being about a lot less--a sideshow that obscured as much as it revealed real concerns among Americans about religious beliefs, science, academic freedom, and public education.
Curriculum
The Evolving Curriculum: Introduction
Parents, educators, and politicians have long debated what students should learn in American schools--and how they should be taught.
Curriculum
Book Smarts
For the young pupil who daydreamed of exotic places and heroic deeds early in this century, a schoolbook could quench the imagination. Back then, history textbooks were plump with lively narratives about the glorious conquests of brave explorers and the noble struggles of the nation's founders to create a new republic.
Classroom Technology
Technology and Its Continual Rise and Fall
The promise of technology, from the Victrola to the World Wide Web.
Curriculum
Opinion
The Chronic Failure of Curriculum Reform
One thing we have learned from examining the history of curriculum in the 20th century is that curriculum reform has had remarkably little effect on the character of teaching and learning in American classrooms. As the century draws to a close, it seems like a good time to think about why this has been the case.
Teaching
Tugging at Tradition
Much of the philosophy behind the 300-student Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School would be sweetly familiar to its namesake.