American Education Reform: History, Policy, Practice
Offered By
American Education Reform: History, Policy, Practice
University of Pennsylvania
About this Course
4.7
46 ratings
Discover what shapes how we talk about schools today by exploring the history of U.S. education reform. Engage with the main actors, key decisions, and major turning points in this history. See how social forces drive reform. Learn about how the critical tensions embedded in U.S. education policy and practice apply to schools nationally, globally— and where you live.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
1
Section
The Colonial Period and Early Republic
This module looks at the sources of education in Colonial America; factors that motivated the acquisition of literacy in the colonies; formal educational institutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; post-Revolution republican visions of free public schools; characteristics of elementary schools in the early Republic; and Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Academy.
8 videos (Total 56 min), 1 reading, 1 quiz
8 videos
1.1) Course Introduction4m
1.2) U.S. Education - An Early Transformation 10m
1.3) Literacy in the Colonial Period7m
1.4) Institutions of Colonial Education7m
1.5) Early Republic Proponents of Common Schools to Build a New Nation5m
1.6) Early Republic Schooling in the United States9m
1.7) Benjamin Franklin’s Academy6m
1 reading
Further Learning10m
1 practice exercise
Colonial Period/Early Republic Quiz10m
2
Section
The National Period
This module takes up the accelerating market economy between 1815 and 1850; the Second Great Awakening and its spur to social innovations; Horace Mann’s paean for “common” schools; Whigs and the common school movement; Catholic opposition to common schools; the suppression of black literacy in the antebellum South; and nineteenth-century academies.
8 videos (Total 47 min), 1 reading, 2 quizzes
8 videos
2.2) The National Market Economy 7m
2.3) "What God Hath Wrought": Dramatic Social Innovations 5m
2.4) Horace Mann: Avatar of Common Schools7m
2.5) The Common School Idea as a Social Movement 5m
2.6) Protestants and Catholics in the Arena7m
2.7) Education of African Americans and Native Americans 6m
2.8) Secondary Schooling in the Common School Era: The Academy4m
1 reading
Further Learning10m
1 practice exercise
National Period Quiz10m
3
Section
Postbellum Period
This module considers the post-Civil War expansion of the common school and the reality behind the myth of the “Little Red Schoolhouse”; the educational gains made by blacks during the Reconstruction period and the limits white supremacists put on blacks’ educational progress after Reconstruction; the Hampton/Tuskegee model of industrial education for blacks and the role of northern industrial philanthropists; Plessy v. Ferguson and Jim Crow schooling in the South; the Carlisle Indian School; and the early progress of the American high school.
7 videos (Total 40 min), 1 reading, 1 quiz
7 videos
3.2) Expansion of the Common School 6m
3.3) After Emancipation: Education of African Americans in the Reconstruction South7m
3.4) Industrial Education in the South's Organic Society 7m
3.5) Jim Crow and the Radical Segregation of African Americans6m
3.6) Boarding Schools for Native Americans 3m
3.7) The Rise of the American High School 5m
1 reading
Further Learning10m
1 practice exercise
Postbellum Era Quiz10m
4
Section
The Progressive Era
This module looks at the Progressive movement writ large; the U.S. settlement movement as a source of urban school reform; the changes “administrative progressives” effected in the governance of urban school districts; the influence of the U.S. Army’s World War I intelligence- testing program on the American school system; social efficiency schooling and its theoretical foundations; the Committee of Ten, 1892–93; the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 1918; and Booker T.Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.
9 videos (Total 55 min), 1 reading, 1 quiz
9 videos
4.2) Progressive Seedbeds of Education Reform4m
4.3) Rise of the Administrative Progressives in American School Reform 6m
4.4) Psychological Testing Movement7m
4.5) Social Efficiency Schooling 6m
4.6) The Committee of Ten5m
4.7) The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education7m
4.8) The Southern Education Movement 7m
4.9) Rosenwald Schools and County Training Schools for African Americans6m
1 reading
Further Learning10m
1 practice exercise
Progressive Era Quiz10m
4.7
Top Reviews
By JQ•Mar 4th 2016
Interesting review of American Education Reform. Thanks for providing information on a topic on which I felt uninformed prior to reading and hearing this course.
By SD•Nov 14th 2017
This course provided background information that I would have not found anywhere else. More materials please!!
Instructors
Dr. John L. Puckett
Professor of EducationGraduate School of Education
Dr. Michael Charles Johanek
Senior FellowGraduate School of Education
About University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (commonly referred to as Penn) is a private university, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. A member of the Ivy League, Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and considers itself to be the first university in the United States with both undergraduate and graduate studies.
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