education history 
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SOURCE: The Nation
2/28/2023
Students are the Victims of DeSantis's Education War in Florida
Ron DeSantis's education policies are driven by what will rile up the most reactionary voters in the state and have little do do with rectifying the growing problems with student achievement and teacher retention that are actually putting the state's schools in crisis, argue two Floridian writers.
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SOURCE: Texas Monthly
2/16/2023
Those "Local" School Battles in Texas are Part of a Decades-Long Statewide Plan to Undermine Public Schools
Advocates of privatizing public schools have bankrolled and organized parents' groups around a range of values issues with the goal of undermining confidence in local schools. In Texas, it seems to be working to break down the longstanding opposition of rural families to voucher programs.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/14/2023
The Book that Launched Black Studies Was a Challenge to Classroom Racism
by Ibram X. Kendi
Education historian Jarvis Givens discusses a 90th anniversary edition of Carter Woodson's pathbreaking "The Mis-Education of the Negro," noting that the book was banned in Oklahoma for being "antiklan" in its efforts to overturn the pervasive message of Black inferiority in the established school curriculum.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
2/15/2023
Democrats' Embrace of Education "Reform" Paved Way for DeSantis
by Nora De La Cour
Decades of stressing metrics, measurement and job-readiness has created a vacuum where a robust public discussion of the role of public schools in nurturing shared humanity should be. Conservatives are now eagerly filling this vacuum with privatization and "classical education" curricula.
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SOURCE: Kappan
2/4/2023
Did DeSantis Claim More Credit than he Deserves for the College Board's Retreat?
by Adam Laats
The College Board faced immense public criticism for its revised standards for the AP US History exam in 2014, and caved to the demands of conservative Southerners. If Florida's governor deserves credit (or blame) it's for predicting they'd cave again.
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SOURCE: Public Books
12/1/2022
The Activist Roots of Student-Centered Teaching (Review)
by Danica Savonick
A new book by Cathy Davidson and Christina Katopodis examines the history of teaching efforts to involve students not simply in discussions but in "co-creating a syllabus."
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
7/26/2022
Have Children Changed in Modern America?
by Steven Mintz
A recent argument for the general stability of children over the last century and a half misses the key point that "childhood" has been a fluid concept, and changes in how childhood is understood has necessarily affected the experiences of children.
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SOURCE: The Forum
7/22/2022
"They Want Your Children!": Right-Wing School Panics Seek to Repeal Modernity
by Rick Perlstein
"Reactionary panics about what children learn in school are about as old as time. And they won’t ever go away."
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7/8/2022
The Story of the School that Defied Nazi Ideological Control
by Deborah Cadbury
Amid the intense politicization of education today, what can we learn from one remarkable story of a teacher's defiance of official ideological control?
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
6/27/2022
The Classic Model of Education and Democracy Can't Address Today's School Politics
by Steven Mintz
The idea of education serving democracy by producing informed citizens is tested by the lack of agreement about what that goal means. Can the competing claims on the education system be reconciled?
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/24/2022
The CRT and "Don't Say Gay" Panics Aren't About Controlling Public Schools, but Destroying Them
by Adam Laats
In the 1920s, the KKK sought to strengthen and control the public schools as vehicles to teach their version of "100% Americanism"; today's culture warriors hope to undermine trust in schools as a way to defund and privatize them.
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SOURCE: Politico
5/17/2022
The Undiscussed Backlash to Brown v. Board: The Sidelining of Black Educators
by Leslie T. Fenwick
Brown v. Board was meant to ensure that children of different racial groups would share classrooms. But resistance to allowing Black teachers and principals to oversee white students' education led an estimated 100,000 Black educators to leave their profession.
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SOURCE: Phenomenal World
5/12/2022
America's School Funding is Kleptocracy in Action
by Esther Cyna
The American system of funding schools largely through local property taxes contributes to inequalities both obvious and subtle that amount to legal dispossession of poor and minority students by denying them access to quality education.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
4/12/2022
John Thelin, Approaching Retirement, Shares Insight on the Past and Future of Higher Education
A college campus can be a spectacular stage set, but it's ultimately people – professors, students, and administrators – who make the campus a dramatic space reflecting and influencing the wider society.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
3/21/2022
Who Gets to Be American?
by Jonna Perrillo
Johann Tschinkel, a Nazi scientist, was recruited by the United States after the war. His reflections on his educational experiences in Germany and those of his children in segregated American schools, offer a warning about the efforts to control the social studies curriculum today.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/7/2022
Adults Support Empowering Youth – Until Youth Dissent
by Dara Walker
American youth are seldom credited for having a clear understanding of the policies that affect their lives. COVID safety walkouts are the latest example of student activism to be dismissed.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/28/2022
Reducing Child Poverty Is a No-Brainer even Without Brain Science
by Mical Raz
Reducing child poverty is a good in itself; justifying policies to reduce poverty in terms of improvements in measures of cognition or IQ scores makes such programs vulnerable to backlash and risks validating racist and eugenicist arguments about race and intelligence.
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SOURCE: Phi Delta Kappan
1/24/2022
School Vandalism Is a Test We Need to Pass
by Campbell F. Scribner
Student vandalism in schools is nothing new. Effective responses must reject surveillance and punishment and put student growth above the simple protection of property.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
11/18/2021
Today's Educator Shortages are a Product of Decades of Bullying and Ignoring Teachers
by Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz
Again and again, politicians and administrators have implemented policies that make teaching unattractive work, then acted surprised when people chose other options.
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/1/2021
Laugh at Parodies of School Board Meetings, but Take Local Politics Seriously
by Lily Geismer and Eitan D. Hersh
Local politics – if it involves a wide spectrum of community opinion – can help override partisan polarization, create new coalitions, and empower citizens to make meaningful change.
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