Building The Federal Schoolhouse

Over the past fifty years, the federal government's efforts to reform American public education have transformed U.S. schools from locally-run enterprises into complex systems jointly constructed by federal, state, and local actors. The construction of this federal schoolhouse-an educational system with common national expectations and practices-has fundamentally altered both education politics and the norms governing educational policy at the local level. Building the Federal Schoolhouse examines these issues through an in-depth, fifty-year examination of federal educational policies in the community of Alexandria, Virginia, a wealthy yet socially diverse suburb of Washington, D.C. The epochal social transformations that swept through America in the past half century hit Alexandria with particular force, transforming its Jim Crow school system into a new immigrant gateway district within two generations. Along the way, the school system has struggled to provide quality education for special needs students, and has sought to overcome the legacies of tracking and segregated learning while simultaneously retaining upper-middle class students. Most recently, it has grappled with state and federally imposed accountability measures that seek to boost educational outcomes. All of these policy initiatives have contended with the existing political regime within Alexandria, at times forcing it to a breaking point, and at other times reconstructing it. All the while, the local expectations and governing realities of administrators, parents, politicians, and voters have sharply constrained federal initiatives, limiting their scope when in conflict with local commitments and amplifying them when they align. Through an extensive use of local archives, contemporary accounts, school data, and interviews, Douglas S. Reed not only paints an intimate portrait of the conflicts that the federal schoolhouse's creation has wrought in Alexandria, but also documents the successes of the federal commitment to greater educational opportunity. In so doing, he highlights the complexity of the American education state and the centrality of local regimes and local historical context to federal educational reform efforts.

Over the past fifty years, the federal government's efforts to reform American public education have transformed U.S. schools from locally-run enterprises into complex systems jointly constructed by federal, state, and local actors. The construction of this federal schoolhouse-an educational system with common national expectations and practices-has fundamentally altered both education politics and the norms governing educational policy at the local level. Building the Federal Schoolhouse examines these issues through an in-depth, fifty-year examination of federal educational policies in the community of Alexandria, Virginia, a wealthy yet socially diverse suburb of Washington, D.C. The epochal social transformations that swept through America in the past half century hit Alexandria with particular force, transforming its Jim Crow school system into a new immigrant gateway district within two generations. Along the way, the school system has struggled to provide quality education for special needs students, and has sought to overcome the legacies of tracking and segregated learning while simultaneously retaining upper-middle class students. Most recently, it has grappled with state and federally imposed accountability measures that seek to boost educational outcomes. All of these policy initiatives have contended with the existing political regime within Alexandria, at times forcing it to a breaking point, and at other times reconstructing it. All the while, the local expectations and governing realities of administrators, parents, politicians, and voters have sharply constrained federal initiatives, limiting their scope when in conflict with local commitments and amplifying them when they align. Through an extensive use of local archives, contemporary accounts, school data, and interviews, Douglas S. Reed not only paints an intimate portrait of the conflicts that the federal schoolhouse's creation has wrought in Alexandria, but also documents the successes of the federal commitment to greater educational opportunity. In so doing, he highlights the complexity of the American education state and the centrality of local regimes and local historical context to federal educational reform efforts.

The full-scale assault on public education threatens not just public education but American democracy itself. Public education as we know it is in trouble. Derek W. Black, a legal scholar and tenacious advocate, shows how major democratic and constitutional developments are intimately linked to the expansion of public education throughout American history. Schoolhouse Burningis grounded in pathbreaking, original research into how the nation, in its infancy, built itself around public education and, following the Civil War, enshrined education as a constitutional right that forever changed the trajectory of our democracy. Public education, alongside the right to vote, was the cornerstone of the recovery of the war-torn nation. Today's current schooling trends -- the declining commitment to properly fund public education and the well-financed political agenda to expand vouchers and charter schools -- present a major assault on the democratic norms that public education represents and risk undermining one of the unique accomplishments of American society.

Eleven stimulating essays--using case studies of major cities and their schools--suggest what might be done to better foster equity and diversity in educating American public schoolchildren, highlighting the complications inherent in today's education system, and providing a framework for grappling with these problems.

Considers (81) S. 137, (81) S. 287, (81) S. 1670, (81) S. 1699.

This book documents the history of the coal mines and coal towns of Thoms Run hollow. Read about the development of coal towns Beechmont, Hickman, Federal, Burdine, and Presto, PA. Get a sense of where the mines and towns were located, and about life in the coal patches. Understand the tough life that miners had in rural Pennsylvania. Learn the rich history of how one little road supported so much coal production and the development of Collier Township, PA

"Modern Schoolhouses: With Plans and Illustrations of the Newest in Schoolhouse Architecture" by W. W. La Chance. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.