Destined To Rule The Schools

Winner of the 1998 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Titles In 1909, when she became the superintendent of the Chicago schools, Ella Flagg Young proclaimed that women were "destined to rule the schools of every city." After all, women accounted for nearly eighty percent of all teachers by 1910 and their ascendance into formal school leadership positions could not be far behind. After World War II, however, a backlash against single women educators and a rigid realignment of gender roles in schools contributed to a rapid decline of women school administrators across the country, a decline from which there has been little recovery to the present. Destined to Rule the Schools tells the story of women and school leadership in America from the common school era to the present. In a broad sense, it offers an historical account of how teaching became women's work and the school superintendency men's. Blount explores how power in school employment has been structured unequally by gender. It focuses on the superintendency because an important component of the effort to establish control of schools has occurred in contesting the definition of this position. Unique and important contributions of this volume include: the only published comprehensive statistical study describing the number of women superintendents throughout the twentieth century, an analysis suggesting that the superintendency may have become an appointive position in part to remove it from the influence of newly enfranchised women voters, a discussion of the role of homophobia in creating and perpetuating rigid gender divisions in school employment, and a broad analysis that integrates the histories of teaching and school administration.

Tells the story of women and school leadership in America from the common school era to the present. Offers an historical account of how teaching became women's work and the school superintendency men's.

Finalist for the 2006 History of Education Society's Outstanding Book Award Winner of the 2005 Critics' Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association Citizen Teacher is the first book-length biography of Margaret Haley (1861–1939), the founder of the first American teachers' union, and a dynamic leader, civic activist, and school reformer. The daughter of Irish immigrants, this Chicago elementary school teacher exploded onto the national stage in 1900, leading women teachers into a national battle to secure resources for public schools and enhance teachers' professional stature. This book centers on Haley's political vision, activities as a public school activist, and her life as a charismatic leader. In the more than forty years of her political life, Haley was constantly in the news, butting heads with captains of industry, challenging autocracy in urban bureaucracy and school buildings alike, arguing legal doctrine and tax reform in state courts, and urging her constituents into action. An extraordinary figure in American history, Haley's contemporaries praised her as one of the nation's great orators and called her the Joan of Arc of the classroom teacher movement. Haley's belief that well-funded, well-respected teachers were the key to the development of a positive civic community remains a central tenet in American education. Her guiding vision of the democratic role of the public school and the responsibility of teachers as activist citizens is relevant and inspirational for educators today.

Interest in progressive education and feminist pedagogy has gained a significant following in current educational reform circles. Founding Mothers and Others examines the female founders of progressive schools and other female educational leaders in the early twentieth century and their schools or educational movements. All of the women led remarkable lives and their legacies are embedded in education today. The book examines the lessons to be learned from their work and their lives. The book also analyzes whether their leadership styles support contemporary feminist theories of leadership that argue women administrators tend to be more inclusive, democratic, and caring than male administrators. Through an examination of these women, this book looks critically at the ways in which the leaders' administrative styles and behaviors lend support to feminist claims.

Honorable Mention, 2006 History of Education Society's Outstanding Book Award Winner of the 2005 Critics' Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association Jackie M. Blount offers a history of school workers in the United States who have desired persons of the same sex as well as those who have transgressed conventional gender bounds. Despite recent impressive social and political gains for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons, schools remain a zone of great vulnerability for the larger LGBT movement. This thoroughly researched, vivid, and engaging book details the largely untold story of how this state of affairs developed during the twentieth century. It also profiles some of the remarkable people who have risked their careers by brilliantly organizing for LGBT rights, openly challenging discriminatory laws and practices, and educating their communities about conditions for LGBT school workers and students alike.

In the tradition of Southern school superintendents, Mildred E. Doyle was a former athlete, a jock, and a «good old boy» politician in a tailored suit. She was also a great character - courageous, mischievous, and contradictory - both beloved and considered odd. In Doyle's biography, McGarrh analyzes issues that interest educational historians and feminist scholars: women's struggles to attain and retain administrative positions; differences in the ways men and women supervise and lead; and the impact of homophobia on those who are not stereotypically «masculine» or «feminine». Kellie McGarrh's Mildred E. Doyle was characterized by ambiguity, contradictions, and paradox, and her life served both to confirm and confound generalizations about women leaders.

Lucy Maynard Salmon was a pioneer educator with a progressive spirit. Having earned a bachelor's and master's degree from the University of Michigan in 1876 and 1883, Salmon continued her studies under Bryn Mawr professor and future U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson. Thereafter, Salmon began her forty-year Vassar College career and earned a reputation as a nationally prominent historian, suffrage advocate, author, and teacher. She helped found the American Association of University Women, the American Association of University Professors, and the Middle States Council for the Social Studies. She was the only woman to serve on the American Historical Association's Committee of Seven and the first woman to be elected to its Executive Council. An advocate of the new social history, Salmon's teaching methods were novel at the time and continue to be relevant today. Indeed, Salmon advised students to «go to the sources».

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