Schooling America: How the Public Schools Meet the Nation's Changing Needs.

Schooling America: How the Public Schools Meet the Nation's Changing Needs. Patricia Albjerg Graham (Oxford).

Education historian Patricia Albjerg Graham has penned a sweeping, readable history of American schooling in the 20th century. She argues that schooling has shifted over the decades from an emphasis on "assimilation" in the early 1900s; to a focus on access in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; to an embrace of achievement in the most recent era. Schooling America also traces the evolution of a chaotic, autonomous system of higher education to one marked increasingly by a commitment to accountability and the ideal of the research university.

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This is a volume marked by personal touches. In a chapter beginning in 1900, the author gives us a description of her father's first day of school. But Graham also pays much attention to individual reformers and decisionmakers. The book is more notable for its scholarship than for the author's cautious conclusions, such as her observation that report cards for elementary, secondary, and higher education may not be worthwhile. Her only clear programmatic recommendation is that the nation needs to invest more in education research. Graham's book may not do much to illuminate the future, but it provides a cogent look at how we got to the present.