![]() ![]() Several other reports and studies that emerged in the early 1980’s contained similar warnings. Then came A Nation at Risk, the clarion declaration by the National Commission on Excellence in Education that the United States faced a bleak future if it did not pull up its socks and pursue quality and performance in its schools with at least as much vigor as access and equality. But there is no denying that the pursuit of “educational equity” as it came to be known was the dominant preoccupation of American K-12 education from 1954 until 1983. Many of these initiatives created unintended problems and few if any achieved all that they set out to do. Additional legislation sought to provide suitable courses of study for recent immigrants (“bilingual” education) and to lower barriers that were believed to constrain educational opportunities for low-income children, homeless youngsters-and girls. The following two decades brought a cascade of federal court orders, laws, rules and programs in the “civil rights” and “compensatory education” realms, as well as the requirement that handicapped youngsters (today we say “children with disabilities”) be afforded a “free, appropriate” public education rather than the attics and inferior offerings that many had been confined to. The Supreme Court began to tackle one of the biggest challenges with its Brown v Board of Education ruling in 1954, which commenced the dismantling of racial segregation. Hence as high-school participation widened, so did the practice of multiple curricular “tracks” such that some students followed the “college prep” sequence while others took “vocational” classes (and still others were cast into a sort of educational no-mans-land called the “general” track).Įven as K-12 education gradually universalized, however, access to decent school opportunities remained a problem for many. So secondary schooling was long the preserve of those headed toward college and into the kinds of careers that called for it. Basic civic participation and parenting required near-universal literacy, but factory and farm work did not really demand the skills and knowledge that we associate with high school. That sluggishness, however, was not a product of exclusion or parsimony so much as a corollary of an economy that for many years did fine without everyone acquiring a secondary education. Publicly-funded high schools were the next stage, but “universal” attendance in them was neither required nor expected until after World War II-which is also when the United States began to fixate on “high school dropout” rates. Other states followed, as did “compulsory attendance” laws, though initially these required children to attend school for just a few years. In the 1840’s, Massachusetts began to make primary education a state responsibility. It was optional for families, and of course it varied greatly in quality. For the most part, that meant boys from relatively prosperous families.īeginning in New England as early as the 17th Century, however, towns started to take upon themselves the responsibility of providing a semblance of “public” education to the children who lived there, mostly at the primary level and often still limited to boys. In the country’s early days, primary-secondary education was essentially a private good, available to youngsters whose parents cared about-and could afford-it. ![]() The access trajectory is relatively easy to trace. And the most recent group of kids to turn up as victims of education that’s less than they (and the nation) need is gifted students, particularly those with high potential but low family incomes. On these dimensions, we still have a considerable distance to travel. To give them a well-aimed shot at the American dream, they need to acquire a full measure of knowledge and skills, which introduces issues of educational quality and effectiveness as well as access and equity. Getting youngsters inside the doors of acceptable schools is only the beginning. The United States has made remarkable progress in providing all its children with access to education, but it hasn’t been easy and it hasn’t yet been enough.
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