USAEDUCATION
IN BRIEF

Bureau of International Information Programs
U.S. Department of State
http://www.america.gov/

INTRODUCTION
International Baccalaureate
students in Washington state
respond to a science question.

All societies must wrestle with fundamental questions
about the nature and purpose of their educational
system, but the United States was the first nation to face thesequestions as a democracy.
Early on, Americans understood that their future as a freepeople rested upon their own wisdom and judgment, and notthat of some distant ruler. For this reason, the quality, character,and costs of education have remained among the country’s
central preoccupations since its founding.
Educational institutions of all types and sizes, from nurseryschools to advanced research institutions, populate theAmerican landscape. Public schools have been described as
the nation’s most familiar government institutions. Whether
communities are poor or affluent, urban or rural, public schools
are a common denominator throughout the United States.
From their origins two centuries ago through today,
America’s public and private schools have served to define

the American identity. Every national experience shaping theAmerican character has been played out in its classrooms: raceand treatment of minorities, immigration and growth of cities,
westward expansion and economic growth, individual freedom
and the nature of community.
Fundamental questions about the purpose and methods ofeducation have resonated in public debates in the United Statesfrom the “common school” movement of the early 19th century
to debates over academic standards and testing today.
Should schools emphasize basic skills — reading, writing,and mathematics — or provide a broad education in the liberalarts and sciences? How can schools provide equal access to
all yet maintain high academic standards? Who should pay
for schools — parents or the public? Should schools focus onpractical, job-oriented skills, or give all children the academic
courses necessary to succeed in college? How should teachers
impart moral and spiritual values to the children of different
cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds? What criteria should
be used for selecting secondary school students for admission
to prestigious colleges and universities?
The answers to these questions are not easy, and, in fact,schools in the United States have answered them in very
different ways at different times in the nation’s history. Today, as
in the past, education remains a topic of vigorous debate, rapidchange, and enduring values.
1

Size

Students experimenting with hydraulics in a vocational class.

Structure of U.S. EducationFor someone from another country, the U.S. educational
system understandably appears large and varied, evenchaotic. Within this complexity, however, American educationreflects the history, culture, and values of the changing country
itself. From a broad perspective, the American educational
system can be characterized by its large size, organizational
structure, marked decentralization, and increasing diversity.

2

Schools in the United States — public and private,
elementary and secondary, state universities and private
colleges — can be found everywhere, and the United States
continues to operate one of the largest universal education
systems in the world. More than 75 million children and adults
were enrolled in U.S. schools and colleges in the 2005-2006
academic year, according to the National Center for Education
Statistics. Another 6.8 million were employed as teachers,
teaching kindergarten through college.
In addition, more than a million preschool children from
low-income families, usually ages three and four, attend
Head Start programs designed to provide learning, social
development, and nutrition programs to ensure that thesepreschoolers will be ready for school at age five or six.
Public school enrollments grew exponentially during thepost-World War II “baby boom” generation (usually defined as
those born from 1946 to 1964). After a drop-off in the 1980s,
enrollments have rebounded strongly, largely as a result of
growing Hispanic populations, according to the latest U.S.
Census Bureau reports.
The U.S. educational system today comprises almost
96,000 public elementary and secondary schools, plus morethan 4,200 institutions of higher learning, ranging from small,3

Preschoolers listen to a story in a Head Start classroom.

two-year community colleges to massive state universities with
undergraduate and graduate programs in excess of 30,000
students.
The nation’s total expenditures for education stand at
approximately $878 billion a year.
K-12 Organization
School attendance is compulsory for students throughage 16 in most states. Children generally begin elementary
school with kindergarten (K) at age five and continue throughsecondary school (grade 12) to age 18. Typically, the elementary
4school years include kindergarten through grades five or six,and at some schools through grade eight. Secondary schools —known as high schools in the United States — generally include
grades nine through 12.
Fifty years ago, elementary school students typically moved
immediately to high school, or they attended junior highschool for grades seven and eight or grades seven, eight, andnine. During the past 30 years, however, junior high schools
have been largely replaced with middle schools configured
for grades six through eight, or roughly for the same grades as
junior high. Estimates are that 20 million young people, ages 10
to 15, attend middle schools today.
As Minnesota principal Mark Ziebarth described thedifference between the two approaches, “A junior high school
program is designed to mirror a traditional high school programfor students at a younger age. It has a similar schedule to thehigh school and classes are arranged by departments. Middle
schools are designed to provide a forum to meet the special
needs of adolescents.”
Team teaching and flexible block scheduling, rather
than set 45- or 50-minute classes, are characteristic of middle
schools. These schools also place emphasis on small groups,
on an interdisciplinary approach to subject matter, and on
special projects that can engage 10- to 15-year-olds, who, says
the National Middle School Association, “are undergoing the5most rapid intellectualand developmental
changes of their lives.”
The large
contemporary highschool, offeringa broad menu ofacademic and elective
English language learners in a middle-school in Grand
Island, Nebraska.
courses for students
ages 14 to 18, became a fixture in American education by themid-20th century. High school students also can choose froma host of clubs, activities, athletics, work-study arrangements,and other extracurricular activities. Based on grades and tests,
students can take advanced academic courses or more generalor vocational classwork.
Through most of the 20th century, high schools wereconsolidated into larger units to offer wider class choices tomore and more students. The rural country school almost
disappeared, replaced by countywide high schools. In cities, it
was not uncommon for large school campuses to hold as manyas 5,000 students with both college-oriented and vocationalcourses that could appeal to just about everyone.
More recently, concerns over the caliber of education insuch large schools has led to a call for the establishment ofsmaller schools with lower student-teacher ratios.
6

The contemporary American high school has long loomed
large in the public culture. The popular musical Grease, thetelevision series Happy Days, and movies like Blackboard Jungle
depicted the light and dark sides of schools in the 1950s. Recent
popular entertainments with high school settings range fromfilms like Mean Girls, Juno, Election, and High School Musical tosuch hit TV shows as Beverly Hills 90210 and Saved by the Bell.
Private Schools
Private schools flourish in the United States; many of theseschools are run by churches and other religious organizations.
Of the estimated 55.8 million children attending elementaryand secondary schools during the 2007-2008 academic year,
about 6 million, or 11 percent, were enrolled in private schools.
More than half of the nation’s private school students
attend Catholic schools, the nation’s oldest private school
system. Other private schools reflect America’s religious
diversity, encompassing nearly all major Protestantdenominations and the Quaker, Islamic, Jewish, and Greek
Orthodox faiths.
The country’s oldest private schools, however, are eliteboarding schools, founded in the 18th century, which have hada record of educating many of the country’s intellectual andpolitical leaders.
7Another 1.1 million
students are home-schooledby their parents underguidelines established by eachof the 50 states, according torecent census figures.
Local Control
Perhaps the mostremarkable characteristicof American education is its
decentralization. Schools in the
Working in the computer lab in a Detroit,
United States have been, andMichigan, elementary school.
remain, overwhelmingly a stateand local responsibility. Unlike most other nations, the UnitedStates does not operate a national education system — with
only a few exceptions, notably the nation’s military academies
and Native American schools. Neither does the federal
government approve nor administer a national curriculum.
Public education constitutes the single largest expenditure
for almost every U.S. city and county, which receive the bulkof their funding from local property taxes. Local boards ofeducation, most of which are elected, administer the nation’s
nearly 15,500 school districts, ranging from small rural schools
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in states like Kansas and Nebraska to the New York City system,
which educates more than a million children annually.
State boards of education, along with a statesuperintendent or commissioner, oversee local education
districts, set student and teacher standards, approve theclassroom curriculum, and often review textbook selections.
The state’s chief power, however, is increasingly financial: Most
states now provide substantial aid to schools to supplement
local tax revenues.
One consequence of local control and financing of publicschools has been disparities between affluent and poor school
districts. In recent years, under pressure from state courts andpublic advocacy groups, many states have taken steps to ensure
more equitable funding of school districts regardless of income
levels.
The federal government provides research and support
to ensure equal access and excellence in education, alongwith funding student loan programs and assistance to lowerincome students. Nevertheless, responsibility for education
remains primarily a state and local enterprise. According to the
U.S. Department of Education, about 90 percent of the annual
expenditures for education at all levels comes from state, local,
and private sources.

9Diversity
Schools in the United States have experienced waves ofimmigration throughout their history, and today American
schools, like the larger society they serve, are more ethnicallydiverse than ever. In the early 20th century, children of
immigrant families — most from southern and eastern
Europe — flooded public school systems in the Northeast andMidwest. Today new immigrants continue to change the ethnic
composition of student populations, although the largest
numbers now come from Latin America and Asia.
African Americans constitute about 17 percent of the K-12
student population; Hispanics, however, are becoming the largest
single minority group in public schools. It is not uncommon
to find schools, especially along the East and West Coasts,
where more than a dozen different languages, from Arabic to
Vietnamese, are spoken at home by students of foreign-bornparents. As a result, the teaching of English as a second language
remains one of education’s most important responsibilities.
Despite their decentralization and diversity, public schools
remain remarkably cohesive in the ways they are run. A student
transferring from a school in California to one in Pennsylvania or
Georgia will find differences no doubt, but the mix of academic
subjects will be largely familiar, despite the fact that the federal
government does not mandate a national curriculum.
10

Ohio State University, one of the first land-grant universities, established in 1873.

Rise of the Public SchoolPublic schools were unknown in the colonial era, althoughseveral New England colonies established “subscription
schools” for those who could afford to pay the fees. Harvard,
the first institution of higher learning in North America, wasfounded in 1636 in Massachusetts and, like all early colleges,
focused almost exclusively on religious scholarship and classicallanguages — Latin and Greek.

11history as the iconic “little red schoolhouse.” In 1820 Congress
authorized the collection of state education funds through thesale of public lands.
In the first half of the 19th century, reformer Horace Mannof Massachusetts launched an influential campaign for usingstate taxes to improve and support free common schools for all
children. According to writer Lawrence Cremin, “The fight for
free schools was a bitter one, and for 25 years the outcome was
uncertain.”By 1860, however, most states had adopted the idea,
mollifying protests against higher taxes by giving local
communities control over their schools. The principle of publicly
funded free education under local control had taken root in
American society.
Students looking up information for a geology experiment.

Land for Colleges

The “Common” School

The Morrill Land Grant Act, enacted during the U.S. Civil War
in 1862, employed the same mechanism of selling public lands
to establish colleges for agriculture and industry. Today theseland-grant schools, constituting some of the largest and mostinfluential state universities in the country, offer a full range ofliberal arts and professional programs at both undergraduate
and graduate levels.
Today there are 106 land-grant colleges.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which encompassed
the present-day states of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin,
and Michigan, mandated that every new township set aside
one parcel of land out of every 36 for a public — or what wasthen termed a “common” — school. These were often simple
one-room buildings topped with a steeple, celebrated in U.S.
12

13

Frontier Schools

Urban Immigrants

On the western frontier, settlers
sought to build schools almost assoon as they established new towns.
Congress, in fact, required territories
to offer free public education to all
before they could be considered
for statehood. “Schools became
important civic amenities that could
draw settlers,” says historian Kathryn
Sklar in the book School.
But frontier schools faced far
different challenges than urban
A new citizens’ naturalization
schools, chief among them an acuteceremony in San Jose, California.
lack of teachers. Catherine Beecher,sister to Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe,led a successful campaign to promote women teachers as a“civilizing force” in the West. These women faced the hardshipsof the frontier equipped with little more than their belief in thecalling of education and a series of popular textbooks tailored
for western schools, called McGuffey Readers. These textbooks
interspersed lessons in reading and arithmetic with “moral tales”
designed to build character.

Public schools grew with the steady influx of immigrantschoolchildren, largely from Europe, but with significant
populations of Chinese and Japanese on the West Coastand Mexicans and Latin Americans in the Southwest. Eachof the successive waves of immigrants challenged not only
the capacity but the aims and organization of the American
educational system as it coped with unprecedented numbers of
new students.
The challenge of assimilating and educating children fromvastly different backgrounds and languages was especiallyacute in the major destination cities for immigrants — whether
Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians in the mid-19th century, or
eastern and southern Europeans in the peak immigration yearsof the 1890s through the 1920s.
Urban schools could be grim and overcrowded places, but
as recounted in the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) book
School, “So powerful was the lure of education that on a day
after a steamship arrived, as many as 125 children would apply
to one New York school.”
Even so, estimates are that, with unrestricted child labor,
only about 50 percent of children attended school at all, and theaverage period of time was five years.
The growth of public schools in this period was enormous

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— from 7.6 million students in 1870 to 12.7 million by the endof the 19th century. The United States, according to the book
School, “was providing more schooling to more children thanany other nation on earth.”
As scholar and educational historian Diane Ravitch writes
in School: “The American school system’s readiness to provide
social mobility to low-income students was truly remarkable;
its efforts to assimilate newcomers into American society werelargely successful. ... These were the enduring accomplishmentsof the American public school.”

Education for All

B

y the mid-20th century, the ideal of universal educationfrom kindergarten through high school had become areality for substantial numbers of Americans. But certainly not
for all, especially the nation’s racial minorities.
Segregation
The largest exception to the growing inclusion of U.S.
public education was African Americans. Before the U.S. Civil
War (1861-1865), southern slaves not only had little accessto education but could be punished for learning to read.
With the end of slavery, black Americans in the South lived
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largely segregatedlives. Education was
no exception, despite
the establishmentof schools by theFreedmen’s Bureau
and others to meet thedemand for what black
Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas, 1957, a
educator Booker T.
landmark in racially integrating schools in the south.
Washington called “anentire race trying to go to school.” Segregated schools, upheld inan 1896 Supreme Court decision under the doctrine of “separate
but equal,” became the practice in 17 southern and borderstates into the 20th century. Even so, estimates are that black
literacy in the decades following the Civil War jumped from 5
percent to 70 percent.
Outside of the South, the principal issue was one of
population and housing patterns that resulted in de facto
segregation of black and white students. As urban areas became
concentrated with African Americans, city school systems
developed into predominantly minority enclaves surrounded bylargely white suburban schools.

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Brown v. Board of Education
African Americans challenged segregation throughout
the nation’s history with little success until school integration
became central to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and1960s.
In 1950, after years of careful preparation, the nation’s
oldest civil rights organization, the NAACP (National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People) recruited 13 blackparents in Topeka, Kansas, who attempted to enroll theirchildren in their local schools. The NAACP sued when they wereturned away, and by the time the Brown v. Board of Educationcase reached the Supreme Court, it had been consolidatedwith similar cases from three other states and the District ofColumbia.
In a unanimous 1954 decision, the Court declared,“Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Kansas
and other border states complied with the decision, but theSouth defied the Court in a campaign called “massive resistance”
that resulted in an ongoing confrontation between the stateand federal governments. The integration of Little Rock Central
High School in Arkansas in 1957 required the dispatch of U.S.
Army soldiers, and when black student James Meredith enrolled
in the University of Mississippi, it triggered widespread rioting.
Southern resistance to school integration didn’t end in many
18

parts of the South until the years following passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 under
President Lyndon Johnson.

Nuevo Schools English Academy in Rogers, Arkansas.

Equally important to the cause of integration was thefirst significant infusion of federal funds into public education
through Title I of the Elementary and Secondary School Act of
1965, which has since provided billions of dollars in aid to school
districts with poor and disadvantaged children. Only schools that
could demonstrate that they didn’t practice racial discrimination
were eligible for Title I funding.
19Racial imbalances persist in many public schools, however,as a result of residential patterns and the concentration ofminorities in urban areas. An ongoing study by Harvard
University has found that racial segregation has increased ina number of states with high minority populations, affecting
many poorer Hispanic students as well as African Americans. By
contrast, Asian Americans are the minority group most likely toattend racially mixed schools.
The lesson is that although American education remains
committed to principles of equality, it often falls short of thatgoal in practice.
Bilingual Education and Assimilation
The legacy of Brown and its principle of equal access forall served as a model for other racial minorities, as well as for
women and the disabled.
Hispanics often found themselves in segregated, poor
schools, and, in fact, a little-known 1947 court decision ended
separate schools for Spanish-speaking students in California.
The language question remained, however: whether toplace students in English immersion programs or in bilingualclasses where students continue to use their native language,
typically Spanish, while also learning English.
The question of bilingual education is an old one and20

reflects a continuingdebate over whether
the United States should
be seen primarily as amelting pot, emphasizing
a common identity, or
as a mosaic, with clearly
defined cultures andStudents engaged in a biology class experiment.
backgrounds.
Bilingual proponents contend that students can keep up
academically in their native language and transition to regularclasses when they have learned English. Advocates for English
argue that a bilingual approach only slows down mastery ofEnglish and prevents students from joining the mainstream
culture.
Many school districts adopted bilingual approaches in the
1960s and 1970s, but their popularity has waned along with lackof funding. In recent years, the typical pattern is to designate
students as “English Language Learners” and place them in
regular English classes, supported by specialists in teaching
English as a second language. About 3.7 million, or 8 percent of
all students, receive special English language services, according
to the U.S. Department of Education.

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Women and Title IX

Mainstreaming

The campaign for equal
rights for women in education
focused primarily on colleges
and universities. The result was
Title IX, a 1972 amendment to
the Higher Education Act thatbanned discrimination on thebasis of gender in higher learning.
As a result, women’s enrollment
in traditionally male professional
programs such as medicine,
Acoma Pueblo students of New
law, and engineering increased
Mexico learning English.
markedly.
The most public controversy over Title IX, however, hasconcerned athletes and whether the law unfairly harmed men’scollegiate sports programs. The issue has been a subject of
furious debate in political and sports circles. Proponents cite theprofound impact of Title IX in opening up academic as well as
athletic opportunities for girls and women. Opponents argue
that the law has become little more than a quota system thatharms the interests of both men and women.

Advocates for disabled and “special needs” students also
drew upon the model of the civil rights movement to call for
fuller inclusion of these students in regular classrooms andschool activities, a process termed “mainstreaming.” They argue
that studies show that placing physically and mentally disabledstudents in regular classes for at least part of the day resultsin higher academic achievement, greater self-esteem, andimproved social skills.
A 1975 law, now known as the Individuals With Disabilities
Education Act, calls for all children with disabilities to receive “afree appropriate public education.” The law requires schools to
prepare an individual education plan, or IEP, for each disabledchild and to place the child in the least restrictive classroom
setting possible.
The law has enjoyed widespread support, although thecosts of implementation have grown rapidly. Much of the overall
increase in spending for public education in recent years can be
attributed to the costs associated with providing an accessible,
equitable education for children and adolescents with physicaland mental disabilities.
According to recent figures, U.S. public schools are
educating about 6.1 million special-needs children. The mostcommon learning disability is speech and language impairment,

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but special needs can include disabilities as a result of mental
retardation, emotional disturbance, or physical problems.
Native American Schools
One of the few exceptions to the direct involvement of thefederal government in education is that of Native Americans.
The federal administration of Indian schools reflects the special
relationship between the government and the semi-sovereign
tribes of American Indian and Native Alaskan peoples that isembodied in both laws and treaties.

Cooperating on math problems in Tesuque, New Mexico.
24

The first exposure of American Indians to formal schoolingoften came through missionaries and church schools, where
the emphasis was less upon academic instruction than religious
conversion and becoming westernized in manner and dress.
As the frontier moved west in the 19th century, many of thesechurch-run schools were gradually replaced by those operated
by the federal government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The policy of these schools was to assimilate Native
Americans into the mainstream by forcibly stripping them of
their tribal culture. Many Indians were educated in boarding
schools, often far from home, where they had their hair cut andtheir native clothes replaced and they were forbidden to speak
their own languages. The most prominent of these boarding
schools was the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania.
A 1928 report spotlighting failures and abuses in Indian
education led to reforms and increased financial aid known as
the Indian New Deal. Later, the civil rights movement sparked
a parallel Indian rights movement. Over decades, the federal
government reversed policy and established an educational
system that seeks to provide modern skills and knowledge
while preserving the traditions and culture of Native American
peoples.
Today the Bureau of Indian Education administers 184
elementary and secondary schools, along with 24 colleges.
These schools are located on 63 reservations in 23 states across25

the United States, serving approximately 60,000 students who
represent 238 different tribes.

Seeking Educational ExcellenceThe movement for what is sometimes termed “excellencein education” has taken many forms. One set of changes
emphasizes a back-to-basics, or core, curriculum focused on
math, science, history, and the language arts (reading, writing,and literature). Most elementary and secondary schools also
provide so-called gifted and talented programs for highachieving students.
AP and IB
For American high school students looking to excel
academically, the two most common approaches today are
known by their initials: AP for Advanced Placement and IB for
International Baccalaureate. AP and IB are different in somerespects, but both require demanding coursework that canpropel students to greater academic achievement in college.
Advanced Placement, founded in 1955, is run by theCollege Board, which comprises 5,200 schools, colleges, andother educational organizations. Through AP, the College Board
has developed strenuous, college-level courses in more than 30

26

Teacher education class in Los Angeles.

subjects that students can take in high school. AP students earn
academic credits for college in the United States and 40 othercountries — provided they score high enough on AP tests givenin their junior and senior years (grades 11 and 12).
More than 60 percent of American high schools offer AP
courses, according to the Department of Education. The mostfrequently taken tests are calculus, English literature, and history.
In 2006 more than 24 percent of all U.S. high school students
took AP exams, up from 16 percent in 2000.
The IB diploma program is administered by the International
Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) in Switzerland and grew out
27

of efforts to establish a common curriculum and system ofacademic credits that would be recognized by colleges anduniversities in other countries.
IBO works with more than 2,000 schools in 125 countries,
including nearly 800 in the United States. Students follow arigorous curriculum in six academic areas: English, foreign
language, science, mathematics, social science, and the arts.
They must also perform 200 hours of community service andwrite a 4,000-word essay based on independent research.
Assessing Teachers

In Los Angeles, learning to use acomputer in an adult education
class.
28

The numbers and qualificationsof teachers are subjects of perennial
debate, although some experts
have pointed to the turnover ofteachers as often a greater problem
than an overall teacher shortage.
One indicator of the push forhigher standards in recent years is
student-teacher ratios, with lower
ratios indicating that teachers canspend more time with individual
students. From 1980 to 2001, thestudent-teacher ratio in elementaryand secondary schools declined from 18.6 to 15.8 students
per teacher, according to the National Center for Education
Statistics. This ratio reflects, in part, the increase in special
education teachers for the disabled or for teaching English as asecond language, and typical public classroom sizes are often in
the 20s.
Recent figures also indicate that more than 90 percent of all
public school teachers are rated as “highly qualified,” meaningthat they are experienced and certified to teach in their subject
area. These same figures reveal a familiar social and economic
divide, however, with more highly qualified teachers in
wealthier schools and fewer in minority and poorer schools.
“Even if you have high numbers [of certified instructors] inthe aggregate,” said one official of the Education Department
to the newspaper USA Today, “there are pockets where students
are being taught by teachers that are not highly qualified.”
Although local school districts have considerable flexibility
in how they organize their instructional programs, teacher
training tends to function as a countervailing force. States may
have different requirements for certification, for instance, but
all states recognize the same college degrees and coursework,
regardless of the location of the school. As a result, mostteachers, similarly trained and accredited, teach the basic core
subjects in roughly the same manner and sequence throughout
the country.
29

Students listening to a lecture at Merritt College in Oakland, California.

Textbooks typically represent a substantial investment bybook publishers who want to ensure that their products areapproved and purchased by as many state and local boards ofeducation as possible. As a result, two of the country’s largest
school systems — Texas and California — wield enormous
influence over textbook content and publication.
Computers and Education
Computers and the Internet have now become ubiquitousin American schools from the elementary grades onward.
30

Recent figures indicate that 100 percent of public schools haveInternet access and that elementary and secondary schools
possess more than 14 million personal computers, roughly one
for every four students.
If the digital divide has been spanned at school, it still
remains a factor at home, according to the Department of
Education, which found that minority and poor students often
lack computer and Internet access at home.
School-oriented Web sites like Blackboard.com havebecome a routine means for posting assignments, homework,and class schedules. Along with e-mail, these Web sites havebecome a favorite way for parents and teachers to stay in directcommunication.
As Internet capacity has increased, so has distance oronline learning. Almost 3.5 million, or 20 percent of all college
students, took one or more online courses during the 2006-2007
academic year — an increase of almost 10 percent over theprevious year, according to Sloan Consortium, an organization
working to improve online education.
Roughly half of all online students are enrolled at thenation’s community colleges, where the most popular courses
are in such professional fields as business management,
computer science, engineering, and health sciences-related
programs.
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Progressive Reforms

Working on a high school physics experiment in Hidalgo, Texas.

Challenge of School ReformA

mericans have always debated the quality and directionof their educational system, but in recent years the focus
has been upon the best ways to measure and increase academic
achievement. Comparisons with students in other countries
have also sharpened the debate over educational methods andresults, especially those showing U.S. schools lagging in scienceand mathematics.
32

Early reformers tried to establish consistent academic
standards, train teachers, or consolidate schools in the nameof efficiency. In other words, to transform education into a
profession.
These efforts culminated in the Progressive Movement of
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when educators like John
Dewey called for fundamental reform in what schools taught
and how they operated. Dewey and his supporters urged giving
teachers greater independence in the classroom, emphasizing
learning by doing instead of rote memorization and challenging
students to think independently.
But Dewey’s “child-centered” approach was almost
immediately challenged by those more interested in using
new social science methods to increase efficiency and organize
students into separate tracks of those destined for college
or for manual labor. Progressive education was also widely
misunderstood, as its emphasis on the needs of children
became interpreted as a lack of academic standards.
Nation at Risk
Criticism of new or progressive ways of teaching resurfacedin the 1950s, when the debate over the most effective ways to33teach language skills to children
triggered stories on “Why Johnny
Can’t Read.” (A similar debate, two
decades later, inevitably produced“Why Johnny Can’t Write.”)The 1957 launch of theSoviet satellite Sputnik triggeredsimilar concerns and led to anincreased emphasis on science andmathematics in an era of Cold War
conflict and the U.S.-Soviet space
Using microscopes to observe bacteria
in pond water in a high school science race.
lab, Donna, Texas.
In 1983, a highly influential
report called A Nation at Risk asserted that declining academic
standards threatened America’s position in an increasinglycompetitive world and called for more resources and greater
rigor in education.
The response to the Risk report ranged from lengthening
the school day and year to greater emphasis on core academic
subjects. Yet the report’s conclusions have been vigorously
disputed. “Not only is it not true there has been a great decline,”
contends historian Carl Kaestle in the book School, “but it isalso true that we are educating a much wider proportion of ourpopulation now than we were in the 1950s.”
34

Charter Schools and Competition
Many recent school reforms have sought to introduce
greater competition into the public school system. Charterschools, for example, are independently operated public schoolsthat must meet the same academic and legal requirements
as traditional public schools but are free from most of thebureaucratic and regulatory constraints of their traditionalcounterparts. Approximately 2,000 charter schools are now
operating in the United States.
Another response to concerns over academic standards andinternational competition has been to forge alliances between
business and schools. In some cases, school districts have tried
to emulate efficiencies and organization of the corporate modelby establishing standards and goals that can be measured andby holding administrators and teachers accountable for results.
In the push for accountability, many states have passed
laws permitting the closure of low-performing or failing publicschools. In such cases, which are still rare, the schools canchoose to reconstitute themselves with new staff and teachers
or convert themselves to charter-school status. Families withfailing neighborhood schools are often given the opportunity totransfer their children to higher-performing schools.
School vouchers have proven to be a highly controversial
innovation. A voucher program permits parents to leave failing35

Privatization

Learning multiplication tables at a charter school in New Orleans, Louisiana.

or substandard public schools and receive public funds tocover all or part of the tuition at private schools. The amount isusually based on the per-student spending in the community.
The idea is that if schools have to compete for students, they
will improve. However, the controversy over using tax money tosupport private or religious schools has been intense, and few
communities have fully implemented school vouchers.

36

Estimates are that private, for-profit companies now
operate 10 percent of the nation’s public charter schools. Oneof the largest is Edison Schools, founded in 1992, which runs
charter schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia, as
well as providing “academic academies” and other services inpartnership with existing public schools.
Traditional organizations of public school professionals
like the National Education Association oppose privatization,
contending that there is an inherent conflict between the profit
demands of private companies and the needs of schoolchildren.
Companies like Edison contend that competition can help
improve both public and privatized schools, thereby benefiting
the “customers” — students — just as in any other marketplace.
Both sides point to outside studies that buttress their sideof the argument. Public school proponents cite reports in the
1990s that show there is no substantial edge for Edison students
or that Edison schools publicize only favorable results. A RAND
Corporation study in 2000, on the other hand, concluded that“student achievement gains at Edison Schools matched or
exceeded similar improvements in student performance incomparable public schools.”

37

High School Redesign
Another reform movement, led by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, has taken a very different approach toeducational reform through a fundamental rethinking of highschools themselves. “Our high schools were designed 50 years
ago to meet the needs of another age,” says Bill Gates, founderof Microsoft.
Over the past five years, the foundation has funded highperforming model schools that “engage all students with arigorous curriculum. They offer coursework that is relevant
to students’ lives and aspirations. And they foster strong
relationships between students and adults.”
The Gates redesign effort also stresses that smaller is usually
better. “All else being equal,” says a foundation report, “students
in small high schools score higher on tests, pass more courses,
and go on to college more frequently than those in large ones.
Moreover, these results appear to be greatest for low-income
students and students of color.”
No Child Left Behind
The most sweeping change to the federal role in education
since the 1965 Elementary and Secondary School Act is theBush administration’s 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law.
38

NCLB requires states to set
educational standards forachievement at different
grade levels and to takesteps to improve theperformance of those who
don’t meet the standards.
NCLB mandates stategoals for what children
should know in reading
and mathematics in grades
Second-grade charter school students inthree through eight as
Bensalem, Pennsylvania.
measured on standardized
tests. These and other accountability measures of school
performance are then collected into statewide annual reportcards.
Although state and local school systems have considerable
flexibility in upgrading performance levels, the law provides foreventual removal of students and funding from failing schools.
Parents with children in failing schools can transfer to otherpublic schools or charter schools. They also are eligible fortutoring and other special services.
NCLB has generated responses ranging from strong support
to skepticism to outright opposition, according to a 2004 reportby the Education Commission of the States.
39

ability. Parents point to schools sacrificing art classes or otherenrichment activities to “teach to the test” and avoid any
designation as a failing school.
Jason Kamras, 2005 National Teacher of the Year, says, “NoChild Left Behind’s greatest strength is that it has institutionalized
high expectations for every child in America.”
From a longer viewpoint, NCLB is only the latest installment
in the long debate over balancing the demands of inclusion and
excellence in American education.

Changing Face of Higher Education

Smiling Toyota scholarship winner in San Marcos, Texas.

Supporters believe that the nationwide institution ofstandards, testing, and accountability are essential to building
and maintaining high-quality schools that can succeed in an
intensely competitive global economy.
Other groups, such as the American Federation ofTeachers and the National Education Association, have raised
strong concerns about how the law distinguishes between
effective and ineffective schools when student populations
differ so much in background, income, and English language
40

A

greater proportion of young people receive higher
education in the United States than in any other country.
These students also can choose from more than 4,000 very
different institutions. They can attend two-year community
colleges or more specialized technical training institutes.
Traditional four-year institutions range from small liberal arts
colleges to massive state universities in places like California,
Arizona, Ohio, and New York, each with multiple campuses andstudent populations exceeding 30,000. Approximately onethird of U.S. colleges and universities are private and generally
charge tuition costs substantially higher than state-run public
institutions.
41North Carolina State University classroom with many veterans in the 1950s.

G.I. BillFor much of their history, American institutions of higher
learning remained bastions of privilege, with a predominantly
white, male population. That pattern didn’t change significantly
until passage of the G.I. Bill in 1944, when the federal
42

government paid for millions of World War II veterans to attend
college. (G.I., which stands for “government issue,” became acasual term for any Army soldier in World War II.)
The G.I. Bill of Rights included subsidies for attending
virtually any recognized institution of higher learning, as wellas payments for vocational training and subsidies to encourage
home ownership. Congress didn’t expect many to takeadvantage of the college provision, but within two years morethan 1 million veterans were enrolled at the nation’s colleges
and universities, doubling the number of college students. Overa seven-year period, the G.I. Bill enabled more than 2.2 million
veterans to attend college.
The social impact of the G.I. Bill has been little short ofrevolutionary. As scholar Milton Greenberg points out, “Today,
American universities are now overwhelmingly public, focusedheavily on occupational, technical, and scientific education,huge, urban-oriented, and highly democratic.”
In subsequent decades, colleges and universities grew
rapidly, as veterans were followed by their children, the socalled baby boom generation that began entering college in the
1960s.
Colleges and universities also began opening their doors
wider to minorities and women. In recent years, more womenthan men have been attending colleges and universities andearning more bachelor’s and master’s degrees — a pattern that43

Costs and Competition

Responsible citizens learn about “Democracy in Action” at Philadelphia’s Constitution HighSchool.

shows no signs of changing, according to the National Center
for Education Statistics.
The proportion of minority students attending college
has increased as well — from 14 percent in 1981 to 27 percent
in 2005. Much of the change can be attributed to growing
numbers of Hispanic and Asian students. African American
enrollments rose from 9 percent to 12 percent in the same
period.
44

Higher education in the United States is an enormous
enterprise, costing almost $373 billion and consuming nearly 3
percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. College costs forstudents can be high, especially for private institutions, which
do not receive general subsidies from either state or federal
governments. To ensure equal access to education for all, theUnited States administers an extensive financial aid programfor students. Seven out of 10 students receive some form offinancial aid, which typically combines grants, loans, and work
opportunities to enable full-time students to meet their living
costs and tuition.
Recently, several of the nation’s wealthiest and mostprestigious universities — schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale,
Columbia, and Dartmouth, among others — announced plans
to substantially increase their financial aid for low- and middleincome families.
Students compete for openings in the nation’s bettercolleges and universities. At the same time, American
institutions of higher learning of all types must broadlycompete for the nation’s top students and to admit sufficientnumbers to maintain their enrollments. The most prestigious
American universities — public and private — receive hundredsof applications for each opening. At the same time, it is true45

that most secondary school graduates with good grades andstrong scores on college entrance exams receive hundreds ofsolicitations from institutions of higher learning.
Reflecting the decentralized nature of American education,state governments may license institutions of higher learning,
but accreditation, which grants academic standing to the college
or university, is accorded by nongovernmental associations, notby states or the federal government.
Community Colleges
For an American high school graduate with a modest
academic record and limited funds, enrolling in a community
college may be a better option than attending a four-yearcollege or university.
Two-year, associate-degree programs in such growing
professional fields as health, business, and computer technology
can be found at most of the nation’s roughly 1,200 community
colleges.
Community colleges are also gateways to four-year
undergraduate institutions for students who need to bolster
mediocre high school grades with stronger college credits.
Taking advantage of low fees and liberal admissions policies,
more than 11 million American and an estimated 100,000
international students now attend community colleges.
46

HBCUs
Most Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
were founded at times when either slavery or segregation
ruled the South, and higher education for African Americans
elsewhere was ignored or marginalized. Although the firstcollege for African Americans— now Cheney Universityof Pennsylvania — wasestablished in 1837, manyof today’s most prestigious
black schools were
established immediately
Nursing students at Hampton University, one of after the Civil War, including
the Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Fisk University in Nashville,
Tennessee; Howard University in Washington, D.C.; andMorehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.
Nineteen public HBCUs were founded with passage of theSecond Morrill (Land Grant) Act in 1890 — many in the thenfirmly segregated South.
Today the White House Initiative on HBCUs counts 40
four-year public colleges and universities, 50 four-year private
colleges, and 13 two-year community and business schools.

47Study in the United States

Journalism school graduates at New York’s Columbia University.

Foreign students have long been a familiar and vitalelement of American higher education. In the 2006-2007
academic year, according to the publication Open Doors,almost 583,000 international students were enrolled in manyof America’s 4,000 colleges and universities, an increase of 3
percent over the previous year. India remains the largest single
source of foreign students, followed by China, Korea, and Japan.
48

The top five areas of study for international students arebusiness and management, engineering, physical and life
sciences, social sciences, and mathematics and computerscience.
International students attend U.S. colleges and institutions
for the same reasons that Americans do: academic excellence,
unparalleled choices in types of institutions and academic
programs, and great flexibility in designing courses of study andeven in transferring between different institutions.
With a wide range of tuition and living costs, plus
opportunities for financial aid, foreign students find that a U.S.
education can be affordable as well. Most large schools haveinternational student advisers, and a worldwide network ofstudent-advising centers, along with a variety of publications,can guide prospective students through the sometimes
complicated process of finding, applying, and being acceptedby an American college or university.

Educating a DemocracyIn the words of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declarationof Independence and third president of the United States, “Ifa nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never
was and never will be.”49

Teaching Democracy

National Identity

A democracy
depends on thefoundation of
educated citizens
who recognize thevalue of their hardwon individual
freedoms and civic
Fourth-grade reading class students in New York City.
responsibilities.
In contrast to
the passive acceptance of authoritarian societies, the objectof democratic education is to produce citizens who are
independent and questioning yet deeply familiar with theprecepts and practices of democracy.
As education scholar Chester Finn has said, “People may
be born with an appetite for personal freedom, but they
are not born with knowledge about the social and politicalarrangements that make freedom possible over time forthemselves and their children. ... Such things must be acquired.
They must be learned.”

America’s schools may teach democratic values, but theyalso teach their students how to be Americans.
Ever since the nation’s founding, Americans haverecognized that, lacking a common ethnic identity or ancient
culture, their national identity would have to rest upon otherfoundations: shared ideas about democracy and freedom andthe common experience of working to build a society withequal opportunity for all.
For most Americans, the institution that most closely
embodies those shared ideas and common experiences has
been the nation’s schools.
Over time, education in America has come to represent
universal free public education for all, regardless of race, social
background, or gender. Education, moreover, is seen as theprimary means to succeed in a society that seeks to replace theclaims of inherited privilege for those of individual freedom andequal opportunity.
The American classroom of the 21st century scarcely
resembles that of a few decades ago, much less the oneroom schoolhouse of a past century. Yet the role of American
education in binding together a growing and diverse nation
endures, transmitting the lasting values of freedom and humandignity from one generation to the next.

50

51

Cover: Jupiterimages. Inside front cover: Elizabeth
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Executive Editor—Raphael CalisManaging Editor—Anita N. Green
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Photo Research—Maggie Johnson Sliker
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Cover photo: Joyful high school graduates.