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The next major phase in the Standards Movement was the development of the Common Core State Standards and the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top (RTTT). Part of the Recovery Act of 2009, RTTT provided $4.35 billion to encourage states to adopt standards. Echoing earlier standards efforts, RTTT urged the adoption of standards to prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and compete in the global economy. In effect, RTTT encouraged states to adopt the Common Core Standards.94 By 2014 the Common Core Standards were under attack from diverse opponents. Some conservatives believed the Standards were an attempt to create a national curriculum, which violated the historic tradition of state and local control of education. Others, like Diane Ravitch, a noted historian of education, opposed the Common Core Standards as serving the market interests of “testing corporations, charter chains, and technology companies. The Standards, she argues, were adopted “behind closed doors” without participation of educators and the public. While not opposed to the concept of standards, Ravitch argued that they should “not be rigid, inflexible, and prescriptive” and should permit teachers to adapt them to their students’ needs.95 See the Taking Issue Box on the previous page.
5-7a Connecting with the History of Education throughout This Book This chapter relates the general historical context of American education to other chapters in this book. It provides the historical background for the following: ●● Chapter 7, Governing and Administering Public Education, which discusses the federal government’s educational role and the establishment of the US Department of Education. ●● Chapter 12, Providing Equal Educational Opportunity, which discusses racial desegregation, compensatory education, bilingual education, education for children with disabilities, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, and No Child Left Behind. ●● Chapter 13, The Changing Purposes of American Education, which discusses major policy reports such as High School and a Nation at Risk. See www.ed.gov. “Everything you need to know about Common Core—Ravitch,” The Washington Post (December 1, 2014) at www.washingtonpost.com.
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Summing Up 1. The European colonists transported and established religious and socioeconomic class-based educational institutions in North America. Primary vernacular schools provided a basic curriculum of reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. The Latin grammar school and the colonial college, reserved for upper-class boys and men, provided a classical curriculum to prepare them for leadership roles in church, state, and society. 2. In the early national period, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Rush proposed plans for a uniquely American school system; Noah Webster’s plan used an
American version of the English language to create the country’s national identity. 3. The common school, the nineteenth century prototype for the public elementary school, contributed to the development of teacher education, especially normal schools, and the entry of more women into teaching. 4. The public high school in the late nineteenth century completed the American educational ladder that connected public elementary schools to state colleges and universities. Important historical influences in shaping American
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