Overview

The Shifting Landscape of the American School District offers a new perspective on the American school district. The educational system of the United States has long been characterized by its tradition of local control, and the district has symbolized community involvement in education. Scholars have written insightful studies on individual city systems and school districts, but rarely has the district—as an organizational form itself—been the subject of scrutiny, and Americans have continued to take the district for granted as the primary unit of local schooling. In recent years reformers have also built many of their innovations upon the belief that it is the traditional, bureaucratic, hierarchical district that requires overhaul. The Shifting Landscape of the American School District seeks to challenge that perception. The editors argue that the pervasive view of district history—the notion that the school district is a holdover from the progressive reforms of the early twentieth century—has shrouded a fascinating story of the ways in which districts have evolved, innovated, and reacted in response to state and federal mandates, national reform movements, demographic shifts, desegregation, structural/organizational changes, and a shifting political climate. The chapters in this volume offer compelling evidence of the many ways that districts have expanded, contracted, integrated, consolidated, reorganized, and been torn apart over the past century. By covering a wide range of time periods, the authors are able to draw fascinating parallels between the past and present.

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9781433133954

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This excellent collection of essays is a great first step toward addressing these and other questions, and for focusing historians and policy scholars on the need to more carefully historicize and problematize the American school district. (Tracy L. Steffes, History of Education Quarterly, 59/1 2019)

Author Information

David A. Gamson (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of Education Policy Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on educational policy and school reform, past and present. Gamson has written about the role of school districts in Progressive Era reform and, more recently, has been studying the evolving roles and responsibilities of the school district since World War II, the changes to policies designed to provide equal educational opportunities over the past century, and the use of academic standards before the 1980s. Gamson has been a fellow in the Advanced Studies Fellowship Program at Brown University and a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. His publications have appeared in Educational Researcher; Paedagogica Historica; the Journal of Educational Administration; Mind, Brain, and Education; Intelligence; and the 2007 Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. His book, The Importance of Being Urban, is forthcoming. During the 2015–2016 academic year, he was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. Emily M. Hodge (Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University) is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Her work uses historical and qualitative methods, as well as social network analysis, to understand the changing nature of strategies for educational equity. Recent projects have explored how educational systems, schools, and teachers negotiate the tension between standardization and differentiation in the context of the Common Core State Standards, and the varied strategies state education agencies are using to support standards implementation. Hodge is a recipient of a Small Research Grant from the Spencer Foundation. Her research appears in Educational Policy, English Teaching: Practice and Critique, Education Law and Policy Review, Review of Research in Education, and AERA Open.

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