Learning from the Past: What History Teaches Us about School Reform

by Diane Ravitch (Editor), Maris A. Vinovskis (Editor)

Many Americans view today's problems in education as an unprecedented crisis brought on by contemporary social ills. In Learning from the Past a group of distinguished educational historians and scholars of public policy reminds us that many of our current difficulties – as well as recent reform efforts – have important historical antecedents. What can we learn, they ask, from nineteenth century efforts to promote early childhood education, or debates in the 1920s about universal secondary education, or the curriculum reforms of the 1950s? Reflecting a variety of intellectual and disciplinary orientations, the contributors to this volume examine major changes in educational development and reform and consider how such changes have been implemented in the past. They address questions of governance, equity and multiculturalism, curriculum standards, school choice, and a variety of other issues. Policy makers and other school reformers, they conclude, would do well to investigate the past in order to appreciate the implications of the present reform initiatives.

400 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1995

About the author

Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor of Education at New York University, a historian of education, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She is the Founder and President of the Network for Public Education.
She was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education from 1991-93.
She was married to Richard Ravitch from 1960 until they divorced in 1986.
She married Mary Butz in 2012.
Aside from her many books on education history and policy, Ravitch writes for The New York Review of Books and maintains an influential blog on education.