This post contains all of the material for the class on the History of Higher Education in the US that I taught for at the Stanford Graduate School of Education for the last 15 years. In retirement I wanted to make the course available on the internet to anyone who is interested. If you are … Continue reading Course Syllabus: History of Higher Education in the US
This post is a set of slides for a talk I gave recently, "The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism." It's an effort to put the challenge that artificial intelligence poses for American education in historical perspective. Today, students can have AI do course readings for them and then write the required … Continue reading The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism
This post is the text of a keynote address I gave on July 14 (Bastille Day!) at the Building Blackboard Together 2026 conference in Dallas. This is an annual event hosted by Blackboard -- the learning management systems (LMS) company -- which brings together the Blackboard staff and the system's users at colleges and universities … Continue reading Know It Before You Mess With It
This post is a piece I published in Quartz in 2017. Here’s a link to the original. It’s an effort to explore the distinctively populist character of American higher education, drawing on my book, A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. The idea is that a key to understanding the strong public support that … Continue reading How Football Helped Make US Universities Great
This post contains all of the material for the class on the History of School Reform in the US that I taught for at the Stanford Graduate School of Education for 15 years. In retirement I wanted to make the course available on the internet to anyone who is interested. If you are a college … Continue reading History of School Reform Class Syllabus with Links to Readings and Slides
This post is a piece I published in Kappan in 2000. Here’s a link to the PDF. It’s an analysis of why Americans have long resisted setting educational standards. Of course my timing wasn’t great. Just one year later, the federal government passed the landmark No Child Left Behind law, which established just such a system of standards mandates. … Continue reading Resisting Educational Standards
This post is an analysis of alternative theories for explaining the historical development of American schooling. It was published in 2014 in the Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy. Here's a link to a pdf of the original. I wrote it as a way to frame the major theories of schooling for students in my … Continue reading Theories of the Historical Development of American Schooling
This post is a piece I wrote for the 1989 book, American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work, edited by Don Warren. Here’s a link to a PDF of the original. A slightly different version appeared as a chapter in my 1997 book, How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. I agreed to write the chapter a … Continue reading Career Ladders and the Early School Teacher: A Story of Inequality and Opportunity
This post is about an issue I wrestled with for years, namely why reforming schools in the U.S. is so difficult. I eventually wrote a book on the subject, Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling, which was published in 2010. But you may not need to read it if you look at … Continue reading The Chronic Failure of Curriculum Reform
This post is a piece I published in Kappan in November, 2018. Here’s a link to the original. Public schools for private gain: The declining American commitment to serving the public good When schooling comes to be viewed mainly as a source of private benefit, both schools and society suffer grave consequences. Here's an overview: In … Continue reading Public Schools for Private Gain: The Declining American Commitment to Serving the Public Good
