Bibliography of the history of education in the United States

A bibliography of the history of education in the United States comprises tens of thousands of books, articles and dissertations. This is a highly selected guide to the most useful studies.

The history of education in the United States, or foundations of education, covers the trends in educational philosophy, policy, institutions, as well as formal and informal learning in America from the 17th century to today.

Surveys

Button, H. Warren and Provenzo, Eugene F., Jr. History of Education and Culture in America. Prentice-Hall, 1983. 379 pp. Cremin, Lawrence A. The transformation of the school: Progressivism in American education, 1876–1957. (1961). Cremin, Lawrence A. American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783. (1970); American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876. (1980); American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980 (1990); standard 3 vol covering all forms of American culture; only a fraction deals with schools

Curti, M. E. The social ideas of American educators, with new chapter on the last twenty-five years. (1934, 1959).

Goldstein, Dana. The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession (2014) Herbst, Juergen. The once and future school: Three hundred and fifty years of American secondary education. (1996). Herbst, Juergen. School Choice and School Governance: A Historical Study of the United States and Germany 2006. . Lucas, C. J. American higher education: A history. (1994). pp.; reprinted essays from History of Education Quarterly (1911-1913). 5 vols: v.1: A-Chrysos (1911); v.2: Church-Fusion; v.4: Liberal-Polyhedron (1913); v.5: Poly-Z + "Analytical indexes" Parkerson Donald H., and Jo Ann Parkerson. Transitions in American education: a social history of teaching (2001) online

Parkerson, Donald H. and Parkerson, Jo Ann. The Emergence of the Common School in the U.S. Countryside. Edwin Mellen, 1998. 192 pp. Peterson, Paul. Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning (2010), theorists from Mann to the present Reese, William J. America's Public Schools: From the Common School to No Child Left Behind Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2005. online Rury; John L. Education and Social Change: Themes in the History of American Schooling. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2002. online version Thelin, John R. A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2004. 421 pp. online Tyack, David B. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (1974), Tyack, David B., and Elizabeth Hansot. Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820–1980. (1982). Zimmerman, Jonathan Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory Yale U. Press (2014).

Pre 1880 Addis, Cameron. Jefferson's Vision for Education: 1760-1845. Lang, 2003. 255 pp. Allmendinger, Jr., David F. Paupers and Scholars: The Transformation of Student Life in Nineteenth-Century New England 1975 Axtell, James. The school upon a hill: Education and society in colonial New England. Yale University Press. (1974). Bernard Bailyn. Education in the Forming of American Society (U of North Carolina Press, 1960), colonial era Brown, Richard D. The strength of a people: The idea of an informed citizenry in America, 1650–1870 (U of North Carolina Press, 1996) Cohen, Patricia. A calculating people: The spread of numeracy in early America (U of Chicago Press, 1982) Cousins, James P. Horace Holley: Transylvania University and the Making of Liberal Education in the Early American Republic. University Press of Kentucky. (2016). Cremin, Lawrence A. American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783. (1970); American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876. (1980) vol 1 online

Cross, Barbara M. Horace Bushnell: minister to a changing America (1958) online Gilmore-Lehne, W J. Reading becomes a necessity of life: Material and cultural life in rural New England, 1780–1835 (U of Tennessee Press, 1989). Graham, Patricia Albjerg. Community & Class in American Education, 1865-1918 1974 Kaestle, Carl F. The Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750-1850. Harvard University Press, 1974 Kaestle, Carl F. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860. 1983. 266 pp. Katz, Michael. The Irony of Early School Reform Harvard University Press, 1968, on Massachusetts McAfee, Ward F. Religion, Race, and Reconstruction: The Public School in the Politics of the 1870s. State U. of New York Press, 1998. 320 pp. Mattingly, Paul H. The Classless Profession: American Schoolmen in the Nineteenth Century 1975 Messerli, Jonathan. Horace Mann: A Biography 1972 Parkerson, Donald H. and Parkerson, Jo Ann. The Emergence of the Common School in the U.S. Countryside. Edwin Mellen, 1998. 192 pp. Reese, William J. The Origins of the American High School. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Robson, David W. Educating Republicans: The College in the Era of the American Revolution, 1750-1800. Greenwood, 1985. 272 pp. Taylor, Bob Pepperman. Horace Mann's Troubling Legacy: The Education of Democratic Citizens (University Press of Kansas; 2010) 192 pages. Argues that Mann's view of civic education marginalized the role of schools in training the intellect; links him to anti-intellectualism in American education. Troen, Selwyn K. "Popular Education in Nineteenth Century St. Louis" History of Education Quarterly 13#1 (1973), pp. 23–40 in JSTOR Troen, Selwyn K. The public and the schools: Shaping the St. Louis system, 1838-1920 (University of Missouri Press, 1975). Welter, Rush, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (Columbia University Press, 1962)

Since 1880 Berube; Maurice R. American School Reform: Progressive, Equity, and Excellence Movements, 1883-1993. 1994. online version Brint, S., & Karabel, J. The Diverted Dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900–1985. Oxford University Press. (1989). Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957. (1961). Cremin, Lawrence A. American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980 (1990); vol 3 of standard detailed scholarly history Dorn, Sherman. Creating the Dropout: An Institutional and Social History of School Failure. Praeger, 1996. 167 pp. Drury, Darrel, and Justin Baer. The American Public School Teacher: Past, Present, and Future (Harvard Education Press; 2011) 326 pages; a portrait study of schoolteachers over the past half century that draws on surveys conducted by the National Education Association every five years. Fenske, Neil R. A History of American Public High Schools 1890-1990: Through the Eyes of Principals. Mellen, 1997. 230 pp. Knight, Edgar W.; Fifty Years of American Education: A Historical Review and Critical Appraisal (1952) online edition Krug, Edward A. The shaping of the American high school, 1880–1920. (1964); The American high school, 1920–1940. (1972). standard 2 vol scholarly history Ravitch, Diane. Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. Simon & Schuster, 2000. 555 pp. Ravitch, Diane and Vinovskis, Maris A., ed. Learning from the Past: What History Teaches Us about School Reform. Johns Hopkins U. Pr., 1995. 381 pp. Troen, Selwyn K. "Popular Education in Nineteenth Century St. Louis" History of Education Quarterly 13#1 (1973), pp. 23–40 in JSTOR Troen, Selwyn K. The public and the schools: Shaping the St. Louis system, 1838-1920 (University of Missouri Press, 1975). Tyack, David B. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (1974), Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry. Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Harvard U. Pr., 1995. 184 pp. Tyack, David B., & Hansot, E. Managers of virtue: Public school leadership in America, 1820–1980. (1982). Tyack, David; Lowe, Robert; Hansot, Elisabeth. Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years. Harvard U. Press, 1984. 267 pp. Zilversmit, Arthur. Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice, 1930-1960. U. of Chicago Press, 1993. 251 pp.

Recent Chubb, John E. and Terry M. Moe. Politics, Markets and America's Schools (1990) Kosar, Kevin R. Failing Grades: The Federal Politics of Education Standards. Rienner, 2005. 259 pp. E. Wayne Ross et al. eds. Defending Public Schools. (Praeger, 2004), 4 vol: Volume: 1: Education Under the Security State (2004); Volume: 2: Teaching for a Democratic Society in the UnitedSatesofAmerica (2004); Volume: 3: Curriculum Continuity and Change in the 21st Century (2004); Volume: 4: The Nature and Limits of Standards-Based Reform and Assessment (2004). Tyack, David. Seeking Common Grounds: Public Schools in a Diverse Society. (Harvard UP, 2003). 237 pp.

Race

Alexander, Roberta Sue. "Hostility and hope: Black education in North Carolina during presidential Reconstruction, 1865-1867." North Carolina Historical Review 53.2 (1976): 113–132. online Allen, Quaylan, and Kimberly White-Smith. "“That’s why I say stay in school”: Black mothers’ parental involvement, cultural wealth, and exclusion in their son's schooling." Urban Education 53.3 (2018): 409-435. online Allen, Walter R. Joseph O. Jewell; "African American Education since 'An American Dilemma'" Daedalus, Vol. 124, 1995 Allen, Walter R., et al. "From Bakke to Fisher: African American Students in US Higher Education over Forty Years." RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4.6 (2018): 41–72. online Anderson, James D. "Northern foundations and the shaping of southern black rural education, 1902–1935." History of Education Quarterly 18.4 (1978): 371–396. online Anderson; James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (University of North Carolina Press, 1988). The standard scholarly study. Baker, Liva. The Second Battle of New Orleans: The Hundred-Year Struggle to Integrate the Schools. HarperCollins, 1996. 564 pp. Belt-Beyan; Phyllis M. The Emergence of African American Literacy Traditions: Family and Community Efforts in the Nineteenth Century. Praeger. 2004. Bond Horace M. Negro Education in Alabama: A Study in Cotton and Steel. (1939). online Bullock Henry Allen. A History of Negro Education in the South from 1619 to the Present. (1967) online

Bureau of Education, Negro Education: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States, Volume II Bulletin, 1916, No. 39 abstract and also full text online comprehensive coverage of each state.

Burton, Vernon. "Race and Reconstruction: Edgefield County, South Carolina." Journal of Social History (1978): 31–56. online Butchart, Ronald E. "Black hope, white power: emancipation, reconstruction and the legacy of unequal schooling in the US South, 1861–1880." Paedagogica historica 46.1-2 (2010): 33–50. Butchart, Ronald E. Northern schools, southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen's education, 1862-1875 (Praeger, 1980). Butler Addie L. J. The Distinctive Black College: Talladega, Tuskegee, and Morehouse. Scarecrow Press, 1977. Carney, Cary Michael. Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction, 1999. 193 pp. Coats, Linda T. "The Way We Learned: African American Students' Memories of Schooling in the Segregated South." Journal of Negro Education 79.1 (2010). online Cooper, Arnold. Between Struggle and Hope: Four Black Educators in the South, 1894-1915. Iowa State U. Press, 1989. 121 pp. Crouch, Barry A. "Black Education in Civil War and Reconstruction Louisiana: George T. Ruby, the Army, and the Freedmen's Bureau." Louisiana History 38.3 (1997): 287–308. online Davis, Alicia, and Greg Wiggan. "Black Education and the Great Migration." Black History Bulletin 81.2 (2018): 12–16. [ online] Denton, Virginia Lantz. Booker T. Washington and the Adult Education Movement. U Press of Florida. 1993.