This is an Accessible Alternative Version of the Adobe Acrobat Portable Document, School Organization: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (PDF; 51KB; 2pp.). The Adobe Acrobat Portable document should be the preferred version for downloading.
Slides
1. Historical forces shaping the school's physical and social organization
- The one-room schoolhouse in early America.
- The growth of cities, immigration, and civic leaders' worry over inefficiency...the standardized 'school plant', a 'one best system' of schooling and facilities.
- Post-war housing boom, early suburban sprawl fueled by cheap energy and the lure of affordable homes. Some architectural innovations inside schools.
- Urban decline, white flight, fractured political support for school finance.
- Retrenching around school quality, standards-based accountability (now the decline of No Child model).
2. Recent developments; the evolving context and diversifying forms of schooling
- Macro economic shifts: Rediscovering the central city, cultural pluralism, smart growth, and rising energy costs.
- In california, shifting politics around school finance, new urbanism, and greater equity in allocating school bond revenues.
- Rejection of the "one-best-system": Rise of small and charter schools, integrating youths into the community, decline of the sacred or uniform classroom.
- Emerging empirical focus on whether and how new, or renovated , schools may boost teacher and school quality, and lift neighborhood economies (the case of Los Angeles Unified School District).
