AAV School Organization: Yesterday Today Tomorrow

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).