Education History 101

Welcome to the blog!

Early into my research around the identities of all members of the New York State Board of Regents since 1904, I came across a salary table in a New York State Education Commissioner’s field report from the 1860s detailing teachers’ summer salaries. I felt my brain hiccup as it was my understanding schools in NYS were closed in the summer so young people could work on the farm.

One read through of School’s In: The History of Summer Education in American Public Schools by Kenneth Mark Gold (2002) and I understood how wrong my understanding was. While sharing my new learning with my husband I said something to the effect of “This is Education History 101 stuff! How come I didn’t know this?” And the podcast was born. (We get into summer vacation in this episode.)

I created the EdHistory101 Twitter account where I share tweets and stories related to American education history and carried the name over to Reddit, where I’m a moderator on Ask Historians. The blog includes my pieces on education history in New York State, summaries of the Wikipedia articles I’ve edited or created, essays where I fact check education history in popular education books, and my thinking and wondering on various education topics such as assessment and standards.

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Latest Posts

Intersection of Women and Leadership in Education

A version of this post was originally published on Education Week's blog The Intersection. The Teacher Wars by Dana Goldstein is hopefully going to be one of those books that all teachers remember reading in their undergrad days. Just like so many leave teacher prep...

The Problem with Kohn*

I'm going to use my author's prerogative to borrow the language from my post about the history of testing and standards in NYS before John King's tenure to introduce this post: I don't know Alfie Kohn. Never met him, never worked for, near, around, or with him. I know...

Making it Count

It's International Women's Day. It's a fantastic way to count - to take stock - of issues related to women around the world. Which opens all sorts of interesting tensions in the world of education around women, power, and who counts. I embrace the idea that there's no...

John King’s Place in NYS History

John King’s Place in NYS History

I don’t know the man. Never met him, never worked for, near, around, or with him. I’m a non-parental taxpaying New Yorker who works in education.

Overconfident Men*

Overconfident Men*

I put down a bunch of words about gender and race over at Identity, Education, and Power and got to join and have lots of really interesting and challenging conversations. I'm hoping they continue in all sorts of spaces. The upside of writing the piece is that I got...

No True Scotswoman

A kindergarten teacher wrote a thing. There are a couple of ways of reading the thing she wrote. A. She's a new teacher*, trying to make the best of a situation. B. She's been bought off to so the website can claim a teacher byline. C. She's a disgrace to the...

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