A Brief History of Schooling in the United States by Edward Janak

Author:Edward Janak
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030243975
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Who Were the Administrative Progressives?

Key figures: Ella Flagg Young

While the child-centered progressives were focusing on reforming American classrooms, another group of progressive educators set their sights on the district offices. Based on improving business models, principles of scientific management, and a membership in the “cult of efficiency,” the administrative progressives believed that the same principles that were correcting and improving productivity in the factories could be applied to school districts. A big part of this was in a true spirit of reform: the efforts were trying to take politics out of schooling by doing such things as abolishing ward boards and redrawing district lines across ethnic barriers.

Just as new levels of management were created in factories, so too did school administration. The principal used to be the “principal member of the faculty”—the teacher with the longest tenure and/or most respect (many other countries still maintain this practice; the lead administrator in a school is known as the “headteacher”). Now, thanks to the expanding college of education, there was a formal training required in educational administration—separating the principal from the teachers.

Some child-centered progressives were able to make their way into positions of authority. One example was Ella Flagg Young, another student of Dewey (though many would argue she taught Dewey as much as he taught her) who was superintendent of Chicago Public Schools from 1909 through 1915, and served on the Illinois State Board of Education from 1888 to 1913. While women such as Young in Chicago and Annie Webb Blanton (State Superintendent of Instruction) in Texas began to make inroads for women in administrative positions, in spite of their dominant numbers among the teaching force women remain significant minorities in school leadership roles, a trend that continues today.

In a sweeping reform, school boards were presented with a system of checks and balances by the addition of school superintendents, who in turn expanded district offices in their efforts to bureaucratize and centralize. Ultimately, governance of school districts came to adopt a familiar pattern: a system with multiple levels and inherent checks and balances. Representing the executive branch were the superintendents; representing the legislative were school boards; representing the judicial were the principals, department heads, and other administrators who designed and implemented policy both in-house and throughout the district.

A top-down management style emerged in the districts. Financially, they urged financial soundness—expanding district boundaries and consolidating schools. Schools began to manage things in-house rather than tapping the community. It wasn’t exclusively at the district level that administrative progressive reforms swept through; most states got in on the action as well. States began formalizing teacher certification standards and ran standardized teacher training institutes. There was a movement toward accountability and control at the state level and regional levels: school accreditation programs sprung up state by state, consolidating into regional systems that are still in effect today.

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