We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
The conventional historiography describing a strict public-private divide in United States schooling is misleading. The standard story claims that public schooling was a fuzzy concept 200 years ago; the division between public and private education for children thus developed largely over the nineteenth century. In the early nineteenth century, public funds went to many private schools and even large private systems, such as the New York Public School Society. In some instances, public funds went to parochial education, either explicitly or as part of an arrangement to allow for diverse religious instruction using public funds. However, the nineteenth century witnessed growing division between public and private, largely excluding religious education (or at least non-Protestant religious education). By the end of the nineteenth century, the standard educational historiography suggests, public schools meant public in several senses: funded from the public coffers, open to the public in general, and controlled by a public, democratically controlled process. Tacit in that definition was a relatively rigid dividing line between public and private school organizations. Historians know that this implicit definition of “public” omits key facts. First, the governance of public schools became less tied to electoral politics during the Progressive Era. Public schooling in nineteenth-century cities generally meant large school boards, intimately connected with urban political machines. By the 1920s, many city school systems had smaller boards in a more corporate-like structure. The consolidation of small rural school districts in the first half of the twentieth century completed this removal of school governance from more local politics. A second problem with the definition above is unequal access to quality education (however defined). Historically, the acceptance of all students was true only in a limited sense, either in access to schools at all (with the exclusion of many children with disabilities) or, more generally, to the resources and curriculum involved in the best public schooling of the early twentieth century (as with racial segregation).
1 Jorgenson, Lloyd P. The State and the Non-Public School, 1825-1925 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987); Kaestle, Carl F. Pillar of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 116-18, 166-71; idem., Evolution of an Urban School System (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973); Katz, Michael B. Reconstructing American Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 132-33; Lannie, Vincent P. Public Money and Parochial Education: Bishop Hughes, Governor Seward, and the New York School Controversy (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1968); Leslie, Bruce “Where Have All the Academies Gone?” History of Education Quarterly 41 (Summer 2001): 262-70; Ravitch, Diane The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973 (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 3-76.Google Scholar
2 Tyack, David The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 23–27, 126-76; Tyack, and Hansot, Elisabeth Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 105-211.Google Scholar
3 E.g., Fass, Paula S. Outside In: Minorities and the Transformation of American Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), one of many books on the history of unequal educational opportunities. Of course, special education also stands accused of being a tool of segregation and racism. This article, however, focuses on a different aspect of the definition of public education, that of the division between public and private.Google Scholar
4 Furgeson, Philip M. Abandoned To Their Fate: Social Policy and Practice toward Severely Retarded People in America, 1820-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), Chap. 3, on the beliefs of early institutional founders.Google Scholar
5 This article also fills a gap in the historiography of special education, which has generally focused on public-school activity; see Osgood, Robert L. “Undermining the Common School Ideal: Intermediate Schools and Ungraded Classes in Boston, 1838-1900,“ History of Education Quarterly 37 (Winter 1997): 375–98; Franklin, Barry M. “Progressivism and Curriculum Differentiation: Special Classes in the Atlanta Public Schools, 1898-1923,” History of Education Quarterly 29 (Winter 1989): 571-93; idem., From “Backwardness” to “At-Risk:” Childhood Learning Difficulties and the Contradictions of School Reform (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); Tropea, Joseph L. “Bureaucratic Order and Special Children: Urban Schools, 1890s-1940s,” History of Education Quarterly 27 (Spring 1987): 29-53; idem., “Bureaucratic Order and Special Children: Urban Schools, 1950s-1960s,” History of Education Quarterly 27 (Fall 1987): 339-61. One hesitates to judge whether the emphasis on public-school programs is because the potential records of such activity are not available or because the questions other historians have asked excluded an examination of such sources. The exception to this trend, of course, are the institutional histories and the literature on influence of institutional superintendents, see Gelb, Steven A. “‘Not Simply Bad and Incorrigible': Science, Morality, and Intellectual Deficiency,” History of Education Quarterly 29 (Fall 1989): 359-79; Gould, Stephen Jay The Mismeasure of Man, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996); Trent, James W. Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Zenderland, Leila Measuring Minds: Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). One should also note the history of special education is different from the recent history of compensatory and private school-aid education programs, where the U.S. Supreme Court has decided questions about appropriate public spending for parochial-school students three times in the past thirty years; Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U.S. 349 (1975), Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U.S. 402 (1985); and Agostini v. Felton, 522 U.S. 803 (1997). There has been pressure in both types of programs to allow public-private cooperation; only in special education has such activity gone relatively unnoticed.Google Scholar
6 For records of public school special education in 1930, see Kunzig, Robert W. Public School Education of Atypical Children, U.S. Office of Education Bulletin 1931 No. 10 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931).Google Scholar
7 For general histories of special education, see Safford, Philip L. and Safford, Elizabeth J. A History of Childhood and Disability (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996). Sarason, Seymour B. and Doris, John Educational Handicap, Public Policy, and Social History: A Broadened Perspective on Mental Retardation (New York: Free Press, 1979); Winzer, Margaret A. The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1993). For one description of the parent organizations combining with professionals to advocate for federal legislation, see Felicetti, Daniel A. Mental Health and Retardation Politics: The Mind Lobbies in Congress (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1975).Google Scholar
8 Biernat, Nancy A. “The History of Special Education in the Buffalo Public Schools, Slow Learners, 1890 to 1939: Utilizing Oral Interviews“ (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1987), 189–90.Google Scholar
9 Fine, Janis B. “Catalysts for Change: Parents of the Handicapped, 1930-1960“ (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University of Chicago, 1989), 65, 70-71, 77-81; Shores, Elizabeth F. “The Arkansas Children's Colony at Conway: A Springboard for Federal Policy on Special Education,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 57 (Winter 1998): 411; Holliday, Patricia A. “The Development of Education for the Severely and Profoundly Retarded Child in the State of New Jersey, 1950-1983” (Ed.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1984), 25; Bair, Barbara “The Parents Council for Retarded Children and Social Change in Rhode Island, 1951-1970,” Rhode Island History 40 (November 1981): 154, 155-56; Pletsch, Vera C. Not Wanted in the Classroom: Parent Associations and the Education of Trainable Retarded Children in Ontario: 1947-1969 (London, Ontario: Althouse Press, 1997). The literature on disability-related parent groups in the mid-twentieth century is relatively small; evidence of varied types of activism in different places is sufficient to suggest that it occurred frequently, if inconsistently, across the continent. For a history of parent-school relationships in general, see Cutler, William W. Parents and Schools: The 180-Year Struggle for Control in American Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).Google Scholar
10 Voters approved metropolitan government in the early 1960s for what had been separate Nashville city and Davidson county services. Terms in this article use those distinctions between the earlier city and county school systems, on the one hand, and the metropolitan Nashville government since the merger.Google Scholar
11 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 30 May 1938, at the Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education, Nashville, Tennessee. A former teacher in the Nashville school reported her belief, from the oral history of the program passed from teacher to teacher, that a particularly aggressive parent pushed the sight-saving class onto the city schools.Google Scholar
12 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 28 October 1940; Nashville City Public Schools, “Annual Report, 1939-40,” box 16 (reel 8), James Emerick Nagy Collection, Microfilm Accession 1052, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville. The city schools had 28,673 students that year and 293 special education students.Google Scholar
13 “School Board Elects Geer as Coordinator,” Nashville Banner [hereafter just Banner], 8 August 1950.Google Scholar
14 Nashville City Schools, “Annual Report, Special Education Services, 1954-1955,” box 12 (reel 6), Nagy Collection.Google Scholar
15 See Tennessee Department of Education statistical reports for 1959-60, 1969-70, and 1979-80, volumes in the Tennessee State Library and Archives.Google Scholar
16 The National Association for Retarded Children, now the Arc, was originally chartered in Tennessee.Google Scholar
17 For example, one meeting of Davidson County Council for Retarded Children at the Jewish Community Center included a class of Lloyd Dunn's participating in the topic “Parent and Teacher Problems with the Mentally Retarded Child;” “Retarded Child Council Sets Parley,” Banner, 30 January 1954. The Council for Retarded Children included, as well, several teachers in the local public schools.Google Scholar
18 Dunn, Lloyd M. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Circle Pines, Minn.: American Guidance Service, 1959).Google Scholar
19 “Nasser, S.T. Educational Pioneer, Dies,” Nashville Tennessean [hereafter just Tennessean], 16 January 1981.Google Scholar
20 “School Keeps the Pace at Junior League Home,” Banner, 20 March 1970; “Junior League To Incorporate Program into Children's Center,” Tennessean, 14 November 1970.Google Scholar
21 “Handicap Talk Seen as Big Help,” Tennessean, 11 January 1957; “Clement Hails Conference To Help Handicapped Children,” Banner, 4 April 1957. The conference was emblematic of the joint community of interest in Tennessee, sponsored by several private organizations, attended by university researchers and local special education administrators, and praised publicly by the governor.Google Scholar
22 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 29 December 1941; “28 Teachers Providing ‘Special Education’ Classes for More than 600 Pupils Here,” Banner, 21 October. 1953.Google Scholar
23 For example, see Nashville City Public Schools, Special Education Services Annual Report, 1956-57, box 18 (reel 5), Nagy Collection. Nor was the Junior League Home unique in this arrangement; in 1961-62, the city schools provided two teachers to Vanderbilt University's psychiatric clinic. See Nashville City Schools Directory, 1961-62, box 7, Education Records, record group 8, Metropolitan Archives, Nashville.Google Scholar
24 “Junior League To Incorporate Program into Children's Center,” Nashville Tennessean, 14 November 1970; “At RIP, Parents Become Teachers,” Tennessean, 8 October 1978. Junior League members sat on the program's advisory board through the 1970s.Google Scholar
25 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 29 December 1941. Through the 1970s, Middle Tennessee public schools’ teaching children who came from other Tennessee counties were occasionally the target of special education policy conflict; e.g., “State Must Aid Education of Handicapped,” Nashville Banner, 9 August 1978.Google Scholar
26 Bass, W. A. to Quill Cope, 23 June 1954, box 353 (reel 120), Education Department records, record group 92, Tennessee State Library and Archives; Nashville City Schools, “Annual Report, Special Education Services, 1954-55,” box 12 (reel 6), Nagy Collection.Google Scholar
27 In 1944-45, the society paid the schools $1.00 per hour for itinerant homebound teachers; see Nashville City Schools, “Annual Report, 1944-45,” box 16 (reel 8), Nagy Collection.Google Scholar
28 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 12 June 1951, 14 February 1952.Google Scholar
29 “City School Board Hears Plea for Hearing, Speech Group,” Banner, 9 May 1952.Google Scholar
30 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 17 July 1952. Part of the reason why Wilkerson may have asked for and received additional resources was because of difficulties in recruiting a teacher; Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 14 August 1952, 6 November 1952.Google Scholar
31 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 9 July 1953.Google Scholar
32 1965-66 and 1968-69 Metropolitan-Nashville schools proposed budgets, looseleaf, box 5, Education records, record group 8, Metropolitan Archive, Nashville; Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 25 July 1967, 8 August 1967, 29 August 1967, 9 January 1968, Education records, record group 8, Metropolitan Archive. The board considered two different resolutions to restore some funds in early August, but both failed.Google Scholar
33 “Lions Save Program for Hearing Impaired,” Banner, 14 July 1978. The special education director, Shef Nasser, had cut the funding despite his direct ties to the center.Google Scholar
34 “School for Retarded Children Accepting Applications Now,” Banner, 1 September 1953; “Retarded Children Council Holds Open House for School,” Banner, 6 October 1953; “Mental Health Aid Here Gains, Church Group Told,” Banner, 7 May 1954.Google Scholar
35 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 11 August 1955, 6 October 1955, 15 November 1955; “City Operation of Edgehill School Sought,” Banner, 6 October 1955.Google Scholar
36 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 15 December 1955.Google Scholar
37 In addition to the homebound program private subsidy in the 1940s, mentioned above, the first few years of the sight-saving class had transportation paid by the Lions Club and Big Brothers of Nashville. Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 28 July 1941, 29 September 1941.Google Scholar
38 The city schools had an “opportunity school” in the late 1930s and early 1940s and an “adjustment room” from 1960 to 1963, evidently as a last chance for students who had behavior problems in general classes; for example, see Nashville City Schools, “Annual Report Of Visiting Teacher and Attendance Division, 1939-1940,” box 12 (reel 6), Nagy Collection; Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 11 August 1960, 12 September 1963.Google Scholar
39 For details of this residential school, see Hobbs, Nicholas The Troubled and Troubling Child (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982).Google Scholar
40 Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 13 September 1966, 9 May 1967; J. Cornelius Summers to Howard Warf, 14 April 1967, box 354 (reel 120), Education Department, record group 92, Tennessee State Library and Archives.Google Scholar
41 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 6 October 1955.Google Scholar
42 “Educational Needs Study Speaker's Topic,” Banner, 9 September 1958.Google Scholar
43 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 5 July 1956, 8 January 1957, 14 March 1957, 16 April 1957.Google Scholar
44 See Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry, Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 136–40.Google Scholar
45 Two parents were at a private conference on state policy regarding severe mental retardation April 20, 1954; see agenda and notes in box 35, Education Department records, record group 92, Tennessee State Library and Archives.Google Scholar
46 Lazerson, Marvin Origins of the Public School: Public Education in Massachusetts, 1870-1915 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); Cuban, Larry “Why Some Reforms Last: The Case of the Kindergarten,” American Journal of Education 100 (February 1992): 166-94.Google Scholar
47 Several parents of former students with developmental disabilities have, in interviews, explained that the Edgehill program and its successor within the public schools consisted primarily of what they called babysitting.Google Scholar
48 Hendrick, Irving G. and MacMillan, Donald L. “Selecting Children for Special Education in New York City: William Maxwell, Elizabeth Farrell, and the Development of Ungraded Classes, 1900-1920,“ Journal of Special Education 22 (Winter 1989): 395–417.Google Scholar
49 Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind; Noll, Steven Feeble-Minded in our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Zenderland Measuring Minds. Google Scholar
50 See Hacsi, Tim Second Home: Orphan Asylums and Poor Families in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
51 Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind, 225–68.Google Scholar
52 Fine, “Catalysts for Change,“ 70–71.Google Scholar
53 National Association for Retarded Children Education Committee, “Day Classes for Severely Retarded Children,” American Journal of Mental Deficiency 58 (January 1954): 357–70.Google Scholar
54 National Association for Retarded Children Education Committee, “Day Classes for Severely Retarded Children,” in its research program to survey day class programs, strongly hinted at the position, as did National Association for Retarded Children, A Well-Rounded Program for the Retarded (New York: National Association for Retarded Children, 1958). The position of researchers involved in mental retardation research was often very different from those of parents, for many thought schools should play no role in raising children with mental retardation; see a pro-and-con debate by I. Ignacy Goldberg and Cruickshank, William M. “The Trainable but Uneducable: Whose Responsibility?” NEA Journal 47 (December 1958): 622-23.Google Scholar
55 “Retarded Child Council's Work Lauded by Clement,” Banner, 17 November 1954.Google Scholar
56 Tennessee Association for Retarded Children Newsletter, 31 May 1957, at the Arc of Tennessee headquarters in Nashville.Google Scholar
57 “Parents to Urge County Program for ‘Trainables,’” Tennessean, 28 May 1957. Nash's statement came in the middle of a debate over whether Davidson County's school system would accept state funds and open up a program for children labeled severely retarded.Google Scholar
58 “State's Mentally Retarded Called Neglected,” Tennessean, 22 October 1970.Google Scholar
59 Noll, Feeble-minded in our Midst, described similar dynamics with regard to the development of residential institutions in the South.Google Scholar
60 Chap. 33, Tenn. Public Acts, 1955.Google Scholar
61 Davidson County Board of Education minutes, May 23, 1957, at Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education.Google Scholar
62 Tennessee Association for Retarded Children Newsletter, 31 May 1957.Google Scholar
63 “Board To Hear Case for Retarded Children,” Tennessean, 31 May 1957; “They Deserve a Break,” Tennessean, 6 June 1957; “Study Set on Training of Retarded,” Banner, 7 June 1957; “Board To Study ‘Trainable’ Class,” Tennessean, 7 June 1957.Google Scholar
64 Davidson County Board of Education minutes, 15 August 1957; 28 August 1958.Google Scholar
65 Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia, 348 F. Supp. 866 (1972); Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 343 Supp. 279 (1972).Google Scholar
66 Nashville City Board of Education minutes, 27 October 1941.Google Scholar
67 Mahaney, Edward J. Jr., “The Development of Approved Private Schools for Exceptional Children through Legislation in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1911-1979,” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1983); Ferguson, Abandoned To Their Fate, Chap. 3. The Elwyn Institute currently operates the Vineland Training School, among other places, where Henry Goddard worked while promoting intelligence tests (webpages available on-line at http://www.elwyn.org and http://www.thetrainingschool.org).Google Scholar
68 McCool, Thomas Philip “Effects of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, Public Law 94-142, on the Devereux Foundation“ (Ed.D. diss., Farleigh Dickinson University, 1980), 10.Google Scholar
69 “1965-66 Proposed Metro School Budget,” folder 12, box 5, Education records, record group 8, Metropolitan Archives.Google Scholar
70 Parents who were dissatisfied with the way that the public schools were teaching their children with disabilities often pushed for a variety of remedies, and having private schools serve their children was only one out of a broad variety of options that developed for them de facto in the 1970s and since.Google Scholar
71 Turnbull, H. Rutherford Free Appropriate Public Education: The Law and Children with Disabilities (4th ed.) (Denver: Love, 1993); Yell, Mitchell L. and Shriner, James G. “The IDEA Amendments of 1997: Implications for Special and General Education Teachers, Administrators, and Teacher Trainers,” Focus on Exceptional Children 30 (September 1997): 1-19; Yell, Mitchell L. Rogers, David, and Lodge Rogers, Elisabeth, “The Legal History of Special Education: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been!” Remedial and Special Education 19, 4 (July/August 1998): 219-28.Google Scholar
72 20 U.S.C. §1400 (d)(1)(A)-(B), 20 U.S.C. § 1401 (8).Google Scholar
73 The problems the family of Ezell, Sara born in 1971 with a condition (osteogenesis imperfect) leaving her with brittle bones, had with school officials represents this individualized relationship. Her parents complained to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) twice. According to Suzanne Ezell, Sara Ezell's mother, the school system negotiated after the family filed the first complaint, but the Reagan administration clamped down on OCR reviews of local school behavior, and the family was left without any options for resolving the later dispute over the provision of a ramp on the school grounds. Sara and Suzanne Ezell oral history interview, 6 February 1996.Google Scholar
74 What is now the Duncanwood school moved several times, finally securing a location in a middle-class neighborhood in South Nashville against the objections of neighbors; “Residents Seek To Stop School for Retarded,” Tennessean, 12 January 1972; “Duncanwood Celebrates Silver Anniversary,” Tennessean, 2 May 1982.Google Scholar
75 Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education agenda, 12 August 1975; 10 August 1976; Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 11 March 1975. One set of contracts, approved by the board 9 September 1975, were for a blanket authorization for 25-30 children at $88,595 total (or a minimum of approximately $3,000 per child).Google Scholar
76 I am estimating that most of the individuals involved are children because of the agencies represented: Donelson Child Development Center, Duncanwood Day Care Center and School for Retarded Children, Easter Seal Society for Crippled Children and Adults, Mur-Ci Home (which had served children with developmental disabilities for many years), Outlook Nashville (explicitly labeled as after-school care), and Waiden House, which also served as a contracting agency for children with behavior problems for the local public schools. The sheets including this information were between two other documents dated in 1977. See “Contract Agencies Specifically for Handicapped Children,” box 2, Halbert Harvill Papers, record group 75, Tennessee State Library and Archives.Google Scholar
77 Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 12 November 1985.Google Scholar
78 For example, see the Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 27 September 1988, which included eight vendors for physical therapy with costs from $32 to $45 per hour.Google Scholar
79 Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 14 August 1990. The bulk of that appropriation was slated for schools that were not part of the Nashville public system. The staff expected enrollment at the 12 contracted special schools might range that year from 220 to 330 students.Google Scholar
80 “Money Forces Debate on Limits of Aid to Handicapped,” Tennessean, 16 November 1980.Google Scholar
81 Total costs in the late 1980s in three districts averaged approximately twice that for other students, and more than two-thirds of funds went for instruction; Singer, Judith D. and Raphael, Ellen S. “Per Pupil Expenditures for Special Education: To Whom Are Limited Resources Provided?“ Revised Final Report, Harvard University Graduate School of Education (Collaborative Study of Children with Special Needs), August 1988 (ERIC Document Reproduction No. ED 302 024).Google Scholar
82 Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 23 November 1982.Google Scholar
83 Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 14 August 1990. In the late 1980s, Benton had approximately 60 students; see the 1988 Benton Hall Yearbook, “Student Annuals,” Education records, record group 8, Metropolitan Archives, Nashville. In 1991, the public school board approved contracts with Benton for up to 25 students; Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 13 August 1991.Google Scholar
84 “Benton Hall Slow Learners’ Haven,” Tennesseean, 25 March 1984.Google Scholar
85 “Westminster Lessens Pain of Learning Disabilities,” Banner, 7 May 1985.Google Scholar
86 Metropolitan-Nashville Board of Education minutes, 13 January 1976, 14 August 1990.Google Scholar
87 “Learning Disability Schools Join Forces,” Banner, 5 March 1979; “Hickory Valley Puts Funds To Use,” Tennesseean, 6 March 1981.Google Scholar
88 “Study, Patience, Love: Special Arts,” Tennessean, 9 April 1978.Google Scholar
89 For some recent examples, see “Special Ed Cost Exceeds Harvard,” Baltimore Sun, 6 December 1998; “Special-Ed Woes Persist in the District,” Washington Post, 15 March 1999; “Disabled Students Get Their Day in Court,” Los Angeles Times, 13 October 1999; “Many in Special-Ed Face Tuition Threat,” Washington Post, 18 November 1999.Google Scholar
90 For an example of a conservative article that explicitly discusses the public-private relationship in special education, see Fox, Jonathan “Sending Public School Students to Private Schools,“ Policy Review: The Journal of American Citizenship no. 93 (January/February 1999), available on-line at http://www.policyreview.org/jan99/fox.html Google Scholar
91 Large publishing empires rely on the sales of textbooks and tests to public schools. Building contractors have used school construction as a solid revenue stream in boom times. Segregation academies in Prince Edward County, Virginia, existed directly because of the school board's decision to close the schools in response to a desegregation order. Even United States Catholic school systems, established in reaction to the hostility of public schools, have had a silent, shadow relationship with public schools, for one can walk into any Catholic high school and identify many of the activities (from academics to extracurricular organizations) that one would see in public schools. They have thus crafted structures as much in reaction—and thus parallel—to public schools as striking out in a dramatically different direction. See FitzGerald, Frances America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979); Owen, David None of the Above: Behind the Myth of Scholastic Aptitude (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985); Crouse, James and Trusheim, Dale The Case against the SAT (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Smith, Robert Collins They Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1951-1964 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965); Ely, James W. The Crisis of Conservative Virginia: The Byrd Organization and the Politics of Massive Resistance (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976); Lazerson, Marvin “Understanding American Catholic Educational History,” History of Education Quarterly 13 (Fall 1977): 297-317; Sister, M. Jerome Leavy, O.S.B. “The Catholic Incarnation of America's One Best System: The Relationship of the Catholic and Public School Systems in the United States,” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Florida, 1989). One might also note the nature of special educational services as quasi-welfare services, and most state welfare agencies have long-term established relationships with private, often religious providers. The state court battle over the Florida voucher plan has revolved, ironically, over these special education contractual services and whether they constitute extraordinary measures that are not a precedent for what the state constitution calls for in a “free public education” system; Holmes v. Bush, 767 So. 2d 668 (Fla. App. 2000). Since much of educational history in the United States has been devoted to other, similarly quasi-welfare purposes (such as saving the poor, promoting mental hygiene, and the like), a more parismonious explanation of the differences between general welfare and educational histories would be the broader political ties of education to citizenship; see Katznelson, Ira and Weir, Margaret, Schooling for All: Education and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar
92 Krug, Edward A. The Shaping of the American High School (2 vols.) (New York: Harper & Row, 1964-1972). The most recent such claim is by Angus, David L. and Mirel, Jeffrey E. The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890-1995 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999).Google Scholar
93 The converse of this dynamic is the uses of public schooling for private purposes; see Grubb, W. Norton and Lazerson, Marvin Broken Promises: How Americans Fail Their Children (New York: Basic Books, 1982), Chaps. 2-5, Labaree, David F. “Public Good, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals, American Educational Research Journal 34 (Spring 1997): 39-81; idem., The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838-1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), esp. Chaps. 1, 7.Google Scholar
94 That administrative progressives supported forms of education that limited opportunities for many children was not inconsistent, by any means, with their notion of public education; see Hansot, Tyack and Managers of Virtue, 114–28. On Ontario school systems, see Gidney, R.D. From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario's Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).Google Scholar
95 E.g., Chubb, John E. and Moe, Terry M. Politics, Markets, and America's Schools (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute, 1990; Lieberman, Myron Beyond Public Education (New York: Praeger, 1986); Rouse, Cecilia Elena “Private School Vouchers and Student Achievement: An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 113 (May 1998): 594.Google Scholar
