Research Catalog

Title

Tinkering toward utopia : a century of public school reform / David Tyack & Larry Cuban.

Author

Tyack, David B.

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Cuban, Larry.

Description

184 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

• "In this book, David Tyack and Larry Cuban explore some basic questions about the nature of educational reform. Why have Americans come to believe that schooling has regressed? Have educational reforms occurred in cycles, and if so, why? Why has it been so difficult to change the basic institutional patterns of schooling? What actually happened when reformers tried to "reinvent" schooling?"--BOOK JACKET.
• "Tyack and Cuban argue that the ahistorical nature of most current reform proposals magnifies defects and understates the difficulty of changing the system. Policy talk has alternated between lamentation and overconfidence. The authors suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and that reformers must also keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Educational change > United States > History > 20th century
• Education and state > United States
• Education > Political aspects > United States
• Education > History
• Education > Social aspects > United States
• United States
• Educational change > United States > History > 19th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [145]-176) and index.

Contents

Prologue: Learning from the Past -- 1. Progress or Regress? -- 2. Policy Cycles and Institutional Trends -- 3. How Schools Change Reforms -- 4. Why the Grammar of Schooling Persists -- 5. Reinventing Schooling -- Epilogue: Looking toward the Future.

ISBN

0674892828 (cloth : acid-free paper)

LCCN

94047545

OCLC

ocm31783052

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries