Index of record19 pages · 6 sections
Every page, in one list
Plant · The building is the oldest decision in the systemSection file
- The oldest thing in a district is usually the buildingSchool construction is a bond question, so the plant a district runs is a record of when it last passed one.
- A roof is a curriculum decisionMaintenance competes with instruction inside one budget, and the building usually loses until it cannot.
- Devices arrived faster than the wiring didOne-to-one device programmes spread widely, and the constraint turned out to be network and support rather than hardware.
Money · Funded by the ground it stands onSection file
- Funded by the ground the school stands onLocal property tax is the primary funding mechanism, which ties a school's income to the assessed value of the parcels around it.
- The Supreme Court declined to make funding equalSan Antonio v. Rodriguez (1973) held there is no federal constitutional right to equal school funding, leaving the question to the states.
- Federal money is targeted, and it is a small shareTitle I directs federal funds toward concentrations of low income, but federal money is a minority of any district's budget.
Measure · The tests are the argument, not the evidenceSection file
- One test is designed to be compared and one is notNAEP samples nationally on a stable framework, which is why it can be tracked over decades where state tests cannot.
- International comparison compares systems, not schoolsPISA measures fifteen-year-olds across countries, and the ranking it produces is read far beyond what the instrument supports.
- The graduation rate is a definition before it is a numberThe four-year adjusted cohort rate fixed a definition that had previously varied enough to make states incomparable.
Founders · The people who set the shapeSection file
- The common school was an argument about who paysHorace Mann's case for tax-supported common schooling set the funding principle the system still runs on.
- Dewey's school was a laboratory, and it was literalJohn Dewey ran an actual laboratory school, and the theory came out of the practice rather than the reverse.
- A 1966 report found the thing nobody commissioned it to findThe Coleman Report concluded that family background predicted attainment more strongly than school resources, and the argument has not closed since.
Acts · Six federal acts and what each actually changedSection file
- The federal government entered the classroom through povertyThe Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 attached federal money to disadvantage, which is how Washington acquired a role at all.
- A 1983 pamphlet set the terms for thirty yearsA Nation at Risk framed schooling as an economic emergency, and the vocabulary of every reform since comes from it.
- Accountability was federalised and then handed backNo Child Left Behind (2001) set federal consequences for test results; ESSA (2015) returned most of that discretion to the states.
- Desegregation was ordered and then had to be implementedBrown v. Board (1954) settled the law and started the far longer administrative argument about districts and boundaries.
Offices · Who decides what, and whereSection file
- The board that decides most of it meets locallySchool boards are elected bodies with real budget and personnel authority, and turnout for them is a fraction of a general election.
- Education is a state power, and the states differ deliberatelyState boards set standards, graduation requirements and much of the funding formula, which is why the system is fifty systems.
- A federal department with less power than its name suggestsThe US Department of Education administers funds and enforces civil-rights law; it does not set curriculum.