Kaestle: Projects
A History of the Federal Role in Education in the United States from 1940 to 1980
This project focuses on the acceptance or resistance to federal education initiatives over four formative decades,how programs and rationales have changed and why, an attempt to get at the causes and consequences of these contending concepts of a proper federal role. Along the way, it addresses new concepts of the "nation" after World War II; the intervention in Little Rock's Central High School, the Congressional response to Sputnik, the change of focus to education as a tool to reduce poverty in the 1960s, and other well-known episodes that have yet to be narrated and analyzed for this time period. Tentative title: Uncertain Mandate: The Federal Role in Elementary and Secondary Education, 1940--1980.