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American Education After 1930

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American education since 1930 has seen a gradual increase in the involvement of the federal government. This intervention has been marked by two major goals: 1.) increasing educational opportunity and equality, especially for groups from which these had been historically denied. 2.) Increasing the quality of education to strengthen communities, states and the nation. The most significant growth of the federal involvement in education has taken place since World War II. “Southern progressives believed that supporting blacks was a recipe for failure.” (Urban and Wagner pg 224) This way of thinking lead to racial segregation which was sanctioned by the Supreme Court in the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. The Plessy vs Ferguson decision extended …show more content…

Although this act happened before 1930, it was altered many times which is why it is known today as the Perkins Act. The act was first authorized by the federal government in 1984 and reauthorized in 1998 which targeted the increase in the quality of technical education within the United States in order to boost the economy. This act was the result of the fact that a so many of the people who were called by the draft for the war were illiterate and didn’t have the most basic skills. This led to the realization that our educational system needed a great deal of change and improvement, particularly in our high school curriculum, which at the time was still the classic curriculum that pretty much only included the study of Greek and Latin and the classics. A goal of this act was intended to introduce more relevant subject matter relevant to the times, as well as vocational programs to all schools. This act also helped establish the Federal Board for Vocational Education and provided federal funding to endorse teaching in the areas of subjects such as agriculture, the trades, industry, commerce, and home economics. This legislation expanded education to a larger segment of the population, but was encouraged by the needs of national but with no formal, intended commitment to widen the scope of public education as a …show more content…

This led to an enormous amount of concern regarding the desire and need for more qualified scientists and engineers in the United States. There was also great concern surrounding whether or not the the quality of our education system, mainly in the areas of math, science, and foreign language instruction, was sufficient. In response to these concerns came the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958. This legislation is most significant because it represented the first time since 1917 that a major education bill was enacted that was not strictly for the support of military bases. However, it did take the impression of a national defense crisis in order for it to be passed. In 1954 came the Brown vs. Board of Education decision which decided that school segregation was unconstitutional and violated the fourteenth amendment. This was a huge historical moment in the Civil Right movement and a monumental step in the history of U.S. modern education. This was the first step in desegregating the white schools in the North and South, but nothing really truly helped desegregate schools until the passing of the Civil Rights Act that took place in 1964; which settled the issue of school segregation

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