Whatever Happened to the “Open Classroom?”*

From time to time I have published posts that take a look at innovations that policymakers and practitioners hailed as “transforming” or “revolutionary” insofar as altering how districts conduct school business, teachers teach and students learn. Not only hyped in the media and by word-of-mouth, these innovations spread across thousands of schools in the U.S. as their brand became known. Many, however, turned out to be only a reform du jour. Such stories are a reminder of the ever-changing topography of U.S. schooling. Historians of education are like geologists who inspect strata of rock formations for what flora and fauna existed in earlier times and what accounts for their appearance and seeming disappearance. But most important of all, historians offer accounts that reckon how the birth and disappearance of innovations affect present-day schools. For this post, I examine the “Open Classroom” that mushroomed across U.S. school districts in the late-1960s through most the 1970s and…