Reimagining the Public High School in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Part 1)

Since 2016, the XQ Institute has awarded over $100 million to 18 schools across the country to “reimagine” the American high school. Backed by philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, these high schools have been putting into practice major changes they had proposed for their schools. Reforming high schools has been steady work for Americans ever since the comprehensive high school that combined academic and vocational subjects appeared in the 1920s. While the evolution of the high school can be traced back to mid-19th century, the familiar structure and organization that U.S. readers have experienced, developed in the early decades of the 20th century. Join me for a quick tour of the past century of high school reform. In the late-19th century, the high school was a strictly academic institution catering to less than 10 percent of eligible youth. Largely enrolling nearly all-white middle-and upper-middle class sons and daughters (there were also segregated Black academic high schools such…