In the three decades from 1910 to 1940, the fraction of U.S. youths enrolled in public and private secondary schools increased from 18 to 71 percent and the fraction graduating soared from 9 to 51 percent. At the same time, state compulsory education and child labor legislation became more stringent and potentially constrained secondary-school aged youths. It might appear from the timing and the specifics of this history that the laws caused the increase in education rates. We evaluate the possibility that state compulsory schooling and child labor laws caused the increase in education rates by using contemporaneous evidence on enrollments. We also use micro-data from the 1960 census to examine the effect of the laws on overall educational attainment. Our estimation approach exploits cross-state differences in the timing of changes in state laws. We find that the expansion of state compulsory schooling and child labor laws from 1910 to 1939 can, at best, account for 5 percent of the increase in high school enrollments and can account for about the same portion of the increase in the eventual educational attainment for the affected cohorts over the period.

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Mass Secondary Schooling and the State

In 1934, Italian immigrant Leonard Covello and others set up Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. Its purpose was to coordinate the educational influences emanating the neighborhood's many institutions, and to inform local citizen decision-making with intensive local social research. A leader in urban education, Benjamin Franklin High pioneered a distinctive community-centered schooling. Covello insisted that "education for social living" be based on solving real community problems in order to prepare students for leadership and civic participation. Problems ranging from poor housing to leisure opportunities to intergroup relations were channeled through Franklin's system of school-community committees. This dissertation describes the evolution of the vision, one of active public purpose, that inspired Benjamin Franklin High in its early years. How did the ideas that guided such an unusual school mission evolve? How were they shaped and changed by their interaction with local events, national trends, demographics, personalities, and social conditions? Though an institutional history, this essay attempts to capture the interplay among a wide configuration of educating agents, in particular the "messy" dynamics of a public school's relationship to its community. Fundamental tensions regarding the nature of the public purposes of schooling, as well as whose purposes are pursued, underlie this intensely local struggle. Chapter I describes the social, economic, and political context of East Harlem in the early 1930s, including the campaign to establish Benjamin Franklin. Chapter II sets out the broader conversation about community schooling in the early 1930s. Chapter III presents the life of Leonard Covello, examining the complex interplay of religious, intellectual, and personal experiences that influenced his vision of public. schooling for East Harlem. In Chapters IV and V, the challenges of promoting cultural democracy through local research, storefront units, adult education, teacher training, curriculum and public rallies flesh out the idea of community-centered schooling as it evolved in East Harlem. Drawing upon varied traditions of community research, early urban sociology, social Christianity and settlement house traditions, Covello shaped a distinct vision of schooling's public role in the democratic development of a diverse people. Implications for current education policy are suggested. Comments Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education in Teacher's College, Columbia University, 1995. This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/182 This is an authorized facsimile, made from the microfilm master copy of the original dissertation or masters thesis published by UMI. The bibliographic information for this thesis is contained in UMI's Dissertation Abstracts database, the only central. source for accessing almost every doctoral dissertation accepted in North America since 1861. U-M-I Diss~rtation . Services A Bell & Howell Company 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 1-800-521-0600 313-761-4700· Printed in 1995 by xerographic process on acid-free paper

The Public Purposes of Public Education: The Evolution of Community-Centered Schooling at Benjamin Franklin High School, 1934-1944

Compulsory education is receiving increasing attention in policy making, educational, and scholarly circles. The Yoder case, which established the right of the Amish in Wisconsin not to send their children to school beyond the eighth grade, tested compulsion in the policy arena via the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. In finding for Yoder, however, the court majority noted more than three centuries of self-sufficiency and adherence to the principles of law and order by the Amish, and cautioned that the court's decision should not be construed as opening the door to a flood of petitions against compulsory education per se. This action by the Supreme Court appeared to discourage questioning the propriety of compulsion itself, especially by groups, as Justice Burger put it, \"claiming to have recently discovered some progressive or more enlightened process for rearing children in modern life.\" Yet the dimensions of compulsory education itself are not the direct provision of the Supreme Court, as education in general is under state rather than federal jurisdiction. Here too, compulsion is receiving wider publicity. Recently, a Florida judge ruled that the father of five young children was not required to send

https://www.depts.ttu.edu/education/our-people/Faculty/additional_pages/duemer/epsy_5314_class_materials/Universalism-to-Usurpation.pdf

From Universalism to Usurpation: An Essay on the Antecedents to Compulsory School Attendance Legislation

Do Schooling Laws Matter? Evidence from the Introduction of Compulsory Attendance Laws in the United States. NBER Working Paper No. 18477.

The first two decades of the twentieth century witnessed efforts in many of America's great cities to provide special classes for mildly retarded children. Many of today's special education issues on such questions as defining programs, selecting children, and preparing teachers were already concerns then. This paper concerns the efforts of Elizabeth Farrell and City Superintendent of Schools William Henry Maxwell to establish ungraded classes in New York City between 1900 and 1920. Their effort was a successful one, but it also included struggles to find and train qualified teachers, correctly identify children to be served, provide ample classroom space—and do all of that in a fair and equitable manner. Teachers and principals frequently wanted to refer for special class assignment students who were troublesome, but not necessarily mentally retarded. By 1920, proponents of special education believed that intelligence testing had finally given educators a fair, objective, and scientific means to determin...

Selecting Children For Special Education In New York City: William Maxwell, Elizabeth Farrell, And The Development Of Ungraded Classes, 1900-1920

The twentieth century has witnessed a major transformation of secondary schools from exclusive institutions serving the elite to inclusive institutions serving the general population. This transformation has been marked by radical changes in entrance and graduation requirements, increasing quantity and different quality of students, expansion and dilution of curriculum and a radically new role for the high school and the high school teacher. The rise of technological and urban society within the context of American middle-class ideology has been a fundamental cause of this transformation.

Moses Stambler

Papers

The Effect of Compulsory Education and Child Labor Laws on High School Attendance in New York City, 1898-1917