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Teacher Blame as the Grammar of Public School Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2022

Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz Open the ORCID record for Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz [Opens in a new window]
Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz*
Affiliation:
College of Education & Human Development, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND
*
*Corresponding author. Email: diana.pawlewicz@und.edu
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Abstract

Historical policy stories that situate teachers as the root cause of problems in public schools have long accompanied educational reforms, including No Child Left Behind. This article portrays the history of teacher blame as a defining component of the grammar of American educational reform. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century reformers identified teacher quality—a later trademark of NCLB—as a panacea for school improvement, but it remained an amorphous idea bound up in gendered and racialized assumptions. The historical results were a swirl of policies that increased standardization across the schools. This article concludes that teacher blame was a critical driver for federal intervention in local public education, and that the roots of that intervention extend far deeper than historians have allowed.

Keywords

education policyteacher reformNo Child Left Behindteacher quality
Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 62 , Special Issue 3: Special Issue on the 20th Anniversary of No Child Left Behind , August 2022 , pp. 291 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the History of Education Society

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References

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