District by design: Progressive education reform in four western cities, 1900--1940

In the early twentieth century, many progressive educators viewed urban school districts as the engines and laboratories of school reform. Far from being maligned, as they have been in recent decades, city school systems served as the models of coordinated educational innovation. This dissertation explores "progressivism" as viewed from the perspective of city school leaders and examines how educators proceeded with comprehensive plans for systemwide reform in four western cities: Oakland, California; Denver, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington. Taken together, the four case studies illustrate how urban districts evolved from informal collections of schools into large, complex systems designed to meet the "needs" of schoolchildren in the twentieth century.;The study follows the adoption and implementation of three types of reforms---administrative reorganization, the classification of students, and the revision of the curriculum---and traces how ideas and practices spread among Progressive era cities. Three principles often guided city school leaders as they implemented these reforms: democracy, differentiation, and districtwide design. In Oakland, educators classified students well before the introduction of intelligence testing in 1917, and during the 1920s, district administrators developed a "socialized" school system that blended testing and tracking with pedagogical innovation. Denver illustrates how city school leaders consciously developed a modern school system and then used an administrative foundation to support the democratic participation of teachers in districtwide curriculum revision. The Portland schools were buffeted by two external evaluations in the 1910s, and the resulting turnover in leadership led to contrasting visions of schooling. In Seattle, a single superintendent oversaw the creation of the progressive school system that borrowed and blended a striking range of educational innovations.;Evidence from these four districts demonstrates how progressive educators mixed and blended reforms that historians have tended to depict as contradictory. In part, this was because city schools defined democracy in ways that allowed them to combine "administrative" and "pedagogical" progressive practices, such as intelligence testing and project-based learning. The study concludes that although Progressive era school leaders adopted similar structures and practices, they often utilized the coordinating power of the district for distinctly different purposes.