University of Wisconsin–Madison
William Reese

William Reese

Carl F. Kaestle WARF and Vilas Research Professor of Educational Policy Studies and History

wjreese@wisc.edu

608.263.2319 | 608.262.1760 (messages)

Office: 2207 Levy Hall
Curriculum Vitae (pdf) | Website
Office Hours: TBA
 
Joint Appointment: Educational Policy Studies

William Reese

My specialization is Educational Policy Studies. I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of American and European education and on an array of reform movements in American history.

Education

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A., Bowling Green State University
B.A., Wilkes College

Books

Testing Wars in the Public Schools: A Forgotten History

William Reese. Testing Wars in the Public Schools: A Forgotten History. Harvard University Press, 2013.

Written tests to evaluate students were a radical and controversial innovation when American educators began adopting them in the 1800s. Testing quickly became a key factor in the political battles during this period that gave birth to America’s modern public school system. William J. Reese offers a richly detailed history of an educational revolution that has so far been only partially told. Single-classroom schools were the norm throughout the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century. Pupils demonstrated their knowledge by rote recitation of lessons and were often assessed according to criteria of behavior and discipline having little to do with academics. Convinced of the inadequacy of this system, the reformer Horace Mann and allies on the Boston School Committee crafted America’s first written exam and administered it as a surprise in local schools in 1845. The embarrassingly poor results became front-page news and led to the first serious consideration of tests as a useful pedagogic tool and objective measure of student achievement. A generation after Mann’s experiment, testing had become widespread. Despite critics’ ongoing claims that exams narrowed the curriculum, ruined children’s health, and turned teachers into automatons, once tests took root in American schools their legitimacy was never seriously challenged. Testing Wars in the Public Schools puts contemporary battles over scholastic standards and benchmarks into perspective by showcasing the historic successes and limitations of the pencil-and-paper exam.

History, Education, and the Schools

William Reese. History, Education, and the Schools. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

This book grapples with two basic questions. What is history? And How can history help illuminate contemporary concerns about the nature and character of America’s schools? From antiquity to the postmodern present, history has served multiple purposes, including a basic human need to learn from what came before. Americans have long invested considerable time, energy, and emotion in their schools, both private and public, and a knowledge of history helps explain why.

Rethinking the History of American Education

William Reese. Rethinking the History of American Education. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

This collection of original essays examines the history of American education as it has developed as a field since the 1970s and moves into a post-revisionist era and looks forward to possible new directions for the future. Contributors take a comprehensive approach, beginning with colonial education and spanning to modern day, while also looking at various aspects of education, from higher education, to curriculum, to the manifestation of social inequality in education. The essays speak to historians, educational researchers, policy makers and others seeking fresh perspectives on questions related to the historical development of schooling in the United States.

America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to ‘No Child Left Behind’

William Reese. America’S Public Schools: From the Common School to ‘No Child Left Behind’. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.

In this update to his landmark publication, William J. Reese offers a comprehensive examination of the trends, theories, and practices that have shaped America’s public schools over the last two centuries. Reese approaches this subject along two main lines of inquiry—education as a means for reforming society and ongoing reform within the schools themselves. He explores the roots of contemporary educational policies and places modern battles over curriculum, pedagogy, race relations, and academic standards in historical perspective. A thoroughly revised epilogue outlines the significant challenges to public school education within the last five years. Reese analyzes the shortcomings of “No Child Left Behind” and the continued disjuncture between actual school performance and the expectations of government officials. He discusses the intrusive role of corporations, economic models for enticing better teacher performance, the continued impact of conservatism, and the growth of home schooling and charter schools. Informed by a breadth of historical scholarship and based squarely on primary sources, this volume remains the standard text for future teachers and scholars of education.

Hoosier Schools: Past and Present

William Reese. Hoosier Schools: Past and Present. Indiana University Press, 1998.

Since the 1980s the U.S. has been preoccupied by school reform. Demands by parents, reformers, and politicians have included a return to basics, a longer school year, accountability through statewide testing, more effective vocational training, and workforce preparation for a more global, technological economy. Activists sometimes forget that schools are a product of history, that many proposed reforms have been tried before with mixed results, and that understanding the past offers a valuable perspective on current efforts to improve schools. Indian turned to public schools in the mid-nineteenth century to help solve a host of social, political, and economic problems. Despite conservative critics’ fears of ‘creeping federalism,’ public schools remain largely a state and local responsibility. This volume presents a series of original studies of school reform in Indiana, from the crucial decades before the Civil War to the most recent efforts to reshape local schools for a postmodern society.

The Origins of the American High School

William Reese. The Origins of the American High School. Yale University Press, 1995.

This engrossing book tells the story of American high schools in the nineteenth century. William Reese analyzes the social changes and political debates that shaped these institutions across the nation—from the first public high school, established in Massachusetts in 1821, to the 1880s, by which time a majority of secondary students in the North were enrolled in high schools. Reese also explores in generous detail the experience of going to school. Drawing on the writings of local educators and school administrators as well as on student newspapers, diaries, and memoirs, he brings to life the high schools of a century ago, revealing what students studied and how they behaved, what teachers expected of them and how they taught, and how boys and girls, whites and blacks, and children in different parts of the nation perceived their schools. America’s earliest public high schools were built in major cities along the eastern seaboard, and they became an important factor in the building of free public school systems, bringing a broad range of middle-class citizens into their orbit. Reese shows that although high schools were condemned by critics as elite institutions of classical learning, they were in fact largely dedicated to offering talented, mostly middle-class youth a quality education in modern, practical subjects.

The Social History of American Education

William Reese. The Social History of American Education. University of Illinois Press, 1988.

For over twenty-five years, the History of Education Quarterly has served as the meeting ground for a generation of the leading experts in educational and social history. For scholars and students alike, Edward McClellan and William Reese bring together the major ideas of some of its most prominent contributors. Bridging the span of American education history from the colonial era to the present, these essays offer extensive coverage of such topics as women’s education, the education of minority groups, and the social dimensions of educational reform.

Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements During the Progressive Era

William Reese. Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements During the Progressive Era. Rev. edition, Teachers College Press, 1986.

This book is a comparative analysis of the tensions, compromises and conflicts over school reform in four urban school systems in the United States. In examining the contradictory forces that shaped urban education in the U.S., it illuminates how grassroots movements operated during the early twentieth century. Unlike many of the standard histories of American education, which focus on New England and Eastern cities, this study analyzes schooling in Rochester, New York; Toledo, Ohio; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Kansas City, Missouri. It explores the ways in which diverse community groups struggled to make local schools responsive institutions in a time of dramatic change. School reform was a dominant motif of the Progressive era, but community organizations from local Socialists to parent-teacher associations fought against the contemporary trend toward centralization and elitist politics. This book focuses on the social movements and people instrumental in the struggle for reforms, describing how organized women, labor, and urban radicals became dynamic, resourceful and successful participants in movements to improve schools in local communities.

Advisor To

History Courses