American Catholic Schools in the Twentieth Century: Encounters with Public Education Policies, Practices, and Reforms - Paperback

by Ann Marie Ryan (Author)

This book examines how Catholic educators grappled with public educational policies and reforms like standardization and accreditation, educational measurement and testing, and federal funding for schools during the early to mid-twentieth century. These issues elicited an array of reactions including resistance, cooperation, and co-optation.

American Catholics had established one of the largest private educational organizations in the United States by the twentieth century. It rivaled only that of the public school system. At mid-century Catholic schools enrolled some 12 percent of the American school-age population and their enrollments grew in number through the 1960s.

The Catholic Church's lobbying arm, the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), used its well-earned stature to push for federal funds for students attending their schools. The NCWC succeeded in securing funds with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 for students needing special education services and students living in poverty attending Catholic schools. This signified a major shift in American education policy.

Despite this radical change, Catholic schools lost significant enrollment over the next several decades to public, private, and newly minted public charter schools. Catholic schools faced an increasingly competitive landscape in an ever-expanding school-choice environment that they helped create.

Author Biography

Ann Marie Ryan, PhD is professor and chair for the Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching (ILT) at UTSA. She teaches courses in ILT and Curriculum and Instruction. Her areas of focus are teacher preparation, secondary education, the teaching of history and social studies, and the history of education and curriculum history. Her teaching and research concentrate on the connections between teaching and learning in P-12 schools, communities, and teacher preparation. Within the history of education, she specializes in examining intersections between Catholic schools and public education policy in the United States from the early to mid-twentieth century. Ann Marie has published in journals including Teachers College Record, The History of Education Quarterly, The Journal of Teacher Education, Review of Research in Education, and the American Journal of Education.
Ann Marie has served as a co-editor for the Review of Research in Education. She and the editorial team worked on a volume focusing on?teaching practices in P-20 educational settings and a second volume examining the quality of research evidence in education. She served as the Program Chair for Division F (History and Historiography) of AERA in 2017 and the President of the Organization of Educational Historians in 2019. She currently is Co-PI on the IES UTSA Pathways grant project. UTSA Pathways supports undergraduate students preparing for doctoral studies in education research by providing opportunities to learn about research, engage in education research, and be mentored by experts in their fields.