Reviews

This is a history with a present-day purpose. In Reconstructing American Education, historian Michael Katz attacks the once-standard view of American educational history as a story of progressive improvement. In its place he substitutes a critical account of how big-city school systems turned into increasingly unwieldy bureaucracies in the nineteenth century. -- David Macleod * NEA Today *
Bound to stimulate a new rush of polemic commentary... Katz makes a strong case for a constructive role that could be played by reasonable historians. -- Urban Whitaker * Perspective *