School Reform as Progressive Statecraft: Education Policy in New York Under Governor Alfred E. Smith, 1919–1928

Abstract

Since the Progressive Era itself, scholars have exhibited strong interest in the connections between progressivism and education. Historical studies have elucidated countless ways that such reformist impulses as the settlement house movement, the country life movement, the progressive education movement, the “cult of efficiency,” and battles against social ills like child labor influenced early twentieth-century education policy.1 Indeed, as historian Lawrence Cremin has contended, “the Progressive mind was ultimately an educator's mind, and … its characteristic contribution was that of a socially responsible reformist pedagogue.”2