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Why have the established institutional forms of schooling been so stable and why did most challenges fade or become marginalized? We approach these questions by probing a few case studies of reform, some that lasted to become part of the grammar of schooling and some that did not. We begin by eocploring the origins of two enduring institutional forms, the graded school and the Carnegie unit. Next we analyze the history of three transient attacks on the grammar of schooling: the Dalton Plan, the Eight-Year Study, and the new model flexible high school of the 1960s. In each case political and institutional perspectives inform our interpretations. Finally, we reflect on what the case studies suggest about the nature of institutional continuity and change and offer some policy implications for reform today.

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There have always been students who do not meet the educational expectations of their time—students outside the mainstream mold who do not fit dominant notions of success. The differences between schools and these students can be thought of as a “mismatch” between the structure of schools and the social, cultural, or economic backgrounds of students identified as problems. In this essay we examine the history of these students who have not been able to do what educators wanted them to do. We look at how educators have labeled poor school performers in different periods and how these labels reflected both attitudes and institutional conditions. We then summarize four major historical explanations for why children fail in school—individual deficits or incompetence, families, inefficiency in schools, and cultural difference. Finally, we explore what implications this history has for students in the current standards-based reform movement, including implications for social promotion and the age-graded school. To avoid a mismatch in the standards movement, we argue that educators should focus on adapting the school better to the child, addressing social inequalities that extend beyond the classroom, and undertaking comprehensive changes that take no features of current schools for granted.