Competing for Inequality: 19th-Century "Market Forces" and Unequal Schooling in California

• In Event: Inequality and the Construction of Schooling in the 19th Century

Abstract

This paper examines the spread of American pubic schooling in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1848 and 1876. While the development of American public education in California was inextricably connected to larger state building projects, this paper finds that many of the first public schools in California were created and funded by real estate speculators. In focusing on the tangled relationship between state projects of educational expansion and real estate markets, this paper considers how the development of American public schooling in California might enrich our understanding of the origins of public education in the United States. Moreover, this paper suggests that California’s educational history might offer important insights into assumptions undergirding contemporary models of market-based school reform.

Author

• Matthew G. Kelly, Stanford University