Exploring Early 20th Century Conceptions of Alternative Schools in Denver, Colorado, and Kansas City, Missouri

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Education and the Carceral State

Abstract

This paper explores the establishment and management of alternative schools in the early twentieth century in Denver, Colorado, and Kansas City, Missouri. Both rapidly growing cities sought ways to deal with concerns of rising juvenile crime and subsequently created juvenile courts and alternative schools for accused juvenile offenders. Relying on school district archives, juvenile court records, and writings from prominent Denver and Kansas City juvenile court judges, this paper explores the under researched area of the institutional interactions between schools and court systems and the differing ways that they collaborated to create alternative schools.

Author

• Curtis Mason, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign