Welcome to the blog!

Early into my research around the identities of all members of the New York State Board of Regents since 1904, I came across a salary table in a New York State Education Commissioner’s field report from the 1860s detailing teachers’ summer salaries. I felt my brain hiccup as it was my understanding schools in NYS were closed in the summer so young people could work on the farm.

One read through of School’s In: The History of Summer Education in American Public Schools by Kenneth Mark Gold (2002) and I understood how wrong my understanding was. While sharing my new learning with my husband I said something to the effect of “This is Education History 101 stuff! How come I didn’t know this?” And the podcast was born. (We get into summer vacation in this episode.)

I created the EdHistory101 Twitter account where I share tweets and stories related to American education history and carried the name over to Reddit, where I’m a moderator on Ask Historians. The blog includes my pieces on education history in New York State, summaries of the Wikipedia articles I’ve edited or created, essays where I fact check education history in popular education books, and my thinking and wondering on various education topics such as assessment and standards.