Iowa Country Schools: Landmarks of Learning
Event Details
602 5th Avenue Southwest
Altoona, IA 50009
Email: humanities-iowa@uiowa.edu
Phone: (319) 335-4149
Website: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/event?eid=aTM0ZDFpOXJiNW5raGRqcjBmcGpzZnViOWsgaHVtYW5pdGllcy1pb3dhQHVpb3dhLmVkdQ&ctz=America/Chicago
Event Description
This presentation reviews milestones and the impact of Iowa’s network of one room country schools. It describes through a power point presentation how former country school buildings are being recycled. It also shows how some country schools have been preserved and are being used today as schools by Amish and Mennonite groups. Potential topics include:
-a comparison of academic performance of students attending one-room schools versus students enrolled in graded schools
-country school heroes (eight persons from Iowa who had a national impact on country schooling)
-how high stakes testing and performance-based pay for teachers were pioneered in Iowa’s country schools to help ensure that students learned and were capable of advancing to high school
-how elements of the country school program are being used today in Montessori schools, home schooling, some innovative urban schools, and charter schools
-strikes undertaken in the 1920s by country school teachers in Jasper, Sioux, and Webster Counties to demonstrate teacher concerns
-how the instructional day in a country school was organized and how this schedule was altered with the adoption of the pledge of allegiance
-how the standard school law was used in Iowa to improve building conditions and teacher salaries, and how it became the first school accreditation program.
