Archived: The Educational System in the United States: Case Study Findings

Physical Environments
The United States is a nation of nearly 250 million people, living in 50 states,
including Alaska and Hawaii, and spanning a distance of more than 3,000 miles
on the mainland. Nonetheless, there are commonalties among U.S. schools. With
only minor exceptions at the secondary level, students are in classes with others
of the same age throughout their school careers. Schools are age graded, with

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children of a particular age range usually housed in a single building. Elementary
schools are usually smaller than middle or secondary schools, and they are neigh-
borhood-based. Within school buildings, classrooms also tend to be clustered by
age (e.g., K–1, 2–3, 4–5). Teachers have their own classrooms, which they person-
alize by decorating bulletin boards and displaying students’ work. The principal’s
office is located at the front entrance, and parents and other visitors are expected
to stop there before proceeding further into the building. Elementary teachers
generally teach all major subjects to the same group of children each year. Ele-
mentary school teachers and children are assigned to a new classroom when they
move to the next grade.
Middle schools are for children in grades five to eight, six to eight, or six to nine.
Middle school teachers specialize in a particular subject area and often work in
teams with 4 or 5 teachers who teach other subjects to the same group of 100–
150 students. In middle school, students begin to move from one class to another
over the course of the day. Teachers tend to have their own classrooms, although
they may move to another room or rooms to teach a particular subject. Middle
schools often serve children from several ‘‘feeder’’ elementary schools, with chil-
dren being bused to the school from their neighborhoods.
Secondary schools include grades 9–12 or 10–12. Secondary schools can be quite
large, serving several hundred to several thousand students. High school teachers
are subject matter specialists who teach different groups of students over the
course of the day. Here also students move from one class to another at the end
of each session, and, though teachers tend to have their own classrooms, they
too may move to a different room as necessary. Teachers are typically expected
to be at school a half-hour or so before school begins and to stay in the building
during school hours. Case Study teachers varied in the amount of time they actu-
ally spent at school.
The design of the Case Study Project included schools in low-, middle-, and high-
income communities in three U.S. cities. It became instructive, therefore, to con-
trast school and community environments. Schools differed in many ways. Many
were situated in pleasant areas and conformed to the image of well kept spacious
buildings with wide halls, well-equipped classrooms, libraries, and other support
services. School districts had obviously allocated significant portions of their budg-
ets to the construction and maintenance of educational facilities.
There were marked exceptions to this image, however. Some schools in suburban
areas were located on large campuses with impressive facilities. At Hamilton High
school, a school built for 5,000 that serves 3,000, there are remarkable facilities:
a planetarium, large library and computer rooms, 15 gymnasiums, a Nautilus fit-

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ness center, a gymnastics center, a weight room, a swimming pool and a lap pool,
3 theaters, a store, and a greenhouse.
In stark contrast, South Central is a large gray stone building with heavy metal
grates at the windows and a metal detector and armed guard on duty at the
school entrance. Teachers in this urban vocational high school patrol every hall,
and, in the principal’s office, a closed-circuit television screen flips every few sec-
onds from one hallway or stairwell to another. Rooms with computers are locked
behind steel doors, and the furnishings and equipment have seen many years of
wear.
The demands placed on teachers and the opportunities for them to be effective
differed greatly in these different environments. Although the facilities in many
schools appeared to be adequate or even outstanding, the contrast in some school
environments was mirrored inside classrooms, where teachers faced different chal-
lenges and had resources at their disposal that differed both in kind and in
amount.