Conant Report
The Conant Report, officially titled *The Education of American Teachers*, emerged from an extensive investigation led by J.B. Conant, a former Harvard president, into the state of U.S. public schools during the late 1950s and 1960s. Conant's central premise was that public education should function as a meritocratic system, fostering talented individuals from diverse backgrounds through a comprehensive high school model that included both academic and vocational education. His findings underscored significant deficiencies in teacher training, prompting him to advocate for a substantial overhaul of the teacher education system, including changes to certification, funding, and accreditation processes.
Published in 1963, the report quickly gained attention, fueled by public concern over the U.S. educational system's inadequacies highlighted by the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1. While the report sparked considerable debate and was met with resistance from various educational authorities, it also led to some changes in teacher training practices, such as increased emphasis on practical classroom experience. However, fundamental issues in the educational system persisted, revealing a gap between Conant's ideals and the realities of American public education. Overall, the Conant Report remains a significant touchstone in discussions about educational reform and the challenges faced by U.S. schools.
Conant Report
Published 1963
Author James Bryant Conant
A sweeping recommendation for overhauling teacher education. The Conant Report blamed the inadequacies of the prevailing system of teacher education for the many failings of public schools in the United States.
Key Figures
James Bryant Conant (1893-1978), author
The Work
Conant, former Harvard president and professor of chemistry and former ambassador to West Germany, carried out an extensive investigation of U.S. public schools, especially high schools, in the late 1950’s and 1960’s. He viewed the public school system as the vehicle for producing a meritocracy, a system in which talented people would lead and govern the nation. His preferred structure was the comprehensive high school, which would bring together students from different social backgrounds to participate in a general-education core program. Gifted students would still be permitted to take more heavily academic programs, but vocational programs would be included in the comprehensive high school curriculum rather than offered in separate vocational high schools.
As Conant delved more deeply into conditions in the public schools, primarily the high schools, he became increasingly convinced that the schools’ inability to stimulate, encourage, and select the ablest students had its roots in the failings of the prevailing system of teacher education. Conant therefore turned his attention to teacher training.
Armed with a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation, in 1961, Conant assembled a staff of professional academicians and visited seventy-seven teacher-training institutions in twenty-two states, including church-affiliated colleges, private colleges, state universities, state colleges, and county or municipal colleges. On the basis of these observations, he recommended a sweeping overhaul of the system of teacher education by changing the system in five major ways: certifying teachers; funding student teachers; hiring, paying, and promoting teachers; strengthening requirements for graduating teachers and those who train them; and altering the method of accrediting teacher-training programs. His recommendations were published in 1963 as The Education of American Teachers, known informally as the Conant Report.
Impact
Conant’s proposals were immediately seen as an attack on the state education bureaucracies and on the National Education Association, a reaction he had predicted. However, his report, The Education of American Teachers, rapidly became a best-seller and was widely commented on in the press. More than fifty thousand copies were sold within three months, and an additional five thousand complimentary copies were distributed. The report’s impact was heightened by public alarm at the seeming inadequacies of U.S. education revealed by the Soviets’ ability to place a satellite, Sputnik 1, in orbit in 1957.
Conant’s emphasis on general education for teachers of all subjects and on solid academic performance were perceived by progressives in the educational establishment as an attack on their “child-centered” approach. His recommendation of special programs for the academically gifted made him vulnerable to the charge of elitism, though he had long expressed a preference for public over private, especially parochial, schools.
The study provoked much controversy in the educational establishment, but its actual effects appear to have been modest. Those students seeking teacher certification continued to be required to take certain courses, and teacher remuneration continued to be based largely on seniority. Conant’s belief in the importance of practical classroom experience did result in more emphasis on practice teaching while future teachers were still in college. Many colleges and universities offering teacher-training programs reevaluated their programs in light of Conant’s criticism, but the system of accreditation devised by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education still dominated, though the group was broadened to include a few more representatives of academic groups.
Education continued to provoke widespread controversy. Almost every decade since the 1960’s, some researcher or group has brought to light the poor performance of many products of the U.S. educational system. The poor performance of U.S. students, especially in comparison with Japanese students, in many international tests conducted in the decades that followed the Conant Report’s publication indicated that public schools in the United States did not measure up to Conant’s ideal. The controversy that arose in the 1990’s over school standards suggested that Americans were deeply divided over what public schools should be and do. Studies showing that African American students in predominantly black schools generally do not perform as well as students in predominantly white suburban schools do, suggest that neither improved teaching training nor additional funds will suffice to bring about fundamental change. The U.S. educational system continues to suffer from the chasm between the ideal, as outlined by Conant, and the reality.
Additional Information
A. Harry Passow’s American Secondary Education: The Conant Influence (1977) summarizes all of Conant’s studies of the U.S. educational system. Robert M. Weiss provides a collection of commentaries on the Conant Report, including his own, in The Conant Controversy in Teacher Education (1969). Conant’s own memoirs, My Several Lives (1970), contains one short chapter on his studies of American education as does James Hershberg’s biography, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (1993).