Item Detail
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31004
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1
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2
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English
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Utah’s Public Schools : Problems, Controversies, and Achievements, 1945–2000
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Utah in the Twentieth Century
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Logan, UT
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Utah State University Press
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318-342
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Education has always been a concern in a state with a high birthrate. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twentieth-first, Utah rated among the lowest states in money spent per pupil. Yet at the end of the twentieth century, nearly half of the state revenues went to education. In 2007 former Governor Olene Walker told a Brigham Young University audience that in the past, Utahns had justifi ed spending less because the students’ test scores were high and state incomes were low. But conditions had changed; state incomes were higher, and test scores were lower. James B. Allen examines the reasons why Utah schools ended up, as Walker put it, on life support. Using newspapers, Utah Foundation and State Board of Education reports, and national magazines, Allen explores the crisis Utah schools faced from World War II to the end of the twentieth century. Each governor from J. Bracken Lee to Michael O. Leavitt tried different programs to fund education while still meeting other obligations. Their efforts encountered resistance and were complicated by demands from parents and the federal government. Allen carefully details the way each governor tried to solve the education dilemmas." [Author]