David b tyack biography

David B. Tyack, an influential education historian, died this morning at age 85.

Tyack was the Vida Jack professor of education emeritus and a professor of history emeritus at Stanford University, where he had taught since 1968.

A passionate advocate of the civil purposes of schools, he documented shifting political allegiances in education in books including the 1974 The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education, the 1995 Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (co-authored with Larry Cuban), and the 2007 Seeking Common Ground: Public Schools in a Diverse Society.

He was also a frequent essayist on education and public policy, including for Education Week.

In one Commentary, Tyack and his partner, the late Stanford political science lecturer Elisabeth Hansot, argued: