A Faithful Mirror
Analysis of the Committee of Ten
Despite the considerable status of the Committee [of Ten] members and the wide-spread professional discussion of the report, lay school boards largely ignored it and the emerging education profession had neither the degree of consensus nor the power to force high school curriculum planning to conform to the 'rational' designs espoused by experts.
David Angus and Jeff Mirel
"Presidents, Professors and Lay Board of Education: The Struggle for Influence over the American High School, 1860-1910"
Interpretations of the Committee of Ten's influence are changing. Once thought to illustrate the dominance of higher education on the high school, the Committee of Ten and its influence are being reconsidered by historians.
Traditionally historians have viewed the Committee of Ten as a reflection of the dominance of higher education on high schools. Historians assumed that the Committee's report led to curricular changes in the high schools. Standard interpretation saw the Committee's report as a culmination of higher education's power over the public schools, a power that was thought to have continued into the twentieth century.
More recently, historians view the Committee of Ten as having failed to control the high school. New interpretations suggest that rather than indicating that higher education controlled the high school, the report is the beginning of a struggle for power over the high school curriculum-a struggle higher education was not winning until after 1920.