Southern Study

The Southern Study (1938–1945), sponsored by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools and funded by the General Education Board, was established to assist 33 high schools in the 11 southern states to experiment with their academic programs. Similar to the efforts of other projects of the 1930s and 1940s—the Progressive

Education Association's Eight-Year Study, the American Council on Education's Cooperative Study, the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes' Secondary School Study, the Carnegie Foundation's Pennsylvania Study—the Southern Association's Commission on Curricular Problems and Research attempted to articulate the relationship between high school and college curriculum. As a way to encourage substantive reform and “radical departures from conventional procedures,” accrediting regulations were waived for those participating schools so that the secondary school programs could be adapted as forms of true experimentation in the areas of curriculum and instruction. It should be noted that while no Southern Association schools elected to take part in the Eight-Year Study, begun in 1930, the Southern Study must be seen as a direct outgrowth of the Progressive Education Association's project. While focusing the curriculum around the needs of students, Southern Study teachers participated in Progressive Education Association-like summer workshops, local and state conferences, and in-school visits with Southern Association administrators and Southern Study and Eight-Year Study staff members.

Of the 33 participating Southern Study secondary schools, 14 were urban, 4 rural, and 15 suburban; 31 schools were coeducational and 6 were demonstration schools and represented a much broader school population than the Eight-Year Study. The following schools were included in the study:

Directly linked to the “implementative research” and experimental reform efforts of other 1930s and 1940s General Education Board–funded projects, the Southern Study, also called the Cooperative Study for the Improvement of Education, organized its practices around the then-popular method of “cooperation”—a distinguishable research method where individuals from different areas (regions) discussed differing viewpoints and cooperated to address a research problem and/or to determine a method of investigation. Project consultants—a network of resource staff and workshop instructors—collaborated with participants to examine common problems and innovative practices in what proved to be a distinguishing factor for this type of method, as teachers came together to “work” in meaningful ways toward school reform. “Cooperation” became emblematic of the entire Southern Study project as member schools were placed together in settings where they could begin to formulate purposes and plans for educational reform. Cooperative planning represented a tangible practice that served to address the Southern Study's one central problem: What curricular reforms will better meet the needs of the youth in our community?

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