A good understanding of this chapter's content would include an understanding of why each of these terms is important to education.

The American High School Today
a book published by James B. Conant in 1958; popularized the modern conception of the large comprehensive high school and helped shape policies to make such schools the norm in urban and rural communities.

community college
a two-year college developed to provide local postsecondary education, largely for vocational purposes but also equipping some students to transfer to four-year institutions.

containment
U.S. foreign policy that used multiple strategies (military, economic, and political) to keep communism and socialism from power in foreign nations, former colonies, and the developing world in general.

Educational Testing Service
considerably influenced by James B. Conant; established in 1947 by the College Entrance Examination Board, the Carnegie Corporation, and the American Council on Education as a nonprofit center for administering the Scholastic Aptitude Examination and other higher education exams.

John Birch Society
an extreme right-wing group particularly active in southern and southwestern states in the middle of the 20th century.

life adjustment education
an approach to public education popularized by Charles Prosser and others in the 1940s who thought that for students who were not college-bound, an education preparing them for their life roles as family members and consumers was appropriate; criticized as a "soft" curriculum in the 1950s and 1960s.

"provisional freedom"
a notion of freedom that is not absolute, but subject to change, even temporary, depending on changing political contexts.

Scholastic Aptitude Test
founded in the early 20th century to provide a fair predictive tool for college success across secondary schools with different academic standards; has been shown to be of limited predictive value but remains in wide use in the United States.

Senator Joseph McCarthy
a rabid anticommunist congressman during the 1940s and 1950s; his vicious attacks on "communist sympathizers" and "fellow travelers" who were prominent in entertainment and the arts destroyed many careers and eventually his own.

Slums and Suburbs
written in the early 1960s by James B. Conant after the success of The American High School Today to address educational differences between low-income urban neighborhoods and middle-income, largely White suburbs.

Sputnik
the Soviet Union's first human-made vehicle to orbit the earth in space (1957); preceded a similar effort by the United States and caused national concern over Soviet technological superiority.