How many times have you heard that public schools in the United States were modeled in the 20th Century on factories and have yet to be restructured to meet 21st Century needs? A lot, I’d bet. But what if that isn’t true? In this post, education historian Jack Schneider looks at the truth behind the “factory model” theory and whether school design is really the cause of student disengagement and inadequate learning. Schneider is an assistant professor of education at the College of the Holy Cross and the author of “Excellence For All: How a New Breed of Reformers Is Transforming America’s Public Schools” and “From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education.” Follow him on Twitter @Edu_Historian.