The 1976 Los Angeles Dodgers finished the season in second place in the western division of the National League. The big news was when long-time manager of two decades Walter Alston resigned abruptly near the end of the season and was replaced by Tommy Lasorda who would manage the team for two decades himself. November 17, 1975: Jimmy Wynn, Tom Paciorek, Lee Lacy and Jerry Royster were traded by the Dodgers to the Atlanta Braves for Dusty Baker and Ed Goodson. December 23, 1975: Bob Randall was traded by the Dodgers to the Minnesota Twins for Danny Walton. March 2: Willie Crawford was traded by the Dodgers to the St. Louis Cardinals for Ted Sizemore. March 2: Ken McMullen was released by the Dodgers. March 31: Orlando Alvarez and cash were traded by the Dodgers to the California Angels for Ellie Rodríguez. June 15: Joe Ferguson, Bob Detherage and Fred Tisdale were traded by the Dodgers to the St. Louis Cardinals for Reggie Smith. June 23: Mike Marshall was traded by the Dodgers to the Atlanta Braves for Elías Sosa and Lee Lacy.

Note: Pos = Position. = Batting average. = Batting average. Of those, ten players would play in the Major Leagues; the top draft pick in the June draft was catcher Mike Scioscia from Springfield High School in Pennsylvania. He would be the Dodgers starting catcher from 1980–1992 and was a 2-time All-Star and 2-time World Series Champion with the Dodgers. After his playing career ended he became the manager of the Anaheim Angels and would win another World Series as their manager in 2002. Baseball-Reference season page Baseball Almanac season page 1976 Los Angeles Dodgers uniform Los Angeles Dodgers official web site

The movement for compulsory public education in the United States began in the early 1920s. It started with the Smith-Towner bill, a bill that would establish the National Education Association and provide federal funds to public schools, it became the movement to mandate public schooling and dissolve parochial and other private schools. The movement focused on the public's fear of the need to Americanize; the movement gained some legislative attention when a 1920 Michigan referendum for compulsory public education received 40% of the vote. In 1922 Oregon passed a similar referendum; this law was challenged and unanimously struck down by the U. S. Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters; the movement experienced a post–World War II revival when some Americans began to fear the power of the Catholic Church and wanted to ensure public funds were not finding their way to parochial schools. Some accused them of hindering democracy. In the 1920s the idea of compulsory public education gained traction in various states as a reaction against parochial schools.

The Ku Klux Klan supported the movement. In Michigan the movement achieved a referendum on the subject in 1920, but won less than 40 percent of the vote. In Oregon a similar measure passed in 1922. Campaigning for it, the Ku Klux Klan “circulated a tract that pictured a grinning, torch-wielding Catholic bishop triumphantly departing from a burning public school house whose teacher rang the school bell one last time as he lay dying in the vestibule, mourned by crying children.”In Pierce v. Society of Sisters the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down Oregon's law; the decision was hailed by progressives such as the presidents of Yale University and the University of Texas, the Journal of Education, John Dewey, the National Education Association. However, other Progressives, such as future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter criticized the decision as unwarranted judicial activism. After World War II some progressives such as The Nation editor Paul Blanshard became concerned with the power of the Catholic Church.

They did not want it to receive public funds via its schools. Some scholars have argued that the 1947 Supreme Court decision Everson v. Board of Education, which affirmed that the legal doctrine of separation of church and state applied at the State and Local government levels, was motivated by anti-Catholic feelings; that opinion was authored by Justice Hugo L. Black, an admirer of Blanshard; some progressives compared parochial education to racial segregation. "You cannot practice democratic living in segregated schools," said one Columbia professor, referring to Catholic schools. At a debate at Harvard Law School a Methodist Bishop called parochial schools un-American. In 1952 prominent educators attacked "nonpublic schools" at a convention of public school superintendents in Boston, they were following the lead of their own president and Harvard’s president, James B. Conant; the United States Supreme Court gave an order granting bilingual education for Spanish-speaking students. The Equal Opportunity in Education Act which prohibited discrimination or unfair treatment for all people with regards to free and guaranteed education was ratified 1972.

Desegration by Busing Students occurred in the mid 1970s and was featured as a cover story in Time magazine. Desegregation busing in the United States is the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts in an effort to reduce the racial segregation in schools; the College Board, a nonprofit organization, found out that Scholastic Aptitude test scores declined beginning in the middle part of the 1960s until the end of the 1970s. In the 1970s, education was not a vital public concern and did not get adequate attention from the media; the general public was not aware that debates took place among educators. The Nation at Risk Report emerged as the typical educational axiom during the 1980s; this Report jolted millions of Americans to awake from their lack of concern regarding the state of educational institutions in the country. There was widespread social demand for education reforms in the 1990s; the catchphrase during that decade was “reinventing the government.”

Supporters of this initiative claimed the bureaucracy was inefficient to the point of being bankrupt. These individuals and groups espoused new organization and effort that underscored authority, competition, community empowerment and performance incentives. Working groups on a national scale that focused on education and teaching control releases reports in the 1990s; these commissions called for a plan in guiding recruitment and support in outstanding mentoring. In addition to these initiatives, said entities emphasized the need for flexibility as well as accountability in public school governance. US Department of Education Rod Paige facilitated the passage of the No Child Left Behind of 2001, the most meaningful amendments in federal education legislation since the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965; this Statute enabled children in sub-performing schools to move to public institutions or receive coaching at government expense. Secretary Paige was responsible for assisting the District of Columbia in becoming home of the first voucher program financed by the federal government.

In 2013, the Washington Post pointed out different issues in public education, the biggest of, the growth of student poverty. National Coordinator for Broader bolder Approach to Education, a program initiated by the Economic Policy