U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wants to intensify the industrial, modernist character of American public schools. He wants a longer school day, a longer school week, and a longer school year.

Post-modernist buildings, those teasing, colorful mash-ups of columns, pilasters and pediments, were both praised and reviled in the 1970s and ‘80s, their heyday. But by the end of the ‘80s, they fell ...