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Horace Mann and his board founded the first public school in the United States, in Massachusetts. This allowed larger demographics of people to receive an education.
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The Department of Education is created in order to help states establish effective school systems. It helps mandate all schools in the United States.
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Hands on learning style and the development of practical life skills are crucial to children education. This is important because it allowed kinesthetic learners to do as well as learners of other variety.
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Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. It desegregated public schools and abolished "separate but equal" facilities.
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Religious teaching in public schools ends. This is important because it makes people of non-christian religions feel equal.
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Guaranteed a free appropriate public education to each child with a disability. This is important because it normalized disabilities and allowed children with disabilities to be in the same schools as children without disabilities.
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Called for sweeping reforms in public education and teacher training, among their recommendations is a forward-looking call for expanding high school requirements to include the study of computer science. It pushed for schools to focus in areas of math, science, and foreign language.
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Students with poor financial situations receive help from the government for the first time. It is important because it leads to major scholarship programs.
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Increased funding for bilingual and immigrant education; and provisions for public charter schools, drop-out prevention, and educational technology.
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Mandates high-stakes student testing, holds schools accountable for student achievement levels, and provides penalties for schools that do not make adequate yearly progress toward meeting the goals of NCLB. It called for state testing and it influenced common core.