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New England Primer
The New England Primer was the first reading primer designed for the American Colonies. It became the most successful educational textbook published in 18th century America and it became the foundation of most schooling before the 1790s. -
Thomas Jefferson's Education Bill
Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill to congress that would provide for 3 years of public education with limited opportunity for a college education beyond that for superior students. The bill was rejected three times. -
Noah Webster's Blue Back Speller
The great American educator Noah Webster first published A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, otherwise known as the Blue Back Speller, in 1783. His goal was to provide a uniquely American, Christ-centered approach to training children. Little did he know that this remarkable gem would become the staple for parents and educators for more than a century and would help to build the most literate nation in the history of the West. -
Horace Mann appointed First Secretary of Education
Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 – August 2, 1859) was an American education reformer. As a politician he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1827 to 1833. He served in the Massachusetts Senate from 1834 to 1837. In 1848, after serving as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education since its creation, he was elected to the US House of Representatives. -
Great School Debates
Catholics, Jews and Presbyterians began demanding that public monies be set aside for their own schools in protest over the indoctrination of their children by the Protestant public schools of the day. -
Philadelphia Bible Riots
Religious Riots between Protestant and Catholic parents resulted in a Catholic church being burned and 13 people being killed. -
Frederick Douglas argues against Segregation
Douglass believed that education was the key for African Americans to improve their lives. For this reason, he was an early advocate for desegregation of schools. In the 1850s, he was especially outspoken in New York. The facilities and instruction for African-American children were vastly inferior. Douglass criticized the situation and called for court action to open all schools to all children. No action was taken. -
(Sarah) Roberts v. Boston
Roberts v. Boston, 59 Mass. (5 Cush.) 198 (1850), was a lawsuit seeking to end racial discrimination in Boston public schools. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of Boston, finding no constitutional basis for the suit. The case was later cited by the US Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the "separate but equal" standard. -
Massachusetts abolishes Segregation in Schools
Massachusetts abolishes segregation in schools -
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Urbanization
Urbanization of American culture brings millions of kids into American cities, both from foreign immigration and migration for rural areas to urban centers. -
Plessy v Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal." -
Exposition Universelle
American Progressive school reform is on display at the Paris World Fair. Countries around the world toast this Progressive Movement and make attempts to copy this model in their own -
World War One
World War One served to fuel patriotic fervor and led to wide acceptence of an "English Only" education that rejected other languages... specifically German, for contextually understandable reasons. -
Gary Plan implemented in New York City
Gary Plan, designed by William Wirt, implemented in New York City. John Highland campaigned against this plan as a Mayoral challenger on Conflict Theorist (Marxist) grounds and won his bid. He immediately canceled the work-study-play model of the Gary Plan. -
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IQ tests and Carrer Tracking are in vogue.
Career tracking and IQ tests are used to attempt a prediction on where children will and should go in life. "Smart" kids are prepared for college while everybody else is put into vocational tracks. -
Pierce v. Society of Sisters
Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), was an early 20th century United States Supreme Court decision that significantly expanded coverage of the Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case has been cited as a precedent in over 100 Supreme Court cases, including Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), as well as in more than 70 cases in the courts of appeals. -
World War 2
Sets the stage for the Cold War with the Soviet Union and, again, fans patriotic feelings as well as feeds the idea that technology, math and science is all that will protect us. -
McCarthy Era
1950-1954. McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1950 to 1954 and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents. -
Brown v Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine was a group of African-American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. -
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite to be put into Earth's orbit. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October, 1957. The unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1's success precipitated the Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited the Space Race, a part of the larger Cold War. -
National Defense Education Act
The NDEA was influenced by the Soviet launch of the satellite Sputnik on October 4, 1957. The launch shook the American belief that the United States was superior in math and science to all other countries. U.S. citizens feared that schools in the USSR were superior to American schools, and Congress reacted by adding the act to take US schools up to speed.[3] -
Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public ("public accommodations"). -
Elementary and Secondary Education Act
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is a United States federal statute enacted April 11, 1965. It was passed as a part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty" and has been the most far-reaching federal legislation affecting education ever passed by Congress. The act is an extensive statute that funds primary and secondary education, while explicitly forbidding the establishment of a national curriculum. -
Title IX
Title IX is a portion of the Education Amendments of 1972, Public Law No. 92-318, 86 Stat. 235 (June 23, 1972), codified at 20 U.S.C. sections 1681 through 1688, U.S. legislation also identified by the name of its principal author as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. It states (in part) that "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program..." -
Lau v. Nichols
Lau v. Nichols was a civil rights case that was brought by Chinese American students living in San Francisco who had limited English proficiency. The students claimed that they were not receiving special help in school due to their inability to speak English, help which they argued they were entitled to under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because of its ban on educational discrimination on the basis of national origin.the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974 ruled in favor of the students -
Milliken v. Bradley
Milliken v. Bradleywas a significant United States Supreme Court case dealing with the planned desegregation busing of public school students across district lines among 53 school districts in metropolitan Detroit. It concerned the plans to integrate public schools in the United States in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) decision.I -
Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA)
The Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA) is a federal law of the United States of America. It prohibits discrimination against faculty, staff and students, including racial segregation of students, and requires school district to take action to overcome barriers to students' equal participation. It is one of a number of laws affecting educational institutions including the Rehabilitation Act (1973), Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act. -
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School Shootings
From the late 1980s to the early 1990s the United States saw a sharp increase in guns and gun violence in the schools. According to a survey conducted by The Harvard School of Public Health "15% said that they had carried a handgun on their person in the past 30 days, and 4% said that they had taken a handgun to school in the past year." a sharp increase from just five years earlier. By 1993, the United States saw some of the most violent time in school shooting incidences. -
Charter Schools
Congress appropriates $80 million for the establishment and administration of Charter Schools -
School Vouchers
School Voucher systems gain in popularity and controversy. The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin led the way in 1990 and now has nearly 15,000 students using vouchers. -
No Child Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is a United States Act of Congress that came about as wide public concern about the state of education. First proposed by the administration of George W. Bush immediately after he took office, the bill passed in the U.S. Congress with bipartisan support. NCLB is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which included Title I, the government's flagship aid program for disadvantaged students.NCLB supports standards-based education
