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Education During the Colonial Period
Many of the men who would become founding fathers were educated and had vested interest in education, and while they didn’t leave behind specific beginning points for education in the US, they and like minded colonists made grassroot efforts to educate their children. Only the largest towns legally needed to have schoolhouses, and though it took a while for public schools to catch up to private tutoring, education began spreading to children of all socioeconomic statuses. -
The Publishing of Webster's Blue-Backed Speller
There were many kinds of textbooks used in education since colonial times, but Webster’s speller, first published this year and one of the precursors to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary we still use today, was especially accessible and popular. It showed characteristics of objective literary study, rather than teaching in foundationally moral terms, and also sought to cultivate American language and ideals as being distinct from those of Britain. -
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18th Century Immigration Diversifies Education
As the US population grew, more and more immigrants poured into the country to create distinct communities and new ways of life in America. Their children highlighted different issues with public education; many of their kids wanted to work rather than go to school, and those kids who did go to school sometimes found deplorable teachings against their own way of life. These issues would take a long time to tease out and shaped educational reform. -
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Education During Westward Expansion
Education in the west had its definite challenges and characteristics, but when those who moved west took the kindling of education with it, they demonstrated how important education was to them. Growth of education in the west features the ardent Catharine Beecher, who championed education in the west as an occupational opportunity for women, and McGuffey readers, schoolbooks that taught morals along with basic skills. -
Horace Mann Reports on the State of Education
As the first Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, Mann took responsibility (especially given his Whig party and Protestant leanings) for surveying US schools in a way no one else had. Beginning this year, he published annual reports on his discoverings, and because the reports could circulate they generated a lot of conversation on education; in them he recommended chairs, blackboards, textbooks--essentially what is still essential to the image of the US classroom today. -
The NY Education Debate before Common Council
In the early 1800s when public education in the US was beginning to take shape, an increase in immigration caused tension over the Protestant nature of that education. John Hughes, Catholic bishop in New York, began advocating for Catholics to receive funding for their own schools, resulting in a debate before the Common Council that packed the building. (The ruling was not in their favor.) Read more -
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Industrialization Shapes Education in the US
The effects of factory life and education (and the workforce) in the US remain inseparably tied; in particular, schools were set up to match the lifestyle families had in the factories. These effects include bell systems, the time of day school is held, and--some educational psychologists argue--the classroom group setting which turns out the “product” of educated students in “batches” by age group. -
Secondary Schools Begin to Rise in the US
MOST IMPORTANT: Secondary schools had not been integral in any other countries before they began to appear in the US during this time. This revolutionary step meant that students were in school longer and had a viable support system for moving them into universities and, from there, careers. Even though the schools first appeared in more affluent, single-demographic communities, they are becoming an equalizing stepping stone across the US today. Read more -
Introduction of the IQ
When German psychologist William Stern introduced the idea of the intelligence quotient it changed education around the world forever by introducing an idea about measuring intelligence. Such measurements have since been widely challenged and inspired the growth of educational psychology, but IQ tests were some of the first standardized tests and were even used to exclude and categorize students. -
The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Ruling
MOST IMPORTANT: This decision overruled legislation avowing racial segregation in schools and named it unconstitutional. More importantly, these foundations paved the way for further cultural change, especially since it was the time of Civil Rights. The ruling gave the Eisenhower administration power to send troops to Little Rock where the troops facilitated desegregation of local schools; the image of the Little Rock Nine remains iconic today. Read more -
Sputnik Becomes Earth's First Satellite
MOST IMPORTANT: This achievement by the Russians--sending the first satellite into Earth’s orbit--was used by the Eisenhower administration to catalyze change. The Cold War gripped the nation and conflated the sense that the US’s failure to achieve something as great was a result of the students in the US falling behind their Russian and other international competitors. We landed on the moon in 1969 but the effects on public education still remain today. Read more -
The Choice Movement: Charter Schools and Vouchers
In this year the idea of charter schools was introduced by a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor; since that time, hundreds of charter schools have opened across the country. Especially with the success of the choice and competition model in Harlem in the 80s, the debate surrounding charter schools, vouchers, and the quality of public education continues to increase today. -
EHA Later Becomes IDEA
MOST IMPORTANT: The act first passed in 1975 later became the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990. IDEA is an instance of the US leading education; no other country matches these efforts to educate students with disabilities. Likely the states would never have integrated these overlooked students on their own, and despite the funding and resource challenges, millions of lives have been and are changed. Read more -
A Nation at Risk
All seemed well in US education when Reagan’s commission produced A Nation at Risk, detailing the failure of schools and students' education. With its militant language, it forced the spotlight onto the structure and content of education and claimed that the likes of the Progressive theory had weakened the quality of schooling, beginning an arduous, contemporary, media-fueled look at how students' and schools' success should be measured and what’s to blame when they don’t. -
ESEA Passed into Law
MOST IMPORTANT: The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was introduced by LBJ as part of the War on Poverty, but has been reauthorized every session since its introduction. It has taken different forms (IASA, NCLB, ESSA) but always aims to direct funding to schools while improving educational standards. It is responsible for the creation of different grants and the idea of Title I schools. Read more
