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Period: to
American Education
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Massachusetts School Law
A Top Five Pick, the Massachusetts Law of 1642 ordered officers in each town to verify that parents and apprentice-masters were, in fact, providing their children with an education. Five years later, with the Education Act of 1647, every town of 50 households or more was ordered to provide a teacher who would instruct children in basic literacy. Townships of 100 households or more were required to set up a grammar school. -
Northwest Ordinance of 1785
One of three ordinances passed to manage the settlement of new territory, beginning in 1784, the Northwest Ordinance of 1785 in particular "provided for the scientific surveying of the territory’s lands and for a systematic subdivision of them" (britannica.com). More particularly, the ordinance set aside a centrally-located portion of every township's land specifically for the location of a public school. -
MOST IMPORTANT: Jefferson. Rush and Webster
I'm calling this the most crucial event on the list. Without men like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Rush pushing for education for the common man, none of the rest of the story gets off the ground. And while Jefferson and Rush were taking the nation's first real steps toward the American system of education, Webster's Blue Backed Speller took the first steps towards an American curriculum. -
The Common School
"Teach a common body of knowledge to give every student an equal chance in life." This is where the modern concept of American systematic tax funded public education took shape. It gave the common man the tools he needed to participate in the political process. -
Horace Mann
When the Massachusetts Board of Education was organized in 1837, Horace Mann became its first Secretary. Mann's efforts to serve well in this office led to his publishing detailed reports recommending everything from blackboards and standardized textbooks to trained teachers and the Common School. Mann “…asserted that education was the right of every child and that it was the state's responsibility to ensure that every child was provided an education.” (p133) -
Population Growth and Immigration
More and more children, more and more of whom came from backgrounds other than the white, protestant majority brought increased expenditures, increased secularization of the public curriculum, and in the case of Catholics, a whole new branch in the system thanks to John Hughes. This secularization of schooling is still going on today, as factions wrestle either to keep or remove religious observance's presence in our schools. -
John Dewey
Born in 1859, John Dewey would go on to spearhead what became known as the progressive education movement. Acording to Dewey, who favored a child-centered, problem-solving approach to experiential learning, the purpose of an education was "...to promote individual growth and to prepare the child for full participation in a democratic society." (p159) -
The Gary Plan
While not universally popular or even accepted, William Wirt's "platoon system," implemented in 1907, brought an unprecedented efficiency to the American school by moving students around the school to make use of specialized facilities and be taught by specialized teachers. The multiclass scheduling of modern secondary schools is a direct descendant of Wirt's work. Britannica.com -
The Measurement and Child Study Movements
In the opening decades of the twentieth century, the Child Study Movement pushed the boundaries of our understanding of child psychological development, giving rise to influential theories like that of Jean Piaget. Aside from helping to meet the military's need for quick and reliable assessment of incoming recruits for the first World War, the Intelligence Quotient tests arising from the Measurement Movement (when used responsibly) aided educators in targeting students with greater need. -
Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education
A response to the Committee of Ten, which itself might be termed "Common Core - 1892," the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education issued seven principles of secondary education in yet another effort to define the goals of a secondary school. The difference between 1892 and 1918, of course, being that the CRSE's recommendations of health, academic skills, vocational preparation, citizenship, and ethics have largely stuck. -
Pearl Harbor is Attacked
Post WWII A Top Five Pick. From reductions in revenue support, enrollment, and faculty to unification of purpose and an energized re-examination of the system, the effects of the Second World War on American education were widespread and long-lasting. Even focusing alone on just one piece of legislation that came about because of the war, the G.I. Bill of Rights represents a watershed moment in American education, as servicemen and women continue to receive higher education through this bill's benefits. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Expanding Civil Rights A Top Five Pick. Not exactly the nail it was expected to be in the coffin of segregation, it was instead a fairly quiet opening salvo in what would become the Civil Rights Movement. Its effects were both positive and negative, however, even in the lives it should have most benefitted. The ruling opened doors to black students to enroll in better-funded schools for a presumably better education, but did so at the cost of many black teachers' jobs. Today's school demographics remain in flux. -
Sputnik launched
Suddenly, we went from debating how progressive American schools should be to tossing progressivism just about completely out the window. Sputnik rendered the debate moot (p166), and America turned its education goals to fostering science and math, lest we fall even further behind than where we were. -
A Nation At Risk
Are We Still "A Nation at Risk"? A Top Five Pick. Where No Child Left Behind can be called a culmination of the reforms of the 80s and 90s, this 1983 report to President Reagan was the spark that lit those movements. After years of progressive gains, including racial and ability integration, this report found students' critical knowledge flagging, and lagging behind other nations. Every education bill since 1983 can trace its roots directly to this report. -
Passage of NCLB
What may be seen as a culmination of the reform movements of the 1980s and 90s (p182), the No Child Left Behind Act took government oversight and school accountability to unprecedented heights. Controversial and sweeping, NCLB has, like Goals 2000 before it, been both successful in bringing some positive change to the educational landscape and unsuccessful in reaching its very lofty goals.
