-
The first Latin Grammar School (Boston Latin School) is established. Latin Grammar Schools are designed for sons of certain social classes who are destined for leadership positions in church, state, or the courts.
-
Harvard College has its beginnings in a seminary founded by the
Great and General Court of Massachusetts at New Town -
Massachussetts Bay Colony passes the Compulsory Education Law, requiring parents to teach their children to read
-
Massachusetts Bay Colony becomes the first to require towns of at least 50 households to hire a teacher to educate the town’s children. Towns of 100 families should build public elementary schools.
-
An evening school for working children is established in New Amsterdam (now New York City)
-
Quaker school for black students established in Philadelphia.
-
John Leverett was the first non-clergy president at Harvard
-
The notion of the voucher system is born with famed economist, Adam Smith
-
Pennsylvania state constitution calls for free public education for poor families. Wealthy families are expected to pay for their
children’s schooling. -
The New York Public School Society is formed by wealthy businessmen to provide education for poor children. Schools are run on the “Lancasterian” model, in which one “master” teaches hundreds of students in a single room.
-
The first U.S. parochial school is founded near Baltimore
by English-American widow, Elizabeth Ann Seton. -
Boston’s English High School opens with 102 students. The school is the first tuition-free public high school to teach no language but English
-
Massachusetts establishes a board of education, naming former educational reformer, Horace Mann, as the first secretary of the
Board. His annual salary was $1,000. -
Ohio becomes the first state to adopt a bilingual education law,
allowing for German-English instruction at parents’ requests. -
Bishop John Hughes asks for state aid for Catholic schools.
-
Platt Rogers Spencer develops the first widely used handwriting teaching system in schools, called Spencerian penmanship
-
The first school for children with mental disabilities opens in Massachusetts.
-
Massachussetts enacts the first compulsory school-attendance
law in the U.S. -
The Children’s Aid Society of New York implements the first school lunch program
-
The National Teachers Association is formed. The name later changes to National Education Association (NEA).
-
The NEA announces its support of physical education in public
schools. -
The NEA announces its support of music education in public schools.
-
Women enter the University of Michigan for the first time since its founding at Ann Arbor in 1817. By the end of the 1870s, there will be close to 154 U.S. coeducational colleges, up from 24 in 1833
-
The board of education in St. Louis, MI establishes the first successful public school kindergarten. It opens in the Des Peres School with 42 students.
-
A school for Native-American children opens in Carlisle, PA with 147 students.
-
The National Congress of Mothers is organized in Washington during a meeting attended by 2,000 people. Today, the group is known as the National Parent Teachers Association, or PTA.
-
A sex education program is introduced citywide in public high schools in Chicago, Illinois.
-
Congress passes the Smith-Hughes act, allowing
funds for vocational education below the college level. -
The NAACP brings a series of suits over unequal teachers' pay for Blacks and whites in southern states. At the same time, southern states realize they are losing African American labor to the northern cities. These two sources of pressure resulted in some increase of spending on Black schools in the South.
-
A survey of 150 school districts reveals that three quarters of them are using so-called intelligence testing to place students in different academic tracks.
-
At the end of World War 2, the G.I. Bill of Rights gives thousands of working class men college scholarships for the first time in U.S. history.
-
Educational Testing Service is formed, merging the College Entrance Examination Board, the Cooperative Test Service, the Graduate Records Office, the National Committee on Teachers Examinations and others, with huge grants from the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations.
-
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Supreme Court unanimously agrees that segregated schools are "inherently unequal" and must be abolished.
-
African American parents and white teachers clash in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of New York City, over the issue of community control of the schools. Teachers go on strike, and the community organizes freedom schools while the public schools are closed.
-
The so-called "taxpayers' revolt" leads to the passage of Proposition 13 in California, and copy-cat measures like Proposition 2-1/2 in Massachusetts. These propositions freeze property taxes, which are a major source of funding for public schools. As a result, in twenty years California drops from first in the nation in per-student spending in 1978 to number 43 in 1998.
-
Milliken v. Bradley. A Supreme Court made up of Richard Nixon's appointees rules that schools may not be desegregated across school districts. This effectively legally segregates students of color in inner-city districts from white students in wealthier white suburban districts.
-
The federal Tribal Colleges Act establishes a community college on every Indian reservation, which allows young people to go to college without leaving their families.
-
Proposition 187 passes in California, making it illegal for children of undocumented immigrants to attend public school. Federal courts hold Proposition 187 unconstitutional, but anti-immigrant feeling spreads across the country.
-
California passes Proposition 209, which outlaws affirmative action in public employment, public contracting and public education. Other states jump on the bandwagon with their own initiatives and right wing elements hope to pass similar legislation on a federal level
-
A multi-millionaire named Ron Unz manages to put a measure on the June 1998 ballot outlawing bilingual education in California.
