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The first "free school" in Virginia opens. However, education in the Southern colonies is more typically provided at home by parents or tutors.
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Benjamin Franklin forms the American Philosophical Society, which helps bring ideas of the European Enlightenment, including those of John Locke, to colonial America. Emphasizing secularism, science, and human reason, these ideas clash with the religious dogma of the day, but greatly influence the thinking of prominent colonists, including Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
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Jefferson proposed a bill that provided 3 years of free tuition for both females and males. He also pushed the establishment of grammar schools across the nation
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The New England Asylum for the Blind, now the Perkins School for the Blind, opens in Massachusetts, becoming the first school in the U.S. for children with visual disabilities.
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Louisville, Kentucky appoints the first school superintendent.
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The University of Iowa is then first state university "to admit men and women on an equal basis."
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Gratz College, the first college for Jewish studies in North America, is founded.
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The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is founded. It is charted by an act of Congress in 1906, the same year the Foundation encouraged the adoption of a standard system for equating "seat time" (the amount of time spent in a class) to high school credits. Still in use today, this system came to be called the "Carnegie Unit." Other important achievements of the Foundation during the first half of the 20th Century include the "landmark 'Flexner Report' on medical education
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Micheal Hart invented the "e-book" which is an online book.
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As COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surge in November, NY City temporarily closes schools and moves to distance learning as do many other districts around the nation.