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1635—Boston Latin School becomes the first public school as well as the oldest existing school in the U.S. https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/school/boston-latin-school
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1783—Noah Webster finishes A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, a three-volume work he developed because he didn’t like the textbooks from England that were used at the time. In later editions, Webster rewrote words using American spelling.
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1791—Individual states take control of education when the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified.
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1801—While James Pillans discovered the method of using chalk on a blackboard while teaching geography, George Baron, an instructor at West Point Military Academy, is considered to be the first American instructor to incorporate the use of a large black chalkboard into the presentation of his math lessons.
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1856—The first kindergarten in the United States is founded by Margarethe Schurz in Watertown, Wisconsin. http://www.watertownhistory.org/Articles/KindergardenFirst.htm
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1892—The Pledge of Allegiance is first used in public schools on Columbus Day.
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1914—Richard Prentice Ettinger drills holes in paper and puts the pages in a ringed binder, using the concept of loose-leaf notebook paper for the first time in the U.S. He later co-founds the educational publisher Prentice Hall.
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1918—Mandatory school attendance laws are in place in every state.
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1939—A conference on student transportation organized by Frank W. Cyr leads to the national standardization of school buses. He is later known as the Father of the Yellow School Bus.
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Late 1950s—Overhead projectors become popular in schools after being used by the police and the U.S. Army.
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1954—The United States Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education is passed, making segregated schools illegal.
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1973—The first episode of SchoolHouse Rock! airs https://movies.disney.com/schoolhouse-rock
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1985—The wildly popular educational computer games Oregon Trailand Where in the World Is Carmen, San Diego? are developed. https://www.format.com/magazine/features/design/you-have-died-of-dysentery-oregon-trail-design
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1995—Dry-erase boards, also called whiteboards, have been replacing many chalkboards in classrooms across the U.S. to eliminate chalk dust.
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2009—The Common Core State Standards Initiative is launched. http://www.corestandards.org/
