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Pre-Revolutionary War
Education is mainly in towns that have pooled their resources to have a school and pay a teacher. A few colonists sent their children to "Dame" Schools which was essentially daycare. Education was centered around the Protestant Bible. -
Revolutionary War
By the time of the Revolutionary War most Americans were only educated enough to read the newspaper and the Bible and prepare their taxes. -
Average School Attendance
Children and Young Adults spent an average of less than 82 days in school throughout their lifetime. -
Thomas Jefferson
As a member of the Virginia Assembly Jefferson penned a proposal that would gaurantee 3 years of free public education to everyone and advanced education for a select few.
This idea was scoffed at by the general Assembly in Virginia -
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Jefferson's Proposal
Three times Thomas Jeffersons proposal came up in the Virginia Assembly and each time it was voted down. -
Noah Webster "Schoolmaster of America"
Noah Webster published a textbook the "Blue-Backed Speller". This book encouraged different spellings and pronunciations of words from British English. This was Americas first textbook and was the forerunner to the "Websters American Dictionary of the English Language. -
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Manifest Destiny
As Americans moved westward they set up towns and with these towns they created schools. Out on the frontier however school districts could strech for 1000 miles and it would take grit and determination to get to school.
This led to women becoming the main educators in the American education system with the help of Catherine Beecher. -
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Statewide School Systems
In between the 1830s and 1840s the statewide school system fought for by Thomas Jefferson began to take root. A Massachusetts reformer Horace Mann the majority leader of the Massachusetts State Senate who became the first Secretary of Education. -
Horace Mann
Mann rode on horseback from town to town to view the different schools. These school would be quite different from one another from one town to the next. Mann visted 1000 schools over the course of 6 years. -
Average School Attendance
The average school attendance in Massachusetts was 4 months when Horace Man became the Scretary of Education. The annunal per pupil cost was $2.81. -
Immigration and Religion
By 1840 nearly half of New York city residents were forgein born many were Irish Catholics. Most of the public schools in New York city were Protestants. -
Bishop Hughes
Protested against the Protestant public school system that was turning the youth of the Catholic church against them was unjust. He asked for funds for Catholic schools which led to other religions asking for funds for their own schools which led to The Great School Debates in New York City in 1840. -
The Great School Debates in New York City
Bishop Hughes stood against many different church leaders and politicians asking for the Catholic portion of the common school fund.
This request was shot down because the State didn't want all of the other sects of society coming forward and claiming their part of the common school fund.
After these debates however New York City school principals were tasked with going through their textbooks and removing parts offensive to Catholics. -
New York City Board of Education
Public School Society is replaced with the New York City Board of Education which was an elected body. -
Philadelphia Bible Riots
An inti-Irish riot that lead to 13 deaths and a Catholic church being burned to the ground. -
Segregation
A group of nearly 90 African-Americans lead by Fredrick Douglas drew up a petition to the Boston School Committee calling for an immediate end to segregation in the cities public schools. -
Benjamin Roberts Takes on the System
5 year old Sarah Roberts was assigned to the Smith School an all black school in Boston. Her father Benjamin Roberts took on the system trying to enroll her in schools that she would pass to on her way to the Smith School. At each she was denied because of her race once she was physically ejected by a teacher.
Roberts took action and sued the State of Boston. -
Average School Attendance
The average school attendance in Massachusetts after Horace Mann had been in office for 11 years was 7 months. The annunal per pupil cost was $4.80. -
Benjamin Roberts vs. Boston
The case reaches the Massachusettes Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled against Sarah Roberts. -
Bishop John Hughes Get Promoted
John Hughes was named Archbishop of New York. Created a national system of Catholic schools that is still today the major alternative to the public school system in the United States. -
Catherine Beecher
Catherine Beecher was a strong advocate for women teachers stating they were the natural teachers in this world. She set up colleges in the East that would train women to be teachers on the frontier. -
Massachusetts Abolishes Segregation in Schools
Benjamin Roberts took his case to the Negro School Abolition Society and took the cause to the State Legislature.
A law was passed abolishing segregation in the schools in Massachusetts. -
American Civil War Ends
The Civil War ends and 4 million former slaves were now free to become literate.
The US legislature required all states offer a non-sectarian education to all children -
American Schooling
By 1890 America was offering more schooling to more children than any other nation on Earth.
Thanks to the 19th century school reform.
Native Americans were sent to special schools that prohibited the use of their languages and native dress.
African-Americans were also prohibited from from many schools and some created their own schools. Black literacy soared from 5% to 70% after the Civil War. -
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Immigration
Over 22 million immigrants come to the US including nearly 3 million children. -
Education Under Attack
John Dewey a philosopher at the University of Chicago wrote a book attacking the way that children were educated called "The School and Society."
Through this book Dewey would become known as the father of progressive education. -
Average School Attendance
Average schooling was 5 years. About 50% of children in America went to school. -
World's Fair
America put their new progressive schools on display at the World's Fair in Paris. -
Graduation Rates
6% -
Gary Model
In Gary Indiana there started a new progressive system in schools that took care of the children, added home econmics for parents, looked for strengths that were outside of the 3 Rs, and had a ZOO! -
Child Labor
As late as 1910 approx 2 million children were working across America.
A inspector found children who should have been in school. When asked if they would rather work in a facotry or go to school 80% out of 500 said they would rather work. -
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World War I
World War I -
Gary Plan Catches On
New York City progressive mayor John Mitchel put the Gary plan into 30 New York schools.
Eventually over 200 cities across America would adopt the Gary system of schooling. -
America Enters the War
The American involvement in the war led to people calling for an English only curriculum in the American public school system. -
Opposition to the Gary Plan
John Hylan attacked the plan that the current mayor had to introduce the Gary Plan into New York City schools and used the tidal wave of oppostion to the plan to ride into the position of mayor in the 1917 election. -
Elwood P. Cubberley
Elwood P. Cubberley had started out as a small school teacher. He looked at the one size fits all system as out of date. He thought that there were indeed classes. He trained a new generation of administratives in the science of school management. He introduces the system in schools called career planning this made schools a place people went to learn what job they wanted to do not a place to become wise. -
IQ Tests
Lewis Terman was a pyschologist that brought the intelligence test to America. He dreamed that the IQ test would revolutionize the society in America. -
Italian-American Children
It was common for Italian immigrant families to expect their children to leave school at age 15 and help bring money into the household. -
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Schooling Expands
During the 1920s Kindergartens became common for five year olds, junior highs for adolescents, and high schools for teenagers.
IQ tests started to be used in schools throughout the US. -
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Great Depression
Because of the economic hardships the US government outlawed child labor and forced all children to go to school. The overcrowding that resulted encouraged school administratives to rely more and more heavily on IQ tests. These IQ tests were given to children in Kindergarten through elementary school.
Some immigrant students who were learning english were put into special education classes because they scored poorly on the IQ tests. -
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World War 2
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Julian Nava Graduates High School
Younger Brother of Henry Nava who went into WWII in the Navy and after seeing what was happening to the less educated men there went back on his leave to Roosevelt High School and demanded that his brother be put into college prep classes.
Julian Nava went to Harvard and got a Doctorate in History and was elected to the LA Board of Education. He was a firm anit IQ tester and got them banned from the LA area. -
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Post WWII
School aged youths were staying for longer than ever before and were continuing on to college in huge numbers. -
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Cold War Era
Progressive education gets attacked as being pro communist. -
Graduation Rates
45% -
Graduation
3 out of 5 students graduated from High School and 50% went on to college afterwards. -
Inequality
African American segregated by law 17 states.
Average schooling for Mexican Americans 5.4 years.
Disabled children not enrolled in schools 72%. -
Arthur Bestor
Blasted the new way of teaching students progressively. He wrote a book "Educational Wastelands" he drew on his experiences as a university professor. He viewed the current schools as spoon feeding their students and not making the students think critically.
Bestor lead a campaign to get back to the traditional ways of teaching. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
The NAACP believed that the place to bring down segregation was schools. They got 13 black parents to try to enroll their children in white schools that were near their homes. They were all turned away and then the suit was filed. It went up to the Supreme Court.
The court unaminously agreed that segregation was unconstitutional. Separate facilities are inherently unequal.
Over the next two decades 30,000 balck teachers would be displaced. -
Governor of Arkansas
The Governor of Arkansas called out the national guard to keep 9 black teenagers to integrate Little Rock's central High School. His challange was met by President Dwight Esienhowser who sent federal troops to escort the students in. -
National Defense Education Act
President Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act. Massive amounts of federal money were sent to aid public education.
This new act forced some students out of history and english courses and into maths and sciences to "beat" the Russians. -
Lyndon B Johnson
President Lyndon B Johnson who was a former school teacher of impoverished Mexican American children. He believed that an equal chance at education was an equal chance at life. -
Civil Rights Act
Outlawed discrimination based on race in an federally funded organization.
This made it so if southern schools didn't integrate they would lose all federal funding. -
Decade After Brown
A decade after Brown 90% of black children were still in black schools. There was almost no segregation. -
Elementary and Secondary Act
This act gave 4 billion dollars to underpriviliged children. -
Mexican-American Students
Mexican-American Students dropping out by 8th grade: 75%.
87% of students in Crystal City Texas were Mexican-American but 3/4 teachers and the principals were all anglo. -
Mexican-American Students Rise Up
The students in Crystal City Texas drew up a list of demands and the school board didn't listen and even walked out of the meeting. The next day 500 students stayed out of school by the next week 3/4s of all students stayed out of school in Crystal City. -
Mexican-Americans Gain Ground
Mexican-Americans gained 4 of the 7 school board positions in Crystal City Texas.
170 Mexican-American students returned to school. -
Womens Education
Medical and Law Degrees awarded to women: 1%
Female High School Athletes: 7.4% -
8 Years After Civil Rights Act
91% of black children attended integrated schools. -
Title IX
This prohibited grants and funding to schools that discriminated on gender. -
Busing Part 1
A federal judge demanded that the suburban students would be bused to the city schools and the city students to the suburban schools. -
Busing Part 2
The Supreme Court struck down the busing in Detriot stating that the suburban schools had no responsibility to the city schools. -
Choice Experiment
A few good teachers were chosen to start small schools within the existing buildings. -
San Frincisco
The Supreme Court ruled that where children were different they needed to be treated differently to make it equal.
The federal government allocated 68 million dollars for bilingual education and published new teaching materials in almost 70 languages. -
Dorothy Raffel and The Enforcement of Title IX
A lawsuit was filed by the Womens Equity League that charged the federal government with not enforcing Title IX.
Within two decades 42% of all High School Athletes were women.
Bais free textbooks and learning material.
Women began earning half of all under graduate and Masters degrees. -
Special Education
3.7 million students were given more equal rights. -
Julian Nava
Julian Nava was named US Ambassador to Mexico by President Jimmy Carter. -
African American Students
African Americans with High School Diplomas:
1950: 13.7%
1980: 51.4% -
Women in College
Medical and LAw Degrees Awarded to Women:
1950: 0.095%
1980: 30% -
Average School Attendance
1950: 9 years
1980: 12.5 years -
Ronald Reagan
Public education is attacked by Ronald Reagan saying that they have a monopoly on the education system.
He was given a report that said that the public education system was so bad that it was a threat to national security.
The President blamed the civil rights act and title IX for holding back the nation. -
Higher Grauation Requirements
35 states
Annual Cost of Standardized Testing: $500 million -
Core Knowledge Foundation
The Core Knowledge Foundation is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation founded in 1986 by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. The Foundation is dedicated to excellence and fairness in early education.
This is a system of schools that teach the exact same thign across the country. -
East Harlem Wins!
East Harlem was out performing half of the schools in the area. -
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School Shootings
Over 200 school shooting deaths occured during the 1990s. -
George Bush Sr.
President George Bush supported a voucher program for public education.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin was the first area to actually make this voucher system a reality. -
New York
New York began allowing families to enroll them in any school in the city. -
Baltimore, Maryland
EAI Education Alternatives Inc. Stated that they could run the schools in Baltimore for cheaper than the government could and make a profit.
They cut special education programs in half, they cut art and music. -
Privitization of Education in Baltimore
In one swift vote the school privitization system in Baltimore was voted down by the school board. -
Religous Schools
Low income students in Clevland Ohio became the first students to use vouchers for a religious private school. -
Voucher
The Milwaukee voucher program served 1500 students. -
Charter Schools
Congress approved 80 million dollars to build new charter schools. -
Education Alternatives Inc.
EAI signed a contrat with Arizona to run a dozen small charter schools. -
Milwaukee
The Milwaukee Supreme Court ruled that it was okay for students to go to religious schools with the voucher program. After this ruling the number of voucher students went to 6000. -
Homeschooling
Students Schooled at Home: 2.5% -
Limited Voucher Plans
Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida. Students using publicly funded vouchers: .03% -
Regular Public Schools
Number of Regular Public Schools: more than 90,000 -
Charter Schools Run by For-Profit Companies
173
The number of Charter Schools: 2100 -
Public School Enrollment
47.8 million students.
Children enrolled in public school: almost 90% -
George Bush Jr.
Spoke out about students getting tested every year after 2nd grade. Educational Excellence became a presidential priority.