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Human Capital Theory
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1838
Horace Mann establishes The Common School Journal, outlining six principles of education:
1.Citizens may not obtain both ignorance and freedom.
2.The public should have to pay for, control, and maintain education.
3.Children of different financial ladders should get the same schooling.
4.The education that is taught must be nonsectarian (nonreligious).
5.The education taught has to use tenets of a free society.
6.This education should be taught by professionally trained teachers. -
1954
Brown v. Board of Education dealt with the segregation of public schools on the basis of race, arguing that such segregation violates the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court held that “separate but equal” facilities are inherently unequal and violate the protections the Fourteenth Amendment and that the segregation of public education based on race instilled a sense of inferiority that had a hugely detrimental effect on the education and personal growth of African American children. -
1961
Theodore Schultz pointed out that “economists have long known that people are an important part of the wealth of nations.” Shultz argued that people invested in themselves through education to improve their job opportunities. In a similar fashion, nations could invest in schools as a stimulus for economic growth. -
1962
The Perry Preschool study began with 123 African American children from low-income families who were considered at risk for school failure. In 1970, the research became the principal project of the High/Scope Foundation which today claims “is perhaps best known for its research on the lasting effects of preschool education and its preschool curriculum approach.” -
1964
In his book Human Capital,Gary Becker asserts that economic growth depends on the knowledge, information, ideas, skills, and health of the workforce. Investments in education, he argued, could improve human capital which would contribute to economic growth. Later, he used the phrase knowledge economy: “An economy like that of the United States is called a capitalist economy, but the more accurate term is human capital or knowledge capital economy.” -
1965
In his 1964 State of the Union address, Lyndon B. Johnson stated,
"Our aim is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it."
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, signed into law in 1965, established the Title I program subsidizing school districts with a large share of impoverished students -
1965
As part of the War on Poverty, Head Start begins. Head Start programs promote school readiness of children ages birth to 5 from low-income families by supporting their development in a comprehensive way. The program also began development of a television show, which would become Sesame Street. -
1972
The San Antonio School District, funded in part by local property taxes, sued the state, arguing that since property taxes were low in the area, students at the public schools were being underserved. They argued that the Equal Protection Clause mandates equal funding among school districts, but the Court ultimately rejected their claim. It held that there is no fundamental right to education, and that the Equal Protection Clause doesn’t require exact “equality or precisely equal advantages”. -
1983
The human capital and knowledge economy argument became a national issue when the federal government’s report A Nation at Risk blamed the allegedly poor academic quality of American public schools for causing lower rates of economic productivity than those of Japan and West Germany. In addition, it blamed schools for reducing the lead of the United States in technological development. -
1991
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, writes in The Work of Nations, “Herein lies the new logic of economic capitalism: The skills of a nation’s workforce and the quality of its infrastructure are what make it unique, and uniquely attractive, in the world economy.” Reich draws a direct relationship between the type of education provided by schools and the placement of the worker in the labor market. -
1992
When Bill Clinton ran for the presidency in 1992, the Democratic platform declared: “A competitive American economy requires the global market’s best educated, best trained, most flexible work force.” Education and the global economy continued as a theme in President Clinton’s 1996 re-election -
2002
Human capital and global competitiveness are used to justify No Child Left Behind: “Satisfying the demand for highly skilled workers is the key to maintaining competitiveness and prosperity in the global economy.” In his 2006 State of the Union, President George W. Bush declared, "One out of every five factory jobs in America is related to global trade … we need to encourage children to take more math and science, and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations" -
2005
In their book Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies?, Pedro Carneiro and James J. Heckman assert: “This dynamic complementarity in human investment was ignored in the early work on human capital. Learning beget learning, skills (both cognitive and noncognitive) acquired early on facilitate later learning.” -
2012
The 2012 Democratic Party platform’s education agenda emphasized global economic goals: "Democrats believe that getting an education is the surest path to the middle class, giving all students the opportunity to fulfill their dreams and contribute to our economy and democracy. … We are committed to ensuring that every child in America has access to a world-class public education so we can out-educate the world and make sure America has the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020" -
2016
The17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — adopted by world leaders at an historic UN Summit — officially came into force. Over the next fifteen years, with these new Goals that universally apply to all, countries will mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind. Goal four is "Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning". -
2016
The Republican platform says the Education Department has spent more than $2 trillion dollars “with little substantial improvement in academic achievement or high school graduation rates.” It supports the notion of Title I portability, or school choice. The platform calls for a constitutional amendment protecting the right of parents to direct their children’s education, care and upbringing “from interference by states, the federal government, or international bodies such as the United Nations.”
