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Puritan
In 1642 Puritan Massachusetts passed a law requiring that every child be taught to read. And in 1647 it passed the "Old Deluder Satan Act," so named because its purpose was to defeat Satan's attempts to keep men, through an inability to read, from the knowledge of the Scriptures. The law required every town of 50 or more families to establish an elementary school and every town of 100 or more families to maintain a grammar school as well. -
New England Primer
The first "basic textbook"--'The New England Primer'--was America's own contribution to education. Used from 1690 until the beginning of the 19th century, its purpose was to teach both religion and reading. The child learning the letter a, for example, also learned that "In Adam's fall, We sinned all." -
John Locke
In the 17th century philosophers, too, were beginning to develop theories of learning that reflected the new scientific reliance on firsthand observation. One of the men whose theories had the greatest impact on education was the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). According to Locke (who did not originate the idea but gave impetus to it), the mind at birth is a blank tablet (tabula rasa). That is, it has no innate, God-given knowledge. But it does have a number of powers or faculties, s -
Rousseau
The man was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). The child, as Rousseau saw him, unfolds or develops--intellectually, physically, and emotionally--much like a plant.
He believed, moreover, that the child is innately good but that all social institutions, including schools, are evil, distorting the child into their own image. He doubted, therefore, that there should be formal schools at all. Whether there were or not, however, he believed that the aim of education should be the natural development -
Webster
Noah Webster published his first dictionary in 1806 -
Pestalozzi
It is no wonder then that Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's (1746-1827) school at Yverdon, Switzerland, created international attention and attracted thousands of European and American visitors. What they saw was a school for children--for real children, not miniature adults. They saw physically active children--running, jumping, and playing. They saw small children learning the names of numbers by counting real objects and preparing to learn reading by playing with letter blocks. -
Froebel
The German educator Friedrich Wilhelm Froebel (1782-1852) is the father of the Kleinkinderbeschaftig-ungsanstalt (institution where small children are occupied). The name, too long even for the Germans, quickly shrank to Kindergarten (garden for children). -
Horace Mann
America came into its own educationally with the movement toward state-supported, secular free schools for all children, which began in the 1820s with the common (elementary) school. The movement gained impetus in 1837 when Massachusetts established a state board of education and appointed the lawyer and politician Horace Mann (1796-1859) as its secretary. One of Mann's many reforms was the improvement of the quality of teaching by the establishment of the first public normal (teacher-training) -
Bruner
Jerome Bruner (1915-) Pioneer of Discovery Learning Theory To combat the behaviorist approach to education, Bruner developed cognitive psychology and promoted a constructivist approach. His discovery learning theory is based on the assumption that children learn and remember better what they discover for themselves and that they are better able to remember new information if they connect it to something that they already know. His research and subsequent theories on child development closely a -
Montessori
Maria Montessori (1870-1952) Pioneer of Individualized Education Montessori methods remain the popular choice for many parents who seek an alternative education for their children, especially for the early childhood through the primary years. -
Head Start
1989 - The Child Development and Education Act of 1989 (Public Law 101-239) authorized appropriations to expand Head Start Programs and programs carried out under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to include child care services. This law was introduced as H.R. 3 by CBC Founder Representative Augustus Hawkins. -
IDEA
1975 - The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142) ensured that all handicapped children have a free education designed to meet their special needs. -
Piaget
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Pioneer of How Children Learn Anyone who has taken a child psychology class will have studied the developmental and learning theories of Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist. Fascinated with how children reasoned, he began researching and writing books on the subject of child psychology. When he later married and fathered three children, he was supplied with enough data to write three more books! His research and subsequent theories have become the basis and foundation o -
Goals 2000
In March 1994, President Clinton signed the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. He said that, "We insist, with Goals 2000, that every student can learn. -
NRP
The National Reading Panel (NRP) was a United States government body. Formed in 1997 at the request of Congress, it was a national panel with the stated aim of assessing the effectiveness of different approaches used to teach children to read. -
Reading First
Reading First is a federal education program in the United States mandated under the No Child Left Behind Act and administered by the federal Department of Education. The program requires that schools funded by Reading First use "scientifically based" reading instruction.[1] Reading First
1 Jan 2000 Put Reading First, National Institute for Literacy In conjunction with No Child Left Behind, Reading First policies are state-funded and require schools to use research based best practices when t -
NCLB
2002 - The No Child left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110) was signed into law in 2002. The Act requires states to develop assessments in basic skills to be given to all students in certain grades, if those states are to receive federal funding for schools. The Act does not assert a national achievement standard; standards are set by each individual state. -
Ken Goodman Whole Language
What's Whole in Whole Language
1 Jan 2006 Ken Goodman publishes, What's Whole in Whole Language, Stating, "Language learning is learning how to mean: making sense of the world in the context of how our parents. families, and cultures make sense of it. Cognitive and linguistic development are totally interdependent: thought depends on language, and language depends on thought" (Goodman, 2006). -
Marie Clay
Marie Clay (1926-2007) Pioneer of Balanced Literacy Model and Reading Recovery Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Marie Clay became an international leader in the study of children’s acquisition of literacy. Her methods of teaching reading and written language have swept through the United States and other English speaking nations since their inception three decades ago. The reading recovery component was developed as a means of lifting the low achieving first grader to a place alongside the ave -
Race to the Top
Race to the Top, abbreviated R2T, RTTT or RTT, is a $4.35 billion United States Department of Education competition designed to spur innovation and reforms in state and local district K-12 education. It is funded by the ED Recovery Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and was announced by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on July 24, 2009. States were awarded points for satisfying certain educational policies, such as performance-based sta -
Obama
March 13, 2010 - On March 23, 2010 the Obama administration released its blueprint for revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). According to the Department of Education, ﾒThe blueprint challenges the nation to embrace education standards that would put America on a path to global leadership. It provides incentives for states to adopt academic standards that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace, and create accountability systems that measure student growth t
