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1635 Boston Latin Grammar School
A classical secondary school with a Latin and Greek curriculum preparing students for college. -
1636 Harvard College
Harvard College is a close-knit undergraduate program located within Harvard University. With world-class faculty, a dedication to affordability, and groundbreaking research opportunities, committed scholars have all the resources they need to fulfill their academic and personal potential. -
1647 Old Deluder Satan Law
Massachusetts colony law requiring teachers in towns of fifty families or more and that schools be built in towns of one hundred families or more. Communities must teach children to read so that they can read the Bible and thwart Satan. -
1687-1890 New England Primer
The New England Primer was first published between 1687 and 1690 by printer Benjamin Harris, who had come to Boston in 1686 to escape the brief Catholic ascendancy under James II. It was based largely upon The Protestant Tutor, which he had published in England, and was the first reading primer designed for the American Colonies. -
1740 South Carolina denies education to blacks
In 1827, Massachusetts passed a law requiring all towns with 500+ families to have a public high school open to all students. -
1751 Opening of the Franklin Academy in Philadelphia
Under Franklin's presidency, the Academy of Philadelphia began offering instruction in 1751. Two years later, at Franklin's invitation, William Smith joined the Academy as a teacher of natural philosophy and logic; and in 1755, when the Academy was rechartered as the College of Philadelphia, Smith became its first Provost. The College consisted of three Schools: the English School, the Mathematics School, and the Latin School. -
1783 Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book/Webster's Dictionary
Noah Webster (1758-1843), best known for his compilation of the American English dictionary, was also famous in his day for The American Spelling Book. This book, first published in 1783, was a very popular textbook for young children in the nineteenth century. -
1785 Land Ordinance Act
The Ordinance of 1785 put the 1784 resolution in operation by providing a mechanism for selling and settling the land, while the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 addressed political needs. The 1785 ordinance laid the foundations of land policy until passage of the Homestead Act in 1862. -
1787 Northwest Ordinance
The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as the The Ordinance of 1787) was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States (the Confederation Congress), passed July 13, 1787. -
1821 Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary opens
Troy Female Seminary. Troy Female Seminary, subsequently called (from 1895) Emma Willard School, American educational institution, established in 1821 by Emma Hart Willard in Troy, New York, the first in the country founded to provide young women with an education comparable to that of college-educated young men. -
1821 First public high school opens in Boston
The English High School began in 1821. Almost two centuries have passed since it was founded and the school has gone through many changes and has accomplished many goals. Up until the early 1800's, the education system in Boston consisted of a scattering of grammar schools throughout the town. A child's education usually ended at the age of 10. The exception to this was the Latin School. -
1823 First normal private school opens in Vermont
A normal school is a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. The first public normal school in the United States was founded in Concord, Vermont, by Samuel Read Hall in 1823 to train teachers. -
1827 Massachusetts requires public high schools
In 1827, Massachusetts passed a law requiring all towns with 500+ families to have a public high school open to all students. -
1837 Horace Mann becomes secretary of board of education in Massachusetts
Born in 1796 in Massachusetts, Horace Mann practiced law before serving in the state Legislature and Senate. Named secretary of the new Massachusetts board of education in 1837, he overhauled the state's public-education system and established a series of schools to train teachers. Mann later was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and served as president of Antioch College in Ohio until his death in 1859. -
1839 First public normal school in Lexington, Massachusetts
The first public normal school in the United States was founded in Concord, Vermont, by Samuel Read Hall in 1823 to train teachers. In 1839, another normal school was established in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It operates today as Framingham State University. -
1855 First kindergarten in the United States
The kindergarten was founded in America by Margarethe Meyer Schurz, wife of the famous German-American statesman Carl Schurz. Mrs. Schurz was a native of Hamburg, Germany, and as a young woman learned the principles of the kindergarten from its creator, Friedrich Froebel -
1862 Morrill Land Grant College Act
Land-Grant College Act of 1862, or Morrill Act, Act of the U.S. Congress that provided grants of land to states to finance the establishment of colleges specializing in agriculture and the mechanic arts. -
1874 Kalamazoo case
While educating the children of Kalamazoo began with the earliest settlers, the extent of public school education was originally limited to common school, what we now think of as elementary school.These boards had the authority to set up high schools funded by local taxes, if citizens of the district voted in favor of the proposal. In anticipation of the legislature’s passage of the law, but without a vote of local citizens, Kalamazoo established its first high school in 1858. -
1896 Plessy v. Ferguson
In the Plessy v. Ferguson case the supreme court ruled separate but equal schools unfair and said that separate but equal schools could no longer exist. -
1909 First junior high school in Berkeley, California
Long thought to be the first junior high school in the United States, Willard was in fact the first in California, and the first junior high school west of the Mississippi. It may have been the second junior high in America when it was established in January 1909. It’s worth noting that the Ohio school was intended primarily to teach trade skills, while Berkeley’s school was focused on academics and preparation for high school. -
1917 Smith-Hughes Act
The Smith-Hughes National Vocational Education Act of 1917 was an act of the United States Congress that promoted vocational agriculture to train people "who have entered upon or who are preparing to enter upon the work of the farm," and provided federal funds for this purpose. -
1919 Progressive education programs
The Progressive Education Association, founded in 1919, defined its philosophy in seven principles. -
1932 New Deal education programs
Upon accepting the 1932 Democratic nomination for president, Franklin Roosevelt promised a new deal for the American people. -
1944 G.I. Bill of Rights
The G.I. Bill of Rights allowed veterans to go back to school for free after fighting for our country. -
1954 Brown v. Board of Education
This was the court case that removed segregation in schools for good and in my opinion it was the best court case win ever.
