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Boston Latin Grammar School
The first Latin Grammar School was created in Boston. The school was originally designed for only sons of certain social classes. The Grammar school's distinct purpose was as a specialist in preparing boys for higher learning.
https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/latingra.html -
Harvard College
The oldest institution of higher education, established by vote of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony. It is named after its first benefactor John Harvard of Charleston. -
Old Deluder Satan Law
Required that towns of a certain size hire a schoolmaster to teach local children. In this way, the burden of education was shifted from the parents to the local community.
http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-law-of-1642-the-old-deluder-satan-act-us-public-education.html -
New England Primer published (1987-1890)
The New England Primer was a textbook used by students in New England and in other English settlements in North America. It was first printed in Boston in 1690 by Benjamin Harris who had published a similar volume in London. It was used by students into the 19th century. Over five million copies of the book were sold.
https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/neprimer.html -
Elementary and Secondary Act (ESEA)
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was signed into law in 1965. From its inception, ESEA was a civil rights law. ESEA offered new grants to districts serving low-income students, federal grants for textbooks and library books, funding for special education centers, and scholarships for low-income college students. Additionally, the law provided federal grants to state educational agencies to improve the quality of elementary and secondary education.
https://www.ed.gov/essa?src=rn -
South Carolina denies education to blacks
In 1740, South Carolina was the first of the Southern states to pass laws absolutely prohibiting the education of slaves.
https://academic.udayton.edu/race/04needs/education06.htm -
Opening of the Franklin Academy in Philidelphia
The Academy of Philadelphia was founded to provide a classical education with a modern twist.The curriculum represented a divide between the majority of the trustees and Benjamin Franklin regarding the nature of the education to be provided.
http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/1700s/acad_curric.html -
Noah Webster's American Spelling Book
The first publication of the spelling book in 1783. Webster’s goal was to divorce the American educational system from its British roots, and accordingly his speller substituted many British spellings for American variants, dropping extra letters like “u” and “e” to simplify the language.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1460977 -
Land Ordinance Act, Northwest Ordinance (1758,17870
The Northwest Ordinance, adopted by the Second Continental Congress, chartered a government for the Northwest Territory, provided a method for admitting new states to the Union from the territory, and listed a bill of rights guaranteed in the territory.
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=8 -
First public high school opens in Boston
The first free high school was established in Boston in 1821. The Massachusetts State Board of Education recommended that free high schools be instituted everywhere and accordingly, the legislature passed a law requiring free high schools to be established throughout the state, to be instructed by persons "of good morals," who would be competent to given instruction in diverse subjects ranging from U.S. history to bookkeeping.
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3530.html -
Emma Wilard's Troy Female Seminary opens, first endowed secondary school for girls
Troy Female Seminary, subsequently called 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. At the time of the seminary’s founding, women were barred from colleges.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Troy-Female-Seminary -
First (private) normal school opens in Vermont (Rev. Samuel Hall)
The first normal schools in the United States were started in New England in the 1820s as private institutions, such as the one founded in Concord, Vermont by Samuel Read Hall in 1823.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Normal_school -
Massachusetts requires public high schools
In 1820, Boston is the site of the first public U.S. high school. And in 1827, a Massachusetts law makes all grades of public school free to all.
http://www.educationbug.org/a/history-of-public-schools.html -
Horace Mann becomes secretary of board of education in Massachusetts
When he was elected to act as Secretary of the newly-created Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, he used his position to enact major educational reform.
http://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/horace.html -
First public normal school in Lexington, Massachusetts (Horace Mann)
The first public normal school in the United States was founded in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1839. Both public and private “normals” initially offered a two-year course beyond the secondary level, but in the 20th century teacher-training requirements were extended to a minimum of four years.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/normal-school -
First kindergarten (German language) in 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. In the 1850s she came to London, where her sister had founded the first kindergarten there. -
Morrill Land Grant College Act
The Morrill Act of 1862 was also known as the Land Grant College Act. It was a major boost to higher education in America. The grant was originally set up to establish institutions is each state that would educate people in agriculture, home economics, mechanical arts, and other professions that were practical at the time. The land-grant act was introduced by a congressman from Vermont named Justin Smith Morrill.
https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/morrill.html -
Kalamazoo case (legalizes taxes for high schools)
In 1875 a lawsuit was filed in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to collect public funds for the support of a village high school. The town had used taxes to support the school for thirteen years without complaints from the citizens. The defendants in the case, the school officials, felt that a select few out of thousands need not dispute their obligation to pay taxes for the purpose of supporting a high school.
https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/kalamazo.html -
Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision supporting racially separate but equal schools
This 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the constitutionality of segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. It stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, breaking a Louisiana law.
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson -
First junior high school in Berkeley, California
In 1909, Berkeley’s school board voted to create “introductory high schools” comprising grades 7 through 9. The first of these was McKinley Introductory High School, formed from the upper grades of McKinley Elementary School.
https://www.willardpta.org/brief-history/ -
Smith-Hughes Act (fund vocational classes)
Smith-Hughes Act, formally National Vocational Education Act, U.S. legislation, adopted in 1917, that provided federal aid to the states for the purpose of promoting precollegiate vocational education in agricultural and industrial trades and in home economics.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Smith-Hughes-Act -
Progressive education programs
The Progressive Movement promoted the idea that students should be encouraged to be independent thinkers, creative beings, and expressive about their feelings. This was a sharp contrast from prevalent educational approaches rooted in social efficiency in the early 1900s, particularly in the United States.
http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_sc/assignment1/1919pea.html -
New Deal education programs
When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to try and stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental projects and programs, known collectively as the New Deal, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. More than that, Roosevelt’s New Deal permanently changed the federal government’s relationship to the U.S. populace. -
G.I. Bill of Rights
G.I. Bill (of Rights), also called Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, U.S. legislation passed in 1944 that provided benefits to World War II veterans. Through the Veterans Administration (VA), the bill provided grants for school and college tuition, low-interest mortgage and small-business loans, job training, hiring privileges, and unemployment payments.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/GI-Bill-of-Rights -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in schools
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_brown.html -
Sputnik leads to increased federal education funds
Though Sputnik was a relatively simple satellite compared with the more complex machines to follow, its beeping signal from space galvanized the United States to enact reforms in science and engineering education so that the nation could regain technological ground it appeared to have lost to its Soviet rival.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/10/how-sputnik-changed-u-s-education/ -
National Defense Education Act (NDEA) funds science, math, and foreign language programs
National Defense Education Act (NDEA), U.S. federal legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 2, 1958, that provided funding to improve American schools and to promote postsecondary education. The goal of the legislation was to enable the country’s educational system to meet the demands posed by national security needs. -
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Job Corps and Head Start are funded
In 1963, shortly before he was assassinated, President Kennedy had asked his economic advisors to draw up some proposals to address the problem of American poverty. Johnson took up this charge after he succeeded Kennedy as President. In Johnson's first State of the Union address on June 8, 1964, he called for an unconditional war to defeat poverty. He expanded and revised the proposals given to Kennedy and developed the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.
http://www.iacaanet.org/history.php -
Bilingual Education Act
Congress legislated the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 in order to mandate schools to provide bilingual education programs. This was the first time congress had endorsed funding for bilingual education. The Bilingual Program was a federally funded program through Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, with the revision of Improving America's Schools Act of 1994.
http://schugurensky.faculty.asu.edu/moments/1968kipp.html -
Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in schools
Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance. Title IX states that:No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/tix_dis.html -
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Public Law 94-142, Education for All Handicapped Children Act (renamed the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act), is passed (IDEA)
Congress enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142), in 1975, to support states and localities in protecting the rights of, meeting the individual needs of, and improving the results for infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities and their families. This landmark law is currently enacted as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as amended in 1997.
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/leg/idea/history.html -
Cabinet-level Department of Education is established
The U.S. Department of Education assists the president in executing his education policies for the nation and in implementing laws enacted by Congress. The Department's mission is to serve America's students-to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/what_pg2.html -
No Child Left Behind Act calls for state standards and annual testing (President George Bush)
President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. NCLB significantly raises expectations for states, local school districts, and schools in that all students will meet or exceed state standards in reading and mathematics within twelve years. NCLB requires all States to establish state academic standards and a state testing system that meet federal requirements.
http://www.gadoe.org/AYP/Pages/AboutNCLB.aspx -
Race to the Top (President Barack Obama)
President Barack Obama joined Secretary Duncan for the announcement of this national competition for states to lead the way in school reforms, backed by historic levels of financial support.
https://blog.ed.gov/2009/07/president-obama-secretary-duncan-announce-race-to-the-top/
