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American History from 1604 to the present
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Jamestown, first English settlement in America
Protestants build their first settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. These Protestant were very well educated. The school system of that time period resembled England schools. Schools were funded my private families. Because most of the families were poor, funding the education system transferred from private ventures to the state. -
Massachusetts Laws
The state takes the responsibility of teaching the youth. The idea of compulsary education comes into play. The Protestant faith has a lot of influence in the education system. This law required that towns of more than 50 homes provide a teacher. And towns with more than 100 homes provide a grammar school. The first brick on the road to compulsory education in America was laid by the Massachusetts Act of 1642. -
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson envisioned democracy as an expression of society as a whole, and called for national self-determination, cultural uniformity, and education of all males of the commonwealth. Jefferson believed that public education and a free press were essential to a democratic nation: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be. ... The people cannot be safe without information. -
Noah Webster
As a teacher, he had come to dislike American elementary schools. They could be overcrowded, with up to seventy children of all ages crammed into one-room schoolhouses. They had poor underpaid staff, no desks, and unsatisfactory textbooks that came from England. Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books, so he began writing a three volume compendium, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. -
Horace Mann
Horace Mann was a big proponent to public education. He is considered as the father of the common school. Mann traveled to every school in the state so he could physically examine each school ground. In 1838, he founded and edited The Common School Journal. In this journal, Mann targeted the public school and its problems. -
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass believed that all people are created equal. But he also believed that we weren't just born free: we have to make ourselves into who we are. So education and self-improvement are incredibly important to him. The worst thing about slavery, to his mind, is that it prevents people from improving themselves through education. In fact, he argues that slavery and education are completely opposite things. -
Secondary Schools
First secondary school was founded in Boston, Massachusets. It was an English classical school, boys only, and focused mainly on practical education.
By 1860, there were 300 secondary schools and 6000 academies. And in the 1900's, they grew to 6000. -
John Dewey
Dewey argued that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place.
Dewey makes a strong case for the importance of education not only as a place to gain content knowledge, but also as a place to learn how to live. -
Progressive Reform Movement
The Progressive movement was about modernizing the schools at the local level. The era was notable for a dramatic expansion in the number of schools and students served, especially in the fast-growing metropolitan cities. After 1910 the smaller cities began building high schools. By 1940, 50% of young adults had earned a high school diploma. -
Child Labor Laws
Child labor laws were often paired with compulsory education laws which were designed to keep children in school and out of the paid labor market until a specified age.
A number of exceptions to these rules exist, such as for employment by parents, newspaper delivery, and child actors. -
Brown v Board of Education
The US Supreme court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. Warren Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This ruling paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement. -
Sputnik
Sputnik was the first man-made artificial satellite. 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. -
Civil Rights Act
On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of The The Civil Righs Act of 1964, banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations. The bill authorized the Attorney General to file lawsuits to enforce the new law. The law also nullified state and local laws that required such discrimination. -
Individuals with Disabilities Act
The Individuals with Disabilities Act contains six elements, which are: Individualized Education Program, Free and Appropriate Public Education, Least Restrictive Environment, Appropriate Evaluation, Parent and Teacher Participation, and Procedural Safeguards. -
A Nation at Risk Report
A Nation at Risk is the 1983 report of American President Ronald Reagan's National Commission on Excellence in Education. Its publication is considered a landmark event in modern American educational history. Among other things, the report contributed to the ever-growing assertion that American schools were failing, and it touched off a wave of local, state, and federal reform efforts. -
No Child Left Behind Act
No Child Left Behind Act requires all public schools receiving federal funding to administer a state-wide standardized test annually to all students. Critics argue that the focus on standardized testing, encourages teachers to teach a narrow subset of skills that the school believes increases test performance.
