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Gabriel was an enslaved well read blacksmith who formulated a plan for a widespread rebellion in Virginia on the eve of the "Revolution of 1800". His plan included taking over the Virginia statehouse, kidnapping the governor of Virginia and negotiating an end to slavery. A massive storm quelled the rebellion before it could begin. Over 25 people were hanged as conspirators in the rebellion. A wave of slave anti-literacy laws are passed in the wake of the failed rebellion.
More on Gabriel's rebellion

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The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony decrees that every town of fifty families should have an elementary school and that every town of 100 families should have a Latin school. The goal is to ensure that Puritan children learn to read the Bible and receive basic information about
their Calvinist religion.

More on the Deluder Acts

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Thomas Jefferson writes the infamous "Notes on the State of Virginia." Among it's more unsavory pieces he discusses a two-track educational system, for the laboring and the learned. He notes that providing a scholarship for about twenty of the poorest students to advance in their studies would allow for "raking a few geniuses from the rubbish". This thought is considered mild in comparison to his unfettered thoughts on Native Americans, slavery and Phyllis Wheatley.

Notes on the State of Virginia

Originally sourced by: Justice by Design

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The Continental Congress (before the U.S. Constitution was ratified) passes a law calling for a survey of the "Northwest Territory" which included what was to become the state of Ohio. The law created "townships," reserving a portion of each township for a local school. From these "land grants" eventually came the U.S. system of "land grant universities," the state public universities that exist today. Of course in order to create these townships, the Continental Congress assumes it has the right to give away or sell land that is already occupied by Native people.

More on the Northwest territory

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Pennsylvania state constitution calls for free public education but only for poor children. It is expected that rich people will pay for their children’s schooling.

Pennsylvania's Constitution

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The percentage of people working in agriculture plummets as family farms are gobbled up by larger agricultural businesses and people are forced to look for work in towns and cities. At the same time, cities grow tremendously, fueled by new
manufacturing industries, the influx of people from rural areas and many immigrants from Europe. During the 10 years from 1846 to 1856, 3.1 million immigrants arrive, a number equal to one eighth of the entire U.S. population. Owners of industry needed a docile, obedient workforce and look to public schools to provide it.

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After race riots envelope Philadelphia in 1829, Richard Humphreys changes his will to bequeath 1/10th of his estate to "establish a school for "the descendants of the African race". The Institute of Colored Youth later renamed Cheyney University is the first of over 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities to be founded in the United States.

More on HBCU's

More on Cheyney University

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Horace Mann becomes head of the newly formed Massachusetts State Board of Education. Edmund Dwight, a major industrialist, thinks a state board
of education was so important to factory owners that he offered to supplement the state salary with extra money of his own.

More on Horace Mann

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Massachusetts Reform School at
Westboro opens, where children who have refused to attend public schools are sent. This begins a long tradition of “reform schools,” which combine the education and juvenile justice systems.

More on Massachusetts's Reform School

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The United State's war against Mexico ends with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which gives the United States almost half of what was then Mexico. This includes all of what is now the U.S. Southwest, plus parts of Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and most of California. The treaty guarantees citizenship rights to everyone living in these areas (mostly Mexicans and Native people.) It also guarantees the continued use of the Spanish language, including in education. The first constitution of the state of California is written in both languages. One hundred fifty years later, in 1998, California breaks that treaty, by passing Proposition 227, which would make it illegal for teachers to speak Spanish in public schools.

More on the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo

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State of Massachusetts passes first its compulsory education law. The goal is to make sure that the children of poor immigrants get “civilized” and learn obedience and restraint, so they make good workers and don’t contribute to social upheaval.

More on the Massachusetts's law

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California passes a law barring blacks from public education just two years after it had become a part of the United States.

Latina Lives, Latina Narratives: Influential Essays by Vicki L. Ruiz

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African Americans mobilize to bring public education to the South for the first time. After the Civil War, African  Americans in the South make alliances with white Republicans to push for many political changes, including for the first time rewriting state constitutions to guarantee free public education. In practice, white

children benefit more than black children.

More on schools and education during Reconstruction

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Congress makes it illegal for Native Americans to be taught in their native languages. Native children as young as four years old are taken from their parents and sent to Bureau of Indian Affairs off-reservation boarding schools, whose goal, as one BIA official put it, is to "kill the Indian to save the man." The first school to open is the Carlisle Indian School in 1879.

More about the Carlisle Indian School

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Susan Clark a 12 year old girl from Iowa wins her case for school integration as the Iowa State Supreme Court rules that "separate" is not "equal" almost 90 years before Brown v Board of Education would make the same ruling for the nation.

More on Clark v Board of Directors

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By 1870 California had devised and implemented a simple formula of ten. When African Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans or American Indians numbered ten students, a school district was empowered to create separate schools for whites and non-white children.

Latina Lives, Latina Narratives: Influential Essays by Vicki L. Ruiz

Racial Desegregation in Public Education in The United States by National Park Service

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The United States government enrolled Native American students in Christian-run boarding schools. In these institutions, children were forbidden to speak in their own languages or wear their hair long, they were taught Christianity, dressed and groomed according to European styles, and had their replaced
with Christian-European names. Many boarding houses were former military sites and were operated by military personnel.

More about the Carlisle Indian School Project and other Indian Boarding Schools

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Tape v Hurley a California Supreme Court case ruled that the San Fransisco public school must admit 8 year old Mamie Tape and that she can not be denied schooling despite her Chinese heritage. The state counters by requiring separate segregated Chinese schools for Chinese Americans. The prevailing doctrine would be upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson
More on Mamie Tate

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Plessy v. Ferguson decision. The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the state of Louisiana has the right to require "separate but equal" railroad cars for Blacks and whites. This decision means that the federal government officially recognizes segregation as legal. One result is that southern states pass laws requiring racial segregation in public schools.

More about the events leading to Plessy vs Ferguson

More about Plessy vs Ferguson as it relates to Brown and education

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Education for European immigrant children included immersion in English-only classrooms without accommodations, placement in 1st grade classrooms regardless of the age of the child and intelligence testing which led to the disproportionate placement of immigrant children in special education classes. Meanwhile in the West and Southwest, separate schools were developed for Spanish-speaking students. These schools focused on
teaching English and punished students for speaking in Spanish. Fewer resources were given to these schools and they were generally staffed by less qualified teachers.

Stay Tuned for Links and resources

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Smith-Hughes Act passes, providing federal funding for vocational education. Big manufacturing corporations push
this, because they want to  remove job skill training from the apprenticeship programs of trade unions and bring it under their own control.

More on the Smith-Hughes Act

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The California school law (Political Code 1662) was amended once again to read as follows:“ The governing body of a school district shall have power to exclude children of filthy or
vicious habits, or children suffering from contagious or infectious diseases, and also to
establish separate schools for Indian children and for children of Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian parentage. When such schools are established, Indian children or children of Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian parentage must not be admitted into any other school.”

Latina Lives, Latina Narratives: Influential Essays by Vicki L. Ruiz

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An act of Congress makes Native
Americans U.S. citizens for the first
time.

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Carl C. Brigham, an avowed Eugenicist, develops the SAT for the College Board. A test designed to ensure that American Colleges and universities stay white.

More on Carl Brigham
More on the racism of the SAT

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The Lemon Grove case, commonly referred to as the Lemon Grove incident is among the earlier desegregation cases in the US. The Lemon Grove School District (located in a suburb of San Diego County, CA) Board (all white), with the support of the all white PTA converted a building to be used as the "Mexican School". In the middle of the school year, the school barred Mexicans from attending their regular school and told the children and the parents that they had to attend the "new" Mexican school. Parents quickly organized the El Comité de Vecinos de Lemon Grove (the Lemon Grove Neighbors Committee) and sought legal aid. Parents and students protested by refusing to attend the school. The judge ruled in favor of the parents in part citing that Mexicans were considered Caucasian and therefore exempt from segregation laws. The school board decided not to appeal and the school remained desegregated paving the way for Westminster v. Mendez.

San Diego History Center on the Lemon Grove Case

Zinn Educational project on the Lemon Grove Case

More on the Lemon Grove Case

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The NAACP brings a series of suits over unequal teachers’ pay for Blacks and whites in southern states. At the same time, southern states realize they are losing African American labor to the northern cities. These two sources of pressure resulted in some increase of spending on Black schools in the South.

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The Montgomery GI bill offered the promise of home ownership and paid college tuition for returning WWII veterans. This is a promise left largely unfulfilled for black soldiers as they were denied access to homes and colleges because of their race.

See more about how the GI bill failed black veterans here

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Sylvia Mendez's family is able to move into Westminster, CA (a predominately white neighborhood) because a Japanese family lost their home due to internment. When the family was told that Sylvia would have to go to "the Mexican School" her family filed suit. With the help of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Mendez v Westminster finally desegregates California schools
NAACP lawyers followed the Mendez v. Westminster case closely and modeled the strategy in Brown vs. Board of Education
in 1954.

More on Mendez vs Westminster

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Educational Testing Service is formed, merging the College Entrance Examination Board, the Cooperative Test Service, the Graduate Records Office, the
National Committee on Teachers Examinations and others, with huge grants from the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations. These
testing services continued the work of eugenicists like Carl Brigham (originator of the
SAT) who did research “proving” that immigrants were feeble-minded.

More on Carl Brigham
More on the racism of the SAT

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Barbara Rose Johns, a 16 year old student at R.R. Morton High school in Virginia, organized an assembly at  school. Her speech to the student body encouraged the 450 students to go on strike from school. While the school and government largely ignored the students, the NAACP helped the students file suit

(Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County)

. This suit would be consolidated with similar suits and was argued at the Supreme Court as Brown v Board of Education.
Rather than abide by the Brown decision, Prince Edward County shut down all public schools for 5 years (1959-1964).

More on Barbara Rose Johns
More on Davis v County School Board of Prince Edward County

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Supreme Court unanimously agrees that segregated schools are “inherently unequal” and must be abolished "with all deliberate speed". Critics argue that the lack of specificity would allow localities to prevent the integration of the order.
Almost 45 years later in 1998, schools, especially in
the north, were as segregated as ever. In 2020, the impact of race and poverty as well as charter schools and school boundary policies continue to impede progress towards the reality of this landmark decision.

More on the Brown decision

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Segregation academies begin springing up all over the country to combat the required integration of public schools as laid forth in Brown v Board of Education. In general, they were designated as private schools despite receiving funding from state and local governance. This practices remains entrenched until the Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional in 1976 (Runyon v. McCrary). Several of these academies continue to run even today.

More on segregation academies

More on  the long term impact of segregation academies and their continued operation

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Lawmakers in the state of Virginia begin a plan of "Massive Resistance" by which they pass a series of laws to prevent the integration of the schools in Virginia.  While most of the laws were eventually overturned, Prince Edward County closed all public schools for five years (1959-1964) to prevent integration.

Learn more about Virginia's Massive Resistance

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Three years after the Brown decision "The Littlerock Nine" are the first black students to enter Littlerock High School. Originally, the national guard was stationed at the school to keep them out, President Eisenhower calls in the 101st Airborne division (a Special Operations division) to escort the children onto campus.
Ernest Green goes on to become the first black graduate of Little Rock High School that school year. The next year, Arkansas closes ALL public schools and opens segregation academies to stop integration efforts.

More on the Little Rock 9

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Burt Glinn "Little Rock Nine." First nine black students to attend Little Rock Central High School. Among these students is Mrs. Daisy Bates, president of the National Association for Advancement of Colored P (...)

eople's Arkansas Branch, with, on right, Minnie Jean Brown, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Pattilo. Little Rock. Arkansas, USA. 1957. © Burt Glinn | Magnum Photos

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par167602.jpg | Magnum Photos Magnum Photos

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Paratroopers escort African-American students into Little Rock Central High School. Little Rock. Arkansas, USA. 1957.

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The Soviet Union launched the first Earth orbiting satellite, Sputnik. In response to this, President Eisenhower signed into law the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which
provided funding to improve science, technology and foreign
language education in American schools. This was also the first large-scale involvement of the U.S. federal government in education and the first endorsement of foreign language
being seen as an asset.

More on the NDEA and it's impact on math/science and foreign language education

More on the effect of Sputnik in Education

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Ruby Bridges is among the first children to desegregate an elementary school in the South (William Frantz Elementary School). Angry parents pull out their children and as a result Ruby Bridges was in a classroom of one.

More on Ruby Bridges

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The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program. When passed, it created a clear role for the federal government in K-12 policy, offering more than $1 billion a year in aid under its first statutory section, known as Title I, to districts to help cover the cost of educating disadvantaged students. The law has been reauthorized and changed more than half a dozen times since that initial legislation. And, for the most part, each new iteration has sought to expand the federal role in education.

More on the History of the ESEA

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In East Los Angeles 22,000 students from five different LAUSD schools began a series of walkouts that became knows  as the Chicano Blowouts to protest poor conditions and treatment in the schools. Less than 5% of Chicanos in East LA were able to attend a UC while the "pushout" or dropout rate was pushing nearly 60% of all chicano students. Led by Sal Castro (a teacher in the district) and the Brown Berets these students presented 39 different demands to the school board. Among their demands: Smaller classes. New libraries. More bilingual counselors, teachers and principals. Improved testing to distinguish between a lack of English proficiency and lack of intelligence. More lessons on Mexican American culture, art and history. And no corporal punishment.
13 leaders (The East LA 13) including Sal Castro were arrested for leading the blowouts. It took over 5 years for the charges to be dropped.

More on the Chicano Blowouts
Youtube 9 minute video on the Blowouts
See Walkout on HBO-Max

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The Bilingual Education Act (BEA) provided funding for bilingual education in the form of competitive grants directly to school districts while provisions in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) created programs such as Head Start and Title I in an attempt to offset the impact of poverty on students in the public education system. The Bilingual Education Act did not require instruction in the students’ native languages, but instead encouraged the development of new and innovative programs to teach students English. The Act also
placed priority on supporting low income students to learn English. This Act came into conflict with certain states that had English-only laws for schools and it also ran the risk of violating desegregation laws by separating
these students into bilingual classes.

"The problem is that many of our school-age children come from homes where the mother tongue is not English. As a result, these children enter school not speaking English and not able to understand the instructions that is [sic] all conducted in English. [There is] an urgent need for this legislation to provide equal educational opportunity for those children who do not come to school with English-speaking ability. We received almost
unanimous enthusiasm and support for this legislation as being an effective remedial program.”
-- Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas, on his support for the Bilingual Education Act of 1968

More on the Bilingual Education Act

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In 1971 The Supreme Court rules unanimously in favor of busing (Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education) as a means of further integrating schools. Busing as a means of integration began in New York in 1957 and peaked in the 1980's.
Busing backlash reached fever pitch in Boston as white students were also bussed into black neighborhoods. It took over 400 court orders before the city of Boston was integrated with busing. Protest was rampant and sometimes violent. Boston was not alone, other protests to busing occurred in cities "like Baltimore, Maryland, Pontiac, Michigan and in Louisville, Kentucky."

More on busing in schools

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Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 is enacted into law. Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against students or employees based on sex. It begins: “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.” As a result of Title IX, any school that receives any federal money from the elementary to university level–in short, nearly all schools–must provide fair and equal treatment of the sexes in all areas, including athletics.

More on the legacy of Title IX

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Chinese American students who were ELLs living in San Francisco filed the class action suit Lau v. Nichols. They claimed that since the schools did not provide English Language Learners such as Chinese Americans with extra support to learn English, the schools were violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits educational discrimination on the basis of  national origin. Essentially, the question at hand was whether school administrators met their
obligation to provide equal educational opportunities by treating all students the same, or whether they must offer special help for students learning English. Lower federal courts absolved the San Francisco school district of any responsibility for providing extra services for English Language Learners but a unanimous Supreme Court disagreed, setting a precedent for providing equitable
resources instead of equal resources to students and for the idea that language based
discrimination is another form of national origin discrimination.

More on the Lau v Nichols case
More on Lau v Nichols

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Milliken v. Bradley. A Supreme Court made up of Richard Nixon’s appointees rules that schools may not be desegregated across school districts. This effectively legally segregates students of color in inner-city districts (i.e. Detroit) from white students in
wealthier white suburban districts.

More on Miliken v. Bradley

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After a congressional investigation discovered that more than 1.75 million school children received NO public education and another 3 million children that were attending school were not receiving educational services that were appropriate with their needs Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA). Signed into law by president Gerald Ford the act mandated that all children with special needs receive an offer of FAPE (Free Appropriate Public Education). To ensure that an offer of Free Appropriate Public Education was offered to students with disabilities the student, the parents and the teachers would work together to develop an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

The Law had four major goals

1. To ensure that special education services are available to children who need them

2. To guarantee that decisions about services to students with disabilities are fair and appropriate

3. To establish specific management and auditing requirements for special education

4. To provide federal funds to help the states educate students with disabilities

More on EAHCA
EAHCA video

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The Supreme Court rules in

Runyon v. McCrary that private schools can not discriminate on the basis of race. This decision effectively shuts down segregation academies. However, several remain open and in operation today. While "integrated" there are disproportionately more white students in these schools. These schools are often in markedly better conditions than the public school options available in the area, which are predominately attended by students of color.

More on Segregation academies still going

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The so-called "taxpayers' revolt" leads to the passage of Proposition 13 in California, and copy-cat measures like Proposition 2-1/2 in  Massachusetts. These propositions freeze property taxes, which are a major source of funding for public schools. As a result, in twenty years California drops from first in the nation in per-student spending in
1978 to number 43 in 1998.

More on the impact of the taxpayer revolt and education

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1990 THe EAHCA is reauthorized as IDEA. Largely the program remained the same as the law from 1975. Updates as a result of Supreme Court Cases had caused some changes but the six key components are an offer of Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). To determine what that looks like an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is developed with Parent, student and teacher participation  and the plan is subject to appropriate evaluation as well as procedural safe guards Key pieces that tie into the core of the idea include confidentiality of information, transition services and a comprehensive approach to discipline.   Subsequent amendments, as reflected in the IDEA, have led to an increased emphasis on access to the general education curriculum,the provision of services for young children from birth through five, transition planning, and accountability for the achievement of students with disabilities. The IDEA upholds and protects the rights of infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities and their families.

Parent Resource Center on IDEA

More on  the impact of IDEA

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California Prop 187 AKA the Save our State (SOS) initiative is passed by California voters. The law would establish a state-run citizenship screening program and prevent undocumented immigrants from using services such as public education, and non-emergency health care. The law passed with 58.9% of California voting yes and only 41.07% voting against. Although the law would be challenged  and found unconstitutional within a week of it's passage. It took another 5 years before the state stopped appealing the ruling.

More on prop 187

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California passes Proposition 209, which outlaws affirmative action in public employment, public contracting and public education. Other states jump on the bandwagon with their own initiatives and efforts are made to pass similar legislation on a federal level.

Effects on Prop 209 in Education

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In 1997 California passes prop 227 which effectively removes bilingual education from public schools and calls on schools to teach Limited English Proficient (LEP) students in specialized English classes for a maximum of  one year before they are "mainstreamed" into regular classes. While this law violates the tenants of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo it was overwhelmingly approved by California voters with 60.88% voting in favor of the bill. This law would remain in effect for almost twenty years as schools focus on English only instruction. In 2016 California voters will overwhelming vote in favor of Prop 58 which overturns CA prop  227.

More on the effects of Prop 227

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The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2001 and was signed
into law by President George W. Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, is the name for the updated to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The NCLB law-—which grew out of concern that the American education system was no longer internationally competitive—significantly increased the federal role in holding schools responsible for the academic progress of all students. And it put a special focus on ensuring that states and schools boost the performance of certain groups of students, such as English-language learners, students in special education, and poor and minority children, whose  achievement, on average, trails their peers. States did not have to comply with the new requirements, but if they didn’t, they risked losing federal Title I money.

More on The Legacy of No Child Left Behind

Another article on the legacy of NCLB

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The Texas School Board adopts
revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum. The revised curriculum plays down the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, questions
the separation of church and state, and claims that the U.S. government was infiltrated by Communists during the Cold War. Texas and California are the bellweathers by which text book companies create their textbooks so the effects are far reaching.

More on the impact of the Texas schoolboard decision

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California’s Budget Act included landmark legislation that greatly simplified the state’s school finance system. The changes introduced by the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) represented a major shift in how California funds Local Educational Agencies (LEAs). For nearly 40 years, California relied on a system that included general purpose funding (known as revenue limits) and more than 50 tightly defined categorical programs to provide state funding to LEAs. Under LCFF, California funds school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education equally per
student with adjustments based on grade levels and demographic characteristics. LCFF replaces complexity in favor of equity, transparency, and performance.

More on LCFF

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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) passes with bipartisan support and is signed into law by president Barack Obama on December 10, 2015. ESSA is the name for the updated updated to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. ESSA is the first reauthorization of the act to reduce the role of the federal government in Education since the 1980s. The onus is placed on the states to create and define criteria for successful schools as well as to create state testing and metrics for evaluating that testing. California adopts the California Dashboard with a color coded system and a 5x5 grid to measure a school's performance in a host of categories.

More on ESSA
The CDE on the CA Dashboard

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CA Prop 58 passes as a ballot initiative with nearly 10 million people voting in favor of it. Prop 58 repeals the 1998 provisions of CA Prop 227 where students were taught English by a teacher who only speaks English. Proposition 227 also required limited English proficient students who were in separate classes to be put into regular classes, ended bilingual programs, and required students to be taught in an English-only environment. Prop 58 allows LEAs to make localized decisions on how best to teach English. It allows for multilingual education environments, where students can become bilingual in elementary schools (EL's learning English and English Only [EO] students learning a different language).

More on Prop 58

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The California State Board of Education votes to approve the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC). The draft approved is the fourth draft of the curriculum and received over 100,000 public comments in the various public commenting phases. The curriculum focuses on African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latino Americans, and Native Americans. The histories and experiences of Jewish Americans and Arab Americans are also included in the curriculum. In it's approval the State Board of Education unanimously supported the inclusion of Critical Race Theory into the ESMC.

More info on the passage of the ESMC

The ESMC

CDE news release on the ESMC

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Connecticut is the first state in the  country to require high schools to offer an elective course of studies at the high school level that provides students with a better understanding of the African-American, Black, Puerto Rican, and Latino contributions to United States history, society, economy, and culture. The bill Public-Act 19-12 was signed into law in 2019 takes effect for the 2022-2023 school year.

Public Act  19-12

Press release by CT on Public Act 19-12

A short news video about the law

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On March 28, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signs into law the "Parental Rights in Education" law  or the "Don't say Gay Bill" bans K-3 teachers from leading classroom lessons on gender identity or sexual orientation for students. Older students are banned as well unless they are deemed "age appropriate or developmentally appropriate." The lack of that kind of conversation among that age group aside, it does raise serious questions for educators when they discuss family. Not all families are traditional. Will they be able to tell students who have non-traditional parents that their family dynamic is fine as long as that dynamic has loving and caring people? A suit challenging the constitutionality of the law was filed within the same week of the bill being signed into law. While the suit works it's way through the court; the Trevor project reports that 42% of LGBTQ respondents seriously considered attempting suicide in the past twelve months.

For more on the bill

For more on the suit