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Education was either taught privately by parents, or religiously by priests because the purpose of education during this time was to learn how to be a well-behaved, Christian, citizen.

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1606- The first Spanish colonial school is opened in St. Augustine, Florida by Franciscans monks. 

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1606- The first Spanish colonial school is opened in St. Augustine, Florida by Franciscans monks. 

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This school would be the first Catholic school in American history!

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First "free" School in Virginia Opens (1635)               -  Bailey Shanahan                        

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First "free" School in Virginia Opens (1635)               -  Bailey Shanahan                        

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The name of this school was The Syms School. This went agaisnt all of the Southerns' beliefs because this was a time where school was supposed to be done through homes. This opended up a lot of doors for the way eduaction could be taught.

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1636-Harvard becomes the first high education institution in the country. 

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1636-Harvard becomes the first high education institution in the country. 

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Before it was known as Harvard, the colleges original name was, New college. It was also religious affiliated.

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Henry Dunster was the first president of Harvard. He created the rules and strived the build the school on success. Unfortunately he was forced to resign after a religious issue. 

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Henry Dunster was the first president of Harvard. He created the rules and strived the build the school on success. Unfortunately he was forced to resign after a religious issue. 

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Dunster, Henry, c.1612-1659, first president of Harvard, b. Lancashire, England, educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge (M.A., 1634). He emigrated to New England in 1640 and was almost at once (Aug. 27, 1640) appointed president of the new college. He formulated its rules and patterned its procedure after the English schools, worked actively for its support, and gave freely of his meager salary for its success. Because of his adoption of Baptist principles he was forced to resign in 1654, and he spent the remainder of his life as a pastor in Scituate, Mass.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Education: Biographies

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Dunster, Henry, c.1612-1659, first president of Harvard, b. Lancashire, England, educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge (M.A., 1634). He emigrated to New England in 1640 and was almost at once (Aug. 27, 1640) appointed president of the new college.

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1638-Harvard houses the first printing press in the colonies.

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1638-Harvard houses the first printing press in the colonies.

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The Massachusetts General Court passed the first education law. The law goes as so " students must read and understand the principles of religion and the laws of the common wealth". This paved the way for future, improved education laws.

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Massachusetts Bay School Law(1647) brianna w.

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Massachusetts Bay School Law(1647) brianna w.

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This requires that parent teach their children the principles of religion and the capital laws of common wealth.

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Public did not necessarily mean free. The law did not specify that towns had to pay the full cost. During the colonial period, many Massachusetts towns required students to cover part of the cost by paying tuition, supplying wood for the schoolhouse, or lodging for the schoolmaster.

Nor did public mean universal. At no point in the colonial period were parents required to send their children to school, and many poor children had to be satisfied with whatever education they received at home. Also, not all towns allowed girls to enroll in publicly-supported schools. Girls and very young children whose parents could afford the fees attended what were called "Dame Schools," where a local woman taught reading, writing, and sometimes domestic arts in her home.

Despite the threat of fines, the record books show that many towns were "shamefully neglectful" of children's education. In 1718 "by sad experience it is found that many towns that not only are obliged by law, but are very able to support a grammar school, yet choose rather to incurr and pay the fine or penalty than maintain a grammar school." Legislators increased the fines once more.

Some towns complied grudgingly if at all. Teachers often complained of schoolhouses that were freezing cold because townspeople failed to supply enough firewood. Schoolhouses were usually crude and poorly equipped. Most had little more than a chair for the teacher and benches for students, who were obliged to provide their own hornbook (alphabet sheet), spelling book, primer, catechism, and writing supplies.

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Massachusetts Passes First Education Law

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On this day in 1642, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the first law in the New World requiring that children be taught to read and write. The English Puritans who founded Massachusetts believed that the well-being of individuals, along with the success of the colony, depended on a people literate enough to read both the ...

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The Massachusetts Law of 1647 (Christina P)

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The Massachusetts Law of 1647 (Christina P)

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Every town of at least 50 families hire a schoolmaster to teach the towns children to read and write. All towns of at least 100 families should have a Latin grammar school master who will prepare students to attend Harvard College.

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The first New England Primer was printed in Boston. It became the most widely-used schoolbook in New England

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1731-The oldest library ( that is still operating) was founded by Ben Franklin. 

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1731-The oldest library ( that is still operating) was founded by Ben Franklin. 

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Melany c

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It Happens Here: Franklin The Home Of The First Public Library In America

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Establishes the idea of faculty psychology which is that the mind is best developed through mental discipline or tedious drills and repetition of basic skills which eventually led to the study of difficult subjects such as classical philosophy, literature, and language. This influences American education throughout the 19th century.

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America Philosophical Society (1743) (Christina P)

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America Philosophical Society (1743) (Christina P)

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Formed by Benjamin Franklin, the American Philosophical Society helps bring ideas of the European Enlightenment, including those of John Locke, to colonial America.

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First "English Academy" (1751) (Christina P)

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First "English Academy" (1751) (Christina P)

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The First "English Academy" was established by Benjamin Franklin. The curriculum is both classical and modern, including courses such as history, geography, navigation, surveying, and modern as well as classical languages. The academy ultimately became the University of Pennsylvania.

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English Academy aka University of Pennsylvania 1751 (Jazmin Morell)

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English Academy aka University of Pennsylvania 1751 (Jazmin Morell)

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Benjamin Franklin was one of the founders of the English Academy in Philadelphia. Their curriculum was based off of history, geography, navigation, surveying, and classical languages. This later into as we know today the University of Pennsylvania.

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Thomas Jefferson authors Bill 79: "A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge," which provides "a comprehensive plan for public education." It was presented in the Virginia House of Delegates several times before a revised bill titled, " An Act to Establish Public Education," is finally passes in 1796.

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Thomas Jefferson (1779) (Maggie Weidner) 

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Thomas Jefferson (1779) (Maggie Weidner) 

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For "the laboring and the learned," Thomas Jefferson proposed two alternative educational paths. This generated class divisions, allowing already wealthy people to access better education and, as a result, greater job opportunities—a pattern that has continued to the present day.

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He created a distinctive American language with its own idiom, pronunciation, and style called "American Spelling Book".

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1787- The Young Lady Academy opens in Philadelphia  

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1787- The Young Lady Academy opens in Philadelphia  

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This School becomes the first Girls school in the colonies/states

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Free Public Education in Pennsylvania (1790)               -Bailey Shanahan

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Free Public Education in Pennsylvania (1790)               -Bailey Shanahan

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Pennsylvania state constitution pushed for free public education only for children who were deemed poor. The idea for this free concept was first mentioned in 1682, but too many problems interefered with the process. It took a while to handle this situation, but luckly this push made an impact in 1804 to move this plan into action.

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1790 Pennsylvania free school for poor children 

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1790 Pennsylvania free school for poor children 

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It was expected that rich children pay for education and the Pennsylvania constitution call for free public education for poor children.

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James Pillans invented the blackboard which allowed teachers to lecture to a whole class rather than teaching each individual student on a tab of wood. It also allowed for mistakes to be made since they could be erased, and then done again, and again.

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First Public High School (1820)                                              -Bailey Shanahan

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First Public High School (1820)                                              -Bailey Shanahan

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It opened in Boston for 101 male students. It was called Boston Latin Grammer School. It was built in hope to prepare these men to go to Harvard. The school was run by a Puritan settler named Philemon Pormont.

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It was one the first public high schools in the U.S. to open.

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Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1837) (Maggie Weidner)

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Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1837) (Maggie Weidner)

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Mount Holyoke Female Seminary was the first women's college in the United States as this was a big deal because higher education has been largely reserved for white men up to this moment.

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The African Institute (Later called the Institute for Colored Youth) (1837)

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The African Institute (Later called the Institute for Colored Youth) (1837)

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It opens in Cheyney, Pennsylvania. Now called Cheyney University, its the oldest institution of higher learning for African Americans.

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New York State Asylum for Idiots (1851) (Cami Matusky)

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New York State Asylum for Idiots (1851) (Cami Matusky)

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Was for children with learning deficits - Eventually renamed to become Syracuse State School

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State of Massachusetts passes first education law 1851 (Jazmin Morell)

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State of Massachusetts passes first education law 1851 (Jazmin Morell)

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Massachusetts passes it’s first compulsory education law, yay!! But for the wrong reasons. There goal with this law was to put not privileged students in order: restrain, have them on a leash to make sure they become good citizens and not cause problems.

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First Free Public Library 1854 (Jazmin Morell)

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First Free Public Library 1854 (Jazmin Morell)

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The Boston Public Library was the first free public library to open in the US. Now is when reading was open to anyone in the public which is so important to learning and the world of education. Now reading and learning was starting to be in peoples reach.

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It opens to the public. It is the first "free municipal library" in the U.S.

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He published "The Origin of Species" on November 24, introducing his theory that species evolve through the process of natural selection, and setting the stage for controversy surrounding teaching the theory of evolution in public schools that persists to this day.

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Congress makes it illegal for Native Americans to learn in their Native Language 1864 (Jazmin Morell) 

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Congress makes it illegal for Native Americans to learn in their Native Language 1864 (Jazmin Morell) 

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Congress didn’t allow Native Americans to learn in the language that they know. Even the children, they were taken away from their families from a very young each to pretty much take away their culture and turn them into “Americans”

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Public Education in the South for the First Time 1865-1877 - Amelia Medina

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Public Education in the South for the First Time 1865-1877 - Amelia Medina

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African Americans mobilize to bring public education to the South for the first time. After the Civil War, and with the legal end of slavery, 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. In former slave holding states, African Americans saw education as an important step towards achieving equality and independence. With education they could gain knowledge and essentially know what the white man knew so that they weren't at an advantage and that they were all equal and had the same opportunities.

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During the Reconstruction Era, African Americans in the former slave-holding states saw education as an important step towards achieving equality, independence, and prosperity. As a result, they found ways to learn despite the many obstacles that poverty and white people placed in their path. African Americans' commitment to education had lasting effects on the former slave-holding states. As voters and legislators, they played crucial roles in creating public schools for blacks and whites in the Southern and border states in the late 1800s.

In Sharpsburg, Maryland, a small church known as Tolson's Chapel was at the center of local blacks' efforts to educate themselves and their children. African American Methodists built Tolson's Chapel in 1866, just two years after the end of slavery in Maryland in 1864. For much of the period between 1868 and 1899, this modest building near the site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam served as both a church and a school. The history of the schools housed in Tolson's Chapel illustrates how African Americans across the former slave-holding states created and sustained schools during Reconstruction.

African American Education in Sharpsburg, 1864-1869

As African Americans built lives as free people in a free society during Reconstruction, they eagerly sought opportunities to learn. Before Emancipation, whites generally denied or restricted African Americans' access to education in an effort to justify and maintain slavery. Learning to read therefore became a symbol of freedom for African Americans in the former slave-holding states. African Americans had other reasons for making literacy a priority after slavery ended. Many hoped that education would improve their economic circumstances and offer some protection from fraud and exploitation. They also saw education as important preparation for participating in civic life.

African Americans faced significant challenges in their efforts to create schools during Reconstruction. One problem was a shortage of qualified teachers. In the early years of Reconstruction, local African Americans who could already read and write shared their knowledge with family, friends, and neighbors. In Sharpsburg, Maryland, for instance, David B. Simons, a literate African American and trustee of Tolson's Chapel, likely taught some children and adults in the town in the mid-1860s. However, given the small number of literate African Americans in most communities in the former slave-holding states, there were not enough local teachers to meet the demand. In addition, black communities often struggled to afford to pay a teacher's salary.

In hopes of getting financial assistance and more qualified teachers, African Americans in Sharpsburg and many other communities turned to the federal government's Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Established by Congress in March 1865 , this agency was commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau. Since the underfunded Bureau had limited money and staff to devote to building schools, it worked with Northern benevolent organizations and African American communities to place Northern teachers in freedpeople's schools in the Southern and border states. Northern benevolent organizations such as the American Missionary Society and the American Freedmen's Union Commission recruited and paid teachers. The Freedmen's Bureau then assigned the teachers to schools and provided them with transportation. The local African American community typically contributed room and board for the teacher as well as a building to house the school.

Thanks to the enthusiasm and persistence of the black community in Sharpsburg, the Freedmen's Bureau twice assigned a teacher to this small town in western Maryland. In April 1868, the Freedmen's Bureau sent Ezra Johnson, a white man from Pennsylvania, to Sharpsburg to teach. Johnson opened what he called the American Union School with limited financial assistance from Northern benefactors. John J. Carter, a black man, came to Sharpsburg to teach in the summer of 1869. The Presbyterian Home Mission paid his salary. African Americans in Sharpsburg provided room and board for both men.

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African Americans and Education During Reconstruction: The Tolson's Chapel Schools (U.S. National Park Service)

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During the Reconstruction Era, African Americans in the former slave-holding states saw education as an important step towards achieving equality, independence, and prosperity. As a result, they found ways to learn despite the many obstacles that poverty and white people placed in their path.

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1867: The U.S. Department of Education established

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1867: The U.S. Department of Education established

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The Department was first created in 1867 after Andrew Jackson wrote legislation approving its creation. It’s main goal was to collect information and statistics on schools across the nation with intent to better the school system.

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The Dewey Decimal System (1876) Alexis Walters

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The Dewey Decimal System (1876) Alexis Walters

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Melvin Dewey created the Dewey Decimal System in 1873. It got published and patented in 1876. It is still used widely across the world in library systems. It is a way of organization by subject using decimals.

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Dewey Decimal System Explained (Library Science)

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The Second Morrill Act(1890)(brianna w.)

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The Second Morrill Act(1890)(brianna w.)

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Provided for annual appropriations to each state to support land grant colleges. It also did not allow racial discrimination in admission policies for schools receiving this money. This also leads to the creation of 16 historically black colleges.

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Local Immigrant Communities Lose Control of Their Local Schools 1893-1913 - Amelia Medina

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Local Immigrant Communities Lose Control of Their Local Schools 1893-1913 - Amelia Medina

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School boards in the country's 28 biggest cities are cut in half. Most local district based positions are eliminated. This means that local immigrant communities lost control of their local schools. Makeup of school boards changes from small local businessmen to doctors, lawyers, big businessmen and other members of the richest classes. Essentially they wanted to get rid of the native language, traditions, and culture.

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The boarding school experience for Indian children began in 1860 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the first Indian boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. These schools were part of a plan devised by well-intentioned, eastern reformers Herbert Welsh and Henry Pancoast, who also helped establish organizations such as the Board of Indian Commissioners, the Boston Indian Citizenship Association and the Women's National Indian Association.

The goal of these reformers was to use education as a tool to "assimilate" Indian tribes into the mainstream of the "American way of life," a Protestant ideology of the mid-19th century. Indian people would be taught the importance of private property, material wealth and monogamous nuclear families. The reformers assumed that it was necessary to "civilize" Indian people, make them accept white men's beliefs and value systems.

Boarding schools were the ideal instrument for absorbing people and ideologies that stood in the way of manifest destiny. Schools would quickly be able to assimilate Indian youth. The first priority of the boarding schools would be to provide the rudiments of academic education: reading, writing and speaking of the English language. Arithmetic, science, history and the arts would be added to open the possibility of discovering the "self-directing power of thought." Indian youth would be individualized. Religious training in Christianity would be taught. The principles of democratic society, institutions and the political structure would give the students citizenship training. The end goal was to eradicate all vestiges of Indian culture.

By the 1880s, the U.S. operated 60 schools for 6,200 Indian students, including reservation day schools and reservation boarding schools. The reservation day school had the advantage of being relatively inexpensive and caused the least opposition from parents. The reservation boarding school spent half a day teaching English and academics and half a day on industrial training. Regimentation was the order of the day and students spent endless hours marching to and from classes, meals and dormitories. Order, discipline and self-restraint were all prized values of white society.

The boarding schools hoped to produce students that were economically self-sufficient by teaching work skills and instilling values and beliefs of possessive individualism, meaning you care about yourself and what you as a person own. This opposed the basic Indian belief of communal ownership, which held that the land was for all people.
"Kill the Indian, Save the Man"
At this juncture, it was felt that reservation schools were not sufficiently removed from the influences of tribal life. In the eyes of assimilationists, off-reservation boarding schools would be the best hope of changing Indian children into members of the white society. For Col. Richard Henry Pratt, the goal was complete assimilation. In 1879, he established the most well known of the off-reservation boarding schools, the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. As Headmaster of the school for 25 years, he was the single most impacting figure in Indian education during his time.

Pratt's motto was, " Kill the Indian, save the man." Pratt believed that off-reservation schools established in white communities could accomplish this task. By immersing Indians into the mainstream of American life, the "outing" system created by Pratt had students living among white families during the summer. He hoped Indian youths would not return to the reservations but rather become part of the white community. Carlisle was the only off-reservation boarding school built in the East; all others were built in the West.

Carlisle and other off-reservation boarding schools instituted their assault on Native cultural identity by first doing away with all outward signs of tribal life that the children brought with them. The long braids worn by Indian boys were cut off. The children were made to wear standard uniforms. The children were given new "white" names, including surnames, as it was felt this would help when they inherited property. Traditional Native foods were abandoned, forcing students to acquire the food rites of white society, including the use of knives, forks, spoons, napkins and tablecloths. In addition, students were forbidden to speak their Native languages, even to each other. The Carlisle school rewarded those who refrained from speaking their own language; most other boarding schools relied on punishment to achieve this aim.

At the better boarding schools, students could attain a reasonable degree of English literacy in a relatively short period. At other schools, the method of teaching - an object card such as CAT shown to students, then written, pronounced and traced - failed to produce a comprehension of those words that had no equivalent in their Native tongue.

The Indian boarding schools taught history with a definite white bias. Columbus Day was heralded as a banner day in history and a beneficent development in their own race's fortune, as only after discovery did Indians enter the stream of history. Thanksgiving was a holiday to celebrate "good" Indians having aided the brave Pilgrim Fathers. New Year's was a reminder of how white people kept track of time and George Washington's birthday served as a reminder of the Great White Father. On Memorial Day, some students at off-reservation schools were made to decorate the graves of soldiers sent to kill their fathers.

Half of each school day was spent on industrial training. Girls learned to cook, clean, sew, care for poultry and do laundry for the entire institution. Boys learned industrial skills such as blacksmithing, shoemaking or performed manual labor such as farming. Since the schools were required to be as self-sufficient as possible, students did the majority of the work. By 1900, economic practicality became the goal and school curriculum slanted even further toward industrial training while academics languished.

The Carlisle school developed a " placing out system," placing Indian students in the mainstream community for summer or a year at a time where they could learn skills other than farming. While monitored carefully at Carlisle, other outing programs were often exploitive. At the Phoenix Indian School, girls became the major source of domestic labor for white families, boys were placed in seasonal harvest or other jobs unwanted by white or immigrant laborers and the students were unsupervised, learning very little from their outing experiences.

The Carlisle and Phoenix schools also had football teams, and Phoenix had a band that performed at summer parades and festivals. These activities were meant to support the idea that Indian people were capable of competing with whites.

Conversion to Christianity was also deemed essential to the cause. Indian boarding schools were expected to develop a curriculum of religious instruction, placing emphasis on the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes and Psalms. Implanting ideas of sin and a sense of guilt were part of Sunday schools. Christianity governed gender relations at the schools and most schools invested their energy in keeping the sexes apart, in some cases endangering the lives of the students by locking girls in their dormitories at night - meaning they could not get out, even in the case of fire. There were, however, ritualized social activities such as dances and promenades.

Discipline within the Indian boarding schools was severe and generally consisted of confinement, deprivation of privileges, threat of corporal punishment or restriction of diet. In addition to coping with the severe discipline, Indian students were ravaged by disease at boarding schools. Tuberculosis and trachoma ("sore eyes") were the greatest threats. In December of 1899, measles broke out at the Phoenix Indian School, reaching epidemic proportions by January. In its wake, 325 cases of measles, 60 cases of pneumonia, and 9 deaths were recorded in a 10-day period.

Naturally, Indian people resisted the schools in various ways. Sometimes entire villages refused to enroll their children in white men's schools. Indian agents on the reservations normally resorted to withholding rations or sending in agency police to enforce the school policy. In some cases, police were sent onto the reservations to seize children from their parents, whether willing or not. The police would continue to take children until the school was filled, so sometimes orphans were offered up or families would negotiate a family quota. Navajo police officers avoided taking "prime" children and would take children assumed to be less intelligent, those not well cared for or those physically impaired.

Indian parents also banded together to withdraw their children en masse, encouraging runaways and undermining the schools' influence during summer and school breaks. An 1893 court ruling increased pressure to keep Indian children in Boarding schools. It was not until 1978 with the passing of the Indian Child Welfare Act that Native American parents gained the legal right to deny their children's placement in off-reservation schools.

Some Native American parents saw boarding school education for what it was intended to be - the total destruction of Indian culture. Others objected to specific aspects of the education system, the manner of discipline and the drilling. Still others were concerned for their children's health and associated the schools with death. Resentment of the boarding schools was most severe because the schools broke the most sacred and fundamental of all human ties, the parent-child bond.

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Native American History and Culture: Boarding Schools - American Indian Relief Council is now Northern Plains Reservation Aid

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The boarding school experience for Indian children began in 1860 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the first boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. These schools were part of a plan devised by...

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This was the first community college in the U.S. Community college, which has positively affected American students for years to come.

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Mary Bethune was an African American educator that established the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training school for African American girls.

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California Extends Public Education to Children of Chinese Immigrants 1905 - Amelia Medina

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California Extends Public Education to Children of Chinese Immigrants 1905 - Amelia Medina

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In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court requires California to extend public education to the children of Chinese immigrants. Children of Chinese immigrants who lived in the country for decades were denied education solely on their race. Some even said they were a danger to others well beings. They didn't have the proper resources available to learn and they were left in the dark. Until, California Superior Court judge ruled that the school's refusal to admit Mamie Tape based on her race was a violation of California state law and the U.S. Constitution. The California Supreme Court confirmed that decision when the state appealed, and held that Chinese students had a right to public education. The Court's decision did not, however, prohibit the creation of segregated schools.

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During the week of September 1, 1884, Joseph and Mary Tape, immigrants from China who had lived in the U.S. for over a decade, attempted to enroll their eight-year-old, American-born daughter, Mamie Tape, in San Francisco's Spring Valley School. The school principal denied the Tapes' request because of Mamie's race, and the state superintendent-noting that even the California Constitution described Chinese-Americans as "dangerous to the well-being of the state"-supported that decision.

This incident took place in the midst of extensive discriminatory treatment of Chinese-American children in California's public schools. Until 1880, Asian American students were forbidden from attending public schools altogether, and the educational options available to them in the early 1880s were sparse, with vastly lower resources than the established schools for white children.

Facing these obstacles to securing meaningful education for their daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Tape sued the school and won. In January 1885, a California Superior Court judge ruled that the school's refusal to admit Mamie Tape was a violation of California state law and the U.S. Constitution. The California Supreme Court confirmed that decision when the state appealed, and held that Chinese students had a right to public education. The Court's decision did not, however, prohibit the creation of segregated schools.

Recognizing that loophole, the California legislature soon passed a bill requiring public school districts to create separate schools for Chinese-American students, and prohibiting Chinese-American students from attending schools attended by white children.

When Mamie Tape arrived for school immediately after the California Supreme Court's decision, she was denied entry because her vaccinations were not up to date. By the time the Tape family was able to comply with the vaccination requirements, a new school had been opened for Chinese-American students in compliance with the new state law, and Mamie was forced to enroll there. The California law banning Chinese-American students from attending public schools with white students was enforced until the late 1920s.

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Sep. 1, 1884 | San Francisco Public Schools Deny Admission to Chinese-American Children

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During the week of September 1, 1884, Joseph and Mary Tape, immigrants from China who had lived in the U.S. for over a decade, attempted to enroll their eight-year-old, American-born daughter, Mamie Tape, in San Francisco's Spring Valley School.

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The U.S Supreme Court & California (1905) (Tati D.)

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The U.S Supreme Court & California (1905) (Tati D.)

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The U.S Supreme Court requires California to extend public education to the children of Chinese immigrants.

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In 1909, the NAACP was founded co-founded by W.E.B Dubois. This organization advocated for basic educational and economical opportunities. They worked to remove all barriers of racial discrimination.

Kella Noncent

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Maria Montessori (1911) (Jennifer Berne)

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Maria Montessori (1911) (Jennifer Berne)

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The first Montessori school opens in the U.S.  Maria Montessori contributed to early childhood education and the science of individual student choice.

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Maria Montessori was born on 31 August 1870 in the town of Chiaravalle, Italy. Her father, Alessandro, was an accountant in the civil service, and her mother, Renilde Stoppani, was well educated and had a passion for reading.

The Montessori family moved to Rome in late 1874, and in 1876 the young Maria enrolled in the local state school on Via di San Nicolo da Tolentino. As her education progressed, she began to break through the barriers which constrained women's careers. From 1886 to 1890 she continued her studies at the Regio Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci, which she entered with the intention of becoming an engineer. This was unusual at the time as most girls who pursued secondary education studied the classics rather than going to technical school.

Upon her graduation, Montessori's parents encouraged her to take up a career in teaching, one of the few occupations open to women at the time, but she was determined to enter medical school and become a doctor. Her father opposed this course-medical school was then an all-male preserve-and initially Maria was refused entry by the head of school. She was undeterred, apparently ending the unsuccessful interview with the professor by saying, "I know I shall become a doctor".

In 1890 Montessori enrolled at the University of Rome to study physics, mathematics and natural sciences, receiving her diploma two years later. This enabled her to enter the Faculty of Medicine, as one of the first women in Italy, and the first to study at the University of Rome. Montessori stood out not just because of her gender, but because she was actually intent on mastering the subject matter. She won a series of scholarships at medical school which, together with the money she earned through private tuition, enabled her to pay for most of her medical education.

Her time at medical school was not easy. She faced prejudice from her male colleagues and had to work alone on dissections since these were not allowed to be done in mixed classes. But she was a dedicated student, and on 10 July 1896 became one of the first female doctors in Italy, and with this distinction also became known across the country.

In September of the same year she was asked to represent Italy at the International Congress for Women in Berlin, and in her speech to the Congress she developed a thesis for social reform, arguing that women should be entitled to equal wages with men. A reporter covering the event asked her how her patients responded to a female doctor. She replied, "... they know intuitively when someone really cares about them.... It is only the upper classes that have a prejudice against women leading a useful existence." [1]

On her return to Rome, in November 1896, Montessori went to work as surgical assistant at Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome. Much of her work there was with the poor, and particularly with their children. As a doctor she was noted for the way in which she 'tended' her patients, making sure they were warm and properly fed as well as diagnosing and treating their illnesses. In 1897 she volunteered to join a research programme at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Rome, and it was here that she worked alongside Giuseppe Montesano, with whom a romance was to develop.

As part of her work at the clinic she would visit Rome's asylums for the children with mental disorders (as they were called in those days), seeking patients for treatment at the clinic. She relates how, on one such visit, the caretaker of a children's asylum told her with disgust how the children grabbed crumbs off the floor after their meal. Montessori realised that in such a bare, unfurnished room the children were desperate for sensorial stimulation and activities for their hands, and that this deprivation was contributing to their condition.

She began to read all she could on the subject of children with learning differences, and in particular she studied the groundbreaking work of two early 19th century Frenchmen, Jean-Marc Itard, who had made his name working with the 'wild boy of Aveyron', and Edouard Séguin, his student.

In 1897 Montessori's work with the asylum children began to receive more prominence. The 28-year-old Montessori was asked to address the National Medical Congress in Turin, where she advocated the controversial theory that the lack of adequate provision for children with mental and emotional disorders was a cause of their delinquency. Expanding on this, she addressed the National Pedagogical Congress the following year, presenting a vision of social progress and political economy rooted in educational measures. She asked for the foundation of medical-pedagogical institutes and a special training for teachers working with special needs children. This notion of social reform through education was an idea that was to develop and mature in Montessori's thinking throughout her life.

In 1899 Montessori visited Bicêtre Hospital in Paris where Séguin had further developed Itard's technique of sensorial education in his schools for children with disabilities. Montessori was so keen to understand his work properly that she translated his book Traitement moral, hygiène et education des idiotes (1846) into Italian. Highly critical of the regimented schooling of the time, Séguin emphasised respect and understanding for each individual child. He created practical apparatus and equipment to help develop the sensory perceptions and motor skills of intellectually challenged children, which Montessori was later to use in new ways.

Montessori's involvement with the Lega nazionale per l'educazione dei fanciulli deficienti led to her appointment as co-director, with Giuseppe Montesano, of a new institution called the Orthophrenic School. The school took children with a broad spectrum of disorders and proved to be a turning point in Montessori's life, marking a shift in her professional identity from physician to educator. Until now her ideas about the development of children were only theories, but the small school, set up along the lines of a teaching hospital, allowed her to put these ideas into practice. Montessori spent two years working at the Orthophrenic School, experimenting with and refining the materials devised by Itard and Séguin and bringing a scientific, analytical attitude to the work; teaching and observing the children by day and writing up her notes by night.

The relationship with Giuseppe Montesano had developed into a love affair, and in 1898 Maria gave birth to a son, named Mario, who was given into the care of a family who lived in the countryside near Rome. Maria visited Mario often, but it was not until he was older that he came to know that Maria was his mother. A strong bond was nevertheless created, and in later years he collaborated and travelled with his mother, continuing her work after her death.

In 1901 Montessori left the Orthophrenic School and immersed herself in her own studies of educational philosophy and anthropology. In 1904 she took up a post as a lecturer at the Pedagogic School of the University of Rome, which she held until 1908. In one lecture she told her students, "The subject of our study is humanity; our purpose is to become teachers. Now, what really makes a teacher is love for the human child; for it is love that transforms the social duty of the educator into the higher consciousness of a mission"[2].

During this period Rome was growing very rapidly, and in the fever of speculative development, some construction companies were going bankrupt, leaving unfinished building projects which quickly attracted squatters. One such development, which stood in the San Lorenzo district, was rescued by a group of wealthy bankers who undertook a basic restoration, dividing larger apartments into small units for impoverished working families. With parents out at work all day, the younger children wreaked havoc on the newly completed buildings. This prompted the developers to approach Maria Montessori to provide ways of occupying the children during the day to prevent further damage to the premises.

Montessori grasped the opportunity of working with typical children and, bringing some of the educational materials she had developed at the Orthophrenic School, she established her first Casa dei Bambini or 'Children's House', which opened on 6 January 1907. A small opening ceremony was organised, but few had any expectations for the project. Montessori felt differently, "I had a strange feeling which made me announce emphatically that here was the opening of an undertaking of which the whole world would one day speak."[3]

She put many different activities and other materials into the children's environment but kept only those that engaged them. What Montessori came to realise was that children who were placed in an environment where activities were designed to support their natural development had the power to educate themselves. She was later to refer to this as auto-education. In 1914 she wrote, "I did not invent a method of education, I simply gave some little children a chance to live".

The children in the Casa dei Bambini made extraordinary progress, and soon 5-year-olds were writing and reading. By the autumn of 1908 there were five Case dei Bambini operating, four in Rome and one in Milan. News of Montessori's new approach spread rapidly, and visitors arrived to see for themselves how she was achieving such results. Within a year the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland began transforming its kindergartens into Case dei Bambini, and the spread of the new educational approach began.

In the summer of 1909 Maria Montessori gave the first training course in her approach to around 100 students. Her notes from this period became her first book, published that same year in Italy, which appeared in translation in the United States in 1912 as The Montessori Method, reaching second place on the U.S. nonfiction bestseller list. Soon afterwards it was translated into 20 different languages. It has become a major influence in the field of education.

On 20 December 1912 Montessori's mother died at the age of 72. Maria was deeply affected by this event, and in the year following her mother's death she brought her 14-year-old son, Mario, to Rome to live with her.

A period of great expansion in the Montessori approach now followed. Montessori societies, training programmes and schools sprang to life all over the world, and from then on Montessori's life would be dedicated to spreading the educational approach she had developed by delivering courses and giving lectures in many countries. Before and during WWI she travelled three times to America, where there was much interest for her original approach to education. Her son Mario accompanied her during the last two journeys.

On returning from the USA after Mario's marriage to his first wife, Helen Christy, at the end of 1917, Montessori settled in Barcelona, Spain, where a Seminari-Laboratori de Pedagogía, an opportunity to experiment with her new pedagogy, had been created for her. Her son and his new wife joined her, and her four grandchildren spent their formative years there: two boys, Mario Jr and Rolando, and two girls, Marilena and Renilde. Renilde, her youngest grandchild, was until 2000 the General Secretary and then President (until 2005) of the Association Montessori Internationale, the organisation set up by Maria Montessori in 1929 to continue her work.

Maria nursed an ambition to create a permanent centre for research and development into her approach to early-years education, but any possibility of this happening in her lifetime in Spain was thwarted by the rise of fascism in Europe. By 1933 all Montessori schools in Germany had been closed and an effigy of her was burned above a bonfire of her books in Berlin. In 1936, two years after Montessori refused to cooperate with Mussolini's plans to incorporate Italian Montessori schools into the fascist youth movement, all Montessori schools in Italy were closed. The outbreak of civil war in Spain forced Montessori to abandon her home in Barcelona, a British battleship took her to England in the summer of 1936. Mario and his children joined her and later that summer the refugees travelled to the Netherlands to stay in the family home of Ada Pierson, the daughter of a Dutch banker. Mario, by now estranged from his first wife, was later to marry Ada.

In 1939 Mario and Maria embarked on a journey to India to give a 3-month training course in Madras (Chennai) followed by a lecture tour; they were not to return for nearly 7 years. With the outbreak of war, as Italian citizens, Mario was interned, and Maria put under house arrest. Her 70th birthday request to the Indian government - that Mario should be released and restored to her - was granted, and together they trained over 1500 Indian teachers. Still under house arrest, the Montessoris spent two years in the rural hill station of Kodaikanal, and this experience guided Maria Montessori's thinking towards the nature of the relationships among all living things, a theme she was to develop until the end of her life and which became known as Cosmic Education, an approach for children aged 6 to 12. The years in India proved to be very important for Montessori, giving her the opportunity enrich her philosophy and approach to education. She met Gandhi, Nehru and Tagore, and was generally very much taken by the spirituality of the Indians and their generosity and kindness towards her.

In 1946 they returned to the Netherlands and to the grandchildren who had spent the war years in the care of Ada Pierson, only to return to India for another two years. In 1949 she received the first of three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. One of her last major public engagements was in London in 1951 when she attended the 9th International Montessori Congress. On 6 May 1952, at the holiday home of the Pierson family in the Netherlands, she died in the company of her son, Mario, to whom she bequeathed the legacy of her work.

[1] Julia Maria, "'Le Feminisme Italien: entrevue avec Mlle. Montessori", L'Italie, Rome, August 16, 1896. Quoted in Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Chicago 1976), p. 52.

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Maria Montessori was born on 31 August 1870 in the town of Chiaravalle, Italy. Her father, Alessandro, was an accountant in the civil service, and her mother, Renilde Stoppani, was well educated and had a passion for reading.The Montessori family moved to Rome in late 1874, and in 1876 the young Maria enrolled in the local state school on Via di San Nicolo da Tolentino.

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Published "Educational Psychology: The Psychology of Learning." His theory was that learning involves repetition and learning can be achieved by using satisfying consequences, such as rewards.

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Smith-Hughes Act Passes (1917)                                             -Bailey Shanahan

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Smith-Hughes Act Passes (1917)                                             -Bailey Shanahan

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This act's purpose was to provide funding for vocational schools. Corporations wanted to push this to have the power and control instead of the apprenticeship programs. The vocational schools dealt with home economics and agricultural and industrial trade. However, with aspiring hope for these schools, they never lived up to the potential.

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(1919) Transportation and School Busing 

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(1919) Transportation and School Busing 

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This was a law enforced that made it mandatory that paid transportation would be provided to all students who attend schools.

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The School Bus, History of Pupil Transportation, Issues in Pupil Transportation

Pupil transportation, also known as school busing, has become one of the most important segments of the American educational system. It is subject to the same rules one might find in the classroom, including the dictates of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and a host of laws and rules governing disabled or special needs pupils.

Pupil transportation is big business. The number of school children riding school buses in the United States has risen dramatically, making school busing one of this nation's greatest service industries. American pupil transportation provides an estimated 10 billion rides to and from school annually.

In 1950, 7 million children were transported in 115,000 school buses. Fifty years later, 448,307 school buses transported 22,675,116 children more than 3,788,427,941 miles to and from public schools. Many of these were pupils with special needs. It is not known how many nonpublic school children are transported or how many school buses are used to transport them.

Public school transportation costs approximately $500 per year per pupil. Only Pennsylvania transports all school children at state expense. The fifty states spent $11,746,576,005 for the 1999-2000 school year, which included expenditures for transportation and capital outlay to purchase new or replacement school buses.

According to a national annual survey done through the state directors of pupil transportation of each state, twenty-two children were killed in school bus loading or unloading accidents during the 1999-2000 school year, whereas eighteen were killed in the 1997-1998 school year. The average annual number of pupils killed in school bus-related accidents during the 1990s is 20.4. The highest toll was during the 1993-1994 school year when thirty-two pupils were killed and the lowest was ten in 1997-1998. More than half of the fatal accidents occurred as pupils were exiting the bus in the afternoon, while approximately one-quarter of the accidents took place in the morning as pupils were waiting for the school bus. As one might expect, most of the victims were elementary school children. Only two of the victims were over the age of twelve. Eleven children were struck by their own bus and another eleven were struck by passing vehicles.

The School Bus

The school bus remains the safest form of surface transportation in the United States. It is far safer than the automobile, truck, public bus, or train. School buses are designed and manufactured specifically for the safety and protection of pupil passengers. Manufacturers must conform to a host of federal standards and certify that each school bus meets all federal and state standards.

The school bus is made up of a straight-body truck chassis with a school bus body mounted on two I-beams. Each area of the school bus body is constructed of a skeletal system beneath the finish and trim elements. The framing elements are heavygauge steel collision beams covered by heavy-gauge steel plates. Emergency personnel have to be specially trained in extrication due to this skeletal framework and the safety cushion built around the pupils.

Safety features. School buses are constructed using the concept of compartmentalization, which provides a passive restraint system in lieu of seat belts. The passengers are seated higher off the ground so that average-sized opposing vehicles are beneath the pupils' feet. The four-inch cushioned seats and seat backs afford the passenger a padded compartment in case of collision. The seats are closer together than in most vehicles to further create a compartmentalized safety zone. The aisles are twelve inches apart. There are no windshields or door close to the riders to offer paths of ejection from the bus. The passenger windows are placed higher than passenger vehicles. Elementary pupils are housed three to a seat while secondary pupils sit two to a seat. This crowding affords an extra measure of safety because the pupils cannot move far from their seat.

In the case of emergency, evacuation may be through the front service door, the rear emergency door, side emergency-operation windows, or roof hatches designed to offer ventilation or fully open as escape routes. In addition, the front windshield may be kicked out to provide another escape route. Escape is also possible through all side windows, which open eleven inches vertically by twenty-two inches in width. Students are trained through school bus evacuation drills to know what to do in case of an emergency. Emergency evacuation drills are held regularly and include what to do after exiting the school bus or in the event of the driver becoming disabled. Emergency evacuation preparation sessions are also conducted with students with disabilities and wheelchair-bound students.

Federal requirements regulate new vehicles that carry eleven or more people that are sold for transporting students to or from school or school-related events. These vehicles are required to meet all federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS) for school buses. They must have stop arms, as regular buses do, along with many other safety features that exceed those of other passenger vehicles.

The success of the pupil transportation program is more dependent on the professional performance by the school bus driver than any other factor in program service. The welfare of every child is directly related to the skills, attitudes, and decisions of the driver.

History of Pupil Transportation

In 1869 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed the first legislation in the United States allowing the use of public funds for transporting school children. By 1919, with the passage of legislation in Delaware and Wyoming, forty-eight states had enacted similar laws. The primary reasons that states passed such legislation appear to be state-mandated, compulsory school attendance and the consolidation of public schools.

The standard means of transporting children to and from school in the nineteenth century was the school wagon, a modified farm wagon converted to carry pupils from the rural areas to the consolidated schools. By World War I motorized trucks began to replace the farm wagons and soon wooden bodies replaced the canvas tarpaulins that covered the farm wagons. Steel bodies emerged to replace the wooden bodies in the 1920s, and the basic concept of the modern school bus had begun to take shape.

With the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Safety Act of 1966, the federal government was authorized to issue regulations and standards to improve the safety of all motor vehicles manufactured in the United States. As of 2001, thirty-three Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards that apply to school buses had been issued. Additions and changes to these standards in 1977 substantially upgraded the safety characteristics, particularly the crashworthiness, of school buses manufactured after April 1,1977.

The newer the school bus, the safer it is. The watershed year for school bus safety was 1977, when requirements for most of the important safety features were put into place. Tragically, it took a fatal school bus accident to accomplish a goal of further safety. As a result of a major accident in Carrollton, Kentucky, in 1988, safety features were studied and later added to the FMVS standards. School buses manufactured after 1992 have even more critical safety equipment such as additional emergency exits, better mirrors for the driver to be able to see around the bus, and swing-out stop arms to alert motorists that children are getting on or off the bus.

Issues in Pupil Transportation

Most issues in pupil transportation cannot be resolved without substantial increases in expenditures. Demands from the public for expanded programs, door-to-door services, and requests for increases in salaries for bus drivers greatly impact budgets. The elimination of on-board disciplinary problems and a reduction in the rate of turnover of school bus drivers tend to be the major factors affected by budgets. Spending tax dollars wisely in the area of pupil transportation continues to be one of the greatest concerns of school administrators.

Ridership. More than 5,000 children under the age of nineteen are killed each year as passengers in motor vehicles other than school buses. More than 800 school-aged children are killed yearly in passenger cars or other private vehicles during normal school hours. It is likely that many of these children were on their way to or from school or a school-related activity. By comparison, an average of eleven children die each year while they are school bus passengers.

Education opportunities for children with disabilities have increased over the years. Transporting children with disabilities to receive education has evolved as well. The passage of the Federal Handicapped Act, Public Law 94-142, and Section 504 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act changed the way schools provide education-related transportation for children with disabilities. Specialized technical and safety equipment have improved greatly to provide safe travel to and from school for students with special transportation needs.

Compartmentalization as a safety feature. In today's school buses compartmentalization is used instead of lap belts to provide an extremely high level of crash protection for student passengers, considering all the types of crashes involving school buses. There are no aggregate statistical data to suggest that a safety problem exists in large school buses that the installation of lap belts would solve. In fact, there is growing concern among safety professionals around the world over the use of lap belts as a form of passenger restraint for young or small children. In August 1998 at a public hearing held by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), five international experts in the field of motor vehicle occupant crash protection expressed their concern about the appropriateness of lap belts in providing crash protection to small children. The unanimous opinion was that lap belts were not a good means of providing crash protection to small children because small children's bone structure, particularly in the area of the hips, is still developing.

An October 1998 study by the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine concluded that children restrained in three-point belts exhibit a similar pattern of injury to those in two-point belts; however, three-point belts appear to be effective for the lumbar spine. The report noted that "seat belt syndrome," which is associated with the use of two-point belts, can include bruising of the abdominal wall, fracture of the lumbar spine, and internal abdominal injuries.

At the outset of the twenty-first century, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is conducting an extensive research program to consider alternative methods of potentially improving federal school bus passenger crash protection requirements. The NHTSA maintains the organizations' position that compartmentalization has proven to be an excellent form of school bus passenger crash protection, but believes it is important to develop the necessary data and science to review and evaluate potential improvements in passenger crash protection for the next generation of school buses.

Pupil discipline. Pupil discipline is probably the most serious issue in pupil transportation. If the riders are misbehaving it takes the driver's attention away from the driving responsibilities. The school bus is considered to be an extension of the classroom, as far as rules and regulations are concerned. While teachers normally have twenty-eight to thirty-two pupils in their class, facing them, school bus drivers have up to eighty-one pupils on a school bus, all sitting behind the driver, who has only an interior rear view mirror to monitor the pupils. Only school buses designated for special needs have aides on board to assist the driver in off-loading pupils.

Drivers must receive the most up-to-date training in pupil discipline methodology in order to provide both safe transportation and a safe environment for all riders. This issue requires serious training for both the drivers and the pupil riders, as well as effective policies to deal with problems. Most offenses are referred to the school administration for action. If riders have come to expect that the school administration will not take action in response to infractions, they are more apt to misbehave.

Methods for minimizing on-board discipline problems include adding personnel or technological means for monitoring behavior, maintaining clear guidelines and consequences for inappropriate activity, and upgrading student education concerning bus behavior. Parent support is also important.

School bus monitors offer a means of altering behavior to reduce discipline problems but cost is a major objection. Video cameras can help promote safe bus behavior, but critics are concerned about the potential for invading student privacy. However, there is no such thing as privacy aboard the school bus except for personal belongings. School bus video cameras are not directed at any person or group but record all that goes on in the school bus.

The use of video cameras mounted inside the bus must be authorized by the state or local boards of education. Prior warning to pupils and parents that video cameras are authorized and in use should be made in writing. A video camera policy should be developed and use of the film should be very limited. School transportation administrators should review tapes when there has been a discipline complaint. They should also review tapes from each school bus on a periodic basis to see if there are problems on that school bus which are not being reported.

Because the video camera and its mounting devices are expensive, most school districts will install the mounting boxes on every school bus and provide one video camera for every ten or so buses. The cameras are mounted in a box with a one-way mirror so that the camera can videotape outward but no one can see through the glass window to see if there is a camera on board the school bus that day. When complaints come in about a particular bus or driver, use of the camera can allay concerns or capture the problems on videotape. The videotape also lets the supervisor know what the driver is doing, although normally the driver is not in direct view while seated in the driver's seat.

Student education is needed as well. It has been estimated that enhanced pupil education programs could be conducted at an additional cost of about one dollar per student per year. Much of the present pupil training relates to loading and unloading the school bus, crossing streets safely, and using emergency exits in case of an accident. Additional education and awareness about appropriate bus behavior could help reduce disciplinary problems.

Suspension of bus riding privileges for rule offenders for one to three days is a common punishment that can act as a deterrent. Parents usually must provide transportation during this time period, because pupils are generally not also suspended from school for bus-related disciplinary problems. As in all aspects of a child's education, parent support is vital in promoting appropriate bus riding behavior.

Driver recruitment and retention. The old adage in the school transportation industry goes, "When the economy is bad, we have all of the school bus drivers we need; however, when the economy is good, we cannot get enough drivers." School bus driving is normally a part-time job. Drivers pick the pupils up in the morning and take them to school, then pick them up at school in the afternoon and take them home. In most cases the job takes no more than one to two hours in the morning and one to two hours in the afternoon.

In the past there was a ready reserve of potential drivers among stay-at-home mothers who would take such a job because the hours were short. They would be at work when their children were in or on their way to school, and they would be off work the same days as their children were out of school, including summers. With fewer stay-at-home mothers, the pool of available drivers has been reduced, even during economic downturns.

Transportation officials now have to be creative, offering incentives and more pay, or creating more employment hours. One way to do this is to have the school utilize the hours between morning and afternoon bus trips by employing these drivers as classroom aides, custodians, groundskeepers, and cafeteria workers.

Retaining drivers is another problem. School transportation departments train their drivers to operate a school bus. Drivers obtain commercial drivers licenses with associated endorsements and through on-the-road training they develop experience. Once school bus drivers have this combination of road experience and commercial license endorsements, they are often recruited by the trucking industry, which benefits from having trained and licensed drivers. Commercial transportation jobs offer full-time employment and a higher rate of pay. To combat this draining of trained drivers, the pupil transportation industry has been lobbying for a school bus-specific commercial driver's license. Several states have adopted this measure but the federal government has not yet endorsed the concept.

Driver training and qualification. The screening and training of drivers is another issue for the school transportation industry. The minimum age for school bus drivers in most states is eighteen, although some states set the minimum at nineteen or twenty-one. Driver training ranges from eight hours of classroom time to forty hours in the classroom as a minimum training requirement. There is also on the-road training and qualification under the tutelage of a driver trainer for an additional eight to twelve hours. Some states require in-service training on a yearly basis. All states check driving history and require annual or semiannual physical examinations. Thirty-nine states require fingerprinting and submission of state and federal criminal history background checks. All states interview prospective drivers in the selection process.

To ensure uniform safety of students in all fifty states, industry watchers believe there should be mandatory minimum training standards and qualifications in the United States plus yearly in-service training. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommends that school bus safety instruction be provided to children, as well, on at least a semiannual basis.

School planning design. Finally, the issue of school grounds design is of concern to school transportation professionals. When school layouts are designed, the school bus is many times a forgotten or add-on issue. The safety of school children is at stake, and school bus drivers and transportation officials have valuable perspectives on how to increase safety in the vicinity of school buses.

When designing schools, care should be taken to design loading and unloading areas on school grounds that safely allow pupils to board or exit the school bus. This area must be free from conflict with other vehicles and non-bus riders. The drivers must have adequate space designed for entering and exiting the school bus area without backing up their vehicles. Separate locations must be provided for parent pick-up zones and other parking facilities. Transportation officials should be included in the site planning of new schools, and they can also offer assistance in upgrading existing sites for increased safety.

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Transportation and School Busing - The School Bus, History of Pupil Transportation, Issues in Pupil Transportation

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The School Bus, History of Pupil Transportation, Issues in Pupil Transportation Pupil transportation, also known as school busing, has become one of the most important segments of the American educational system. It is subject to the same rules one might find in the classroom, including the dictates of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and a host of laws and rules governing disabled or special needs pupils.

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The SAT was first administered. However, in 1926 it was based on the Army Alpha Test, which was designed to screen army recruits during World War I.

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Published "The Child's Conception of the World." This book explained his theory of the Stages of Development and was an important influence in developmental psychology along with the advancement of the education system.

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By the time your child is eight years old, he has firmly entered middle childhood. No longer a wide-eyed novice, he has a great many skills that he will continue to build on to expand his mental abilities in dramatic ways for the next several years. Named by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, the concrete operational period (as it is called) is the stage during which children begin applying logic and reasoning to concrete events. For example, recognizing that a person can feel tired even if it is not nighttime or understanding that just because it is night does not mean a person has to be tired.

Children will also question concrete incongruities, such as being shown a video where a cat results from breeding two dogs. Concrete operational children begin using and manipulating symbols representationally with confidence (e.g., understanding that the symbol '+' means to add together, while 'x' means to multiply). No longer dependent on manipulating objects in order to learn about them, children in this period demonstrate tremendous growth, both in and out of school. While still lacking the ability to fully understand abstract or hypothetical concepts (e.g., how a person who is a 'minority' can be in a situation where she would be the 'majority'), 8- to 10- year-olds are gaining a better understanding of a broad range of here-and-now mental activities.
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Over the course of the concrete operational period (age 7-11), children master the ability to conserve. This ability means that they understand that certain properties of an object will remain the same, even if outward qualities change. For instance, by age 8, children understand that if there are two rows of five pennies, but one is spread so that the pennies are further apart, both rows still have the same total number of pennies. Ask a 4-year old or 5-year-old the same question and she will tell you the spread out row has more.

By 6 or 7, children can conserve both number (pennies, above) and liquid (knowing that a tall thin cup and short fat cup hold equal amounts). However, it is not until firmly within the concrete operational period that the same child will be able to conserve mass (knowing that if you break a clay ball into many parts, the weight is the same). Next comes the ability to conserve area (knowing that 4 Cheezits next to each other take up the same amount of area as four Cheezits spread around the placemat). Last to come online is the conservation of volume. In fact, many children do not understand that a clay ball reshaped and placed in water will not change the volume of water displaced until they are 11 or 12.

Over the course of the concrete operational period, children also begin to reason more accurately. For example, if (during the penny conservation task) they miscount the spread out row of pennies to be more than the other row, they will realize they made a mistake in counting. This realization is in contrast to believing that one row has more simply because it is spread out. Along with this ability comes an understanding of identity - that if nothing is added or taken away, or if only superficial aspects of a situation are changed, the inherent identity remains the same. For example, an 8-year-old understands that painting a white stripe on a black cat does not turn it into a skunk. Similarly, this same child can understand reversibility - that certain operations can reverse or negate the effects of others. For example, combining together a number of smaller clay balls will reverse the effects of breaking apart one larger one.

Concrete operations is a time when the brain goes through a number of significant changes. Information travels with greater speed through the nervous system and different parts of the brain begin to work in coordination with one another in new combinations. One result is that children this age begin to make logical arguments. Thus, it is not uncommon for your 8- or 9-year old to say, "Didn't I read extra long last week? That means this week I can watch a movie instead of read." Problem solving strategies also increase across this age. Now, children are able to use more than one strategy at a time, they can rehearse or preview actions better, and they are more accurate in their choice of strategy.

Similarly, children are able to understand that specific members of a set are also members of the more general set. Thus they can correctly answer the question: "Are there more dogs or black dogs?" because they realize that one set can include another. Try the Cablink app to help your child explore set membership. Seriation also comes online during concrete operations. Now, instead of using a haphazard method to organize items or information, children have the ability to use consistent criteria to order items.

Decentration is another hallmark of this stage. Thus, your child can now more successfully take another's point of view and can consider more than one dimension simultaneously, as long as the considerations remain concrete. He can more effectively communicate about objects that the listener cannot see, and can think about how others perceive him. A fun way to foster perspective taking skills is with optical illusions. In addition, your child can understand more complex actions, such as when a person feels one way but acts another. These skills can also be seen in increased attention abilities. That is, children this age begin to understand that you can look at one thing (e.g., a picture) and yet be thinking about something else. Watch this video, which demonstrates how looking for (paying attention to) one thing limits your ability to look for (pay attention to) something else. As a result, they learn that they can shift and focus their attention with greater control than previously.

In summary, between 8 and 10 years old, children learn to mentally combine, separate, order, and transform objects and actions. They learn to conserve mass and area, with many also learning to conserve volume. Their ability to apply logic and reason increases, as does their ability to focus attention. They can consider multiple perspectives and apply various thought-out strategies. And while they continue to struggle with understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts, children this age can apply mental operations to concrete problems, objects, and events.

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By the time your child is eight years old, he has firmly entered middle childhood. No longer a wide-eyed novice, he has a great many skills that he will continue to build on to expand his mental abilities in dramatic ways for the next several years.

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Intelligence Testing to Place Students in Specific Academic Tracks 1932 - Amelia Medina

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Intelligence Testing to Place Students in Specific Academic Tracks 1932 - Amelia Medina

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A survey of 150 school districts reveals that three quarters of them are using so-called intelligence testing to place students in different academic tracks. Connects to how we take placement tests and some students end up in honors or AP courses.

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From corporate donations to workplace restrictions, what's taught in the classroom has always been influenced by American industry

smithsonianmag.com

If you ask American leaders about the overall goal of the nation's education system, you'd likely get a broad set of answers: to prepare young people for the workforce; to close racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps; to create informed citizens ready to participate in popular democracy. Other western nations, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany, provide their public schools with a national curriculum, roughly equalized budgets and government-produced exams. In contrast, the defining feature of American education is its localism; we have no shared curriculum, large funding disparities and little national agreement about what the purposes of schooling should be.

The absence of centralization leaves space for business leaders and philanthropists to define and fund what they see as priorities in education reform. Today, a broad coalition of standardized test and textbook manufacturers; mega-philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gates and Eli Broad; and CEOs passionate about school reform, like Mark Zuckerberg, coalesce around an agenda that includes implementing Common Core academic standards and tying teacher evaluation, job security, and pay to students' test scores. The underlying idea is that extraordinary teachers, with high standards for all students, can prepare every child to attend and succeed in college, regardless of a student's socioeconomic disadvantages.

This goal-what the Gates Foundation refers to as " college-ready education for all "-represents a sea change from the traditional outlook American business leaders brought to school reform: one that sought to sort students and select only a few for higher-education, while sending the rest to the manufacturing, agricultural or service sectors. For instance, in 1906, the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education reported that young students need "training of a practical character that would prepare them for jobs in industry." Education leaders at the time, such as Stanford president Ellwood Cubberly, agreed. He once wrote, "We should give up the exceedingly democratic idea that all are equal and that our society is devoid of classes. The employee tends to remain an employee; the wage earner tends to remain a wage earner."

In the decades before the Civil War, northeastern businessmen, many affiliated with the Whig Party, supported the efforts of the Common Schools movement to guarantee every child a public elementary education, which would ensure that factory workers were competent in basic literacy and math. To accomplish this goal without raising taxes-another priority of northern industrialists-an anonymous New York philanthropist published an 1842 manual advising schools that female teachers could be the cornerstone of "a cheap system," since even the most talented women would be willing to work for half of what men of the "poorest capacity" would demand. State legislatures and local school boards embraced this penny-pinching advice. In 1800, 90 percent of American teachers were male; by 1900, over three-quarters were women.

The Tuskegee Institute, founded in rural Alabama in 1881 to serve the children of former slaves, offers insight on school reform at the turn of the century. Booker T. Washington, the school's founder, was the most prominent education reformer in America, lauded by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and steel titan Andrew Carnegie. In 1903, Carnegie donated $600,000 to Tuskegee's endowment. The Institute was famous for its hands-on vocational training; the entire campus had been constructed by students, who made their own bricks and laid them. Yet most graduates sought middle-class, not working-class lives. The majority went on to teach in black schools across the Deep South, educating a largely illiterate, poverty-stricken population.

Because of the biases of his time, on frequent Northern fundraising expeditions and speaking tours, Washington obscured the fact that Tuskegee students worked actively for black social mobility, portraying the schools' graduates more as laborers than as educators. As his biographer Robert Norrell has noted, Washington was hardly as reactionary as his critics, like W.E.B Du Bois, portrayed him to be; he understood that racist assumptions about black inferiority contributed to the enthusiasm wealthy whites expressed for black vocational education. Yet as a pragmatist, Washington was unwilling to deny his students the funding that philanthropists like Carnegie could provide.

During the twentieth century, private interests drove a number of cyclical, sometimes conflicting education reform movements. From Chicago, Jane Addams built broad, elite support for an agenda of ending child labor and increasing the years of mandatory schooling. Across the country, politicians and school administrators were inspired by the ideas of the management guru Frederick Winslow Taylor, and implemented complex new evaluation systems to rank and supposedly improve the work of teachers. One of the longest-lasting and historically fraught education reform movements was ability tracking tied to IQ tests, a so-called "social efficiency" agenda that consigned many non-white and working class students, as well as some middle-class girls, to courses in sewing, cooking, personal finance and "current events." Testing companies marketed "intelligence" assessments later revealed to measure not the innate capacity to learn, but simply the quality of a student's previous education. A 1932 survey of 150 school districts found three-quarters used IQ exams to assign students to different academic tracks.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights movement recast education in terms of equality: equal access to good schools, effective teachers and a curriculum with the ability to engage all children and hold them to high standards. Yet when the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education proved incredibly divisive, even in the black community, the national school reform agenda fractured. With the rise of the Black Power movement in the late 1960s, philanthropies like the Ford Foundation embraced the "community control" movement, which sought to abandon efforts at school integration and instead give black parents more power over the curriculum and pedagogy used at their neighborhood schools, as well as a voice in the hiring of teachers and principals. Since the early 1990s, however, Teach for America has been a particular favorite of corporate donors, who embrace the idea that elite university graduates selected through a national program, not local communities, can be the driving force behind school improvement.

In today's post-recession climate, business-oriented reformers hope that more college degrees will invigorate the American economy, by better matching workers to open jobs. Schools are undoubtedly producing too few students ready for careers in the sciences, technology, engineering and math. Yet many economists dispute the idea that unemployment and economic inequality are primarily supply-side problems; of the professions most likely to grow in the coming decades, most-like high-skill manufacturing and dental hygiene-require on-the-job training and an occupational certificate, not a bachelor's degree.
Dana Goldstein is a journalist based in Brooklyn. She is a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation and a Puffin Fellow at the Nation Institute. Her book on the political history of American public school teaching will be published by Doubleday in 2014.
Today's optimism-even romanticism-about the B.A. can seem misplaced in an economy where over half of recent college graduates are jobless or underemployed, working as baristas, waiters and shop clerks. Still, unlike the corporate school reformers of yesteryear, today's philanthropists are at least united around the goal of opening up a broad array of opportunity to disadvantaged children.

The emphasis on "college for all"-and on viewing the individual teacher, as opposed to the neighborhood or community, as the locus of educational change-has pushed aside other, potentially worthy goals, from integrating schools to giving students more opportunities for on-the-job learning outside traditional classrooms. The influence of technocratic philanthropists has changed the course of American education policy over the past decade, all without any major new federal legislation on school reform. So while the American educational system is highly localized, its policies are certainly driven at the national level, and in large part by private institutions. There is nothing new about business influence over public education.

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The Business of American Business Is Education

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smithsonianmag.com If you ask American leaders about the overall goal of the nation's education system, you'd likely get a broad set of answers: to prepare young people for the workforce; to close racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps; to create informed citizens ready to participate in popular democracy.

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World War II and its impact on Education 

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World War II and its impact on Education 

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From 1939 to 1945 this country was involved in the second world war. I mentioned before in class that it seems that every time we have a major war or event, the country experiences a shift in ideology that reflects back in education and the work force. Right before World War II we were going through the Great Depression which took a major tole throughout the country which led to the new deal which gave us a ton of reform on education and led to the G.I. Bill being passed guaranteeing soldiers that come home from the war a chance at getting a college education payed for by the government. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&context=mse_facpub

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In 1946, the free and reduced lunch system started as a way to provide students in need with low income free meal or low-cost meals. This not only helped with kids who were hungry, but also helped them with better eating habits.

KellaNoncent

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Published "Science & Human Behavior." It applied Operant Conditioning and how changes in behavior are due to reinforcement.

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Operant conditioning is a type of learning that happens when certain behaviors are rewarded or punished. Thus the participant, or in this case, the student, becomes conditioned to perform certain behaviors instead of others in the anticipation of punishment or reward.

The father of operant conditioning is B.F. Skinner. Skinner's famous experiment with rats in Skinner boxes showed that rats could learn to respond to stimuli in certain ways to earn food rewards and avoid electrical shocks. While you won't be electrifying your classroom floor, there are many effective strategies for using operant conditioning in education.

Using operant conditioning in the classroom can be beneficial in many ways. But the most important effect, at least from the teacher's perspective, is the establishment of classroom management techniques. Using operant conditioning can give students immediate feedback about their behavior. When the teacher rewards positive behavior, other students are more likely to copy that behavior to earn the reward. The rewarded student is also more likely to repeat that behavior because of the positive feedback.

Immediate feedback is also useful in curtailing negative classroom behaviors. Light punishment or withholding of praise can function as operant conditioning in education. When the teacher punishes negative behavior, other students will want to avoid that punishment, and so they will be less likely to perform that behavior. The punished student will be less likely to repeat the behavior as well, though outside factors may come into play.

Using operant conditioning in the classroom can be part of a sound classroom management strategy. However, relying too heavily on operant conditioning alone has its drawbacks. Operant conditioning in education relies on extrinsic motivation, or factors outside the students themselves used to motivate behaviors. The downside to extrinsic motivation is that it is less permanent than intrinsic motivation, or motivation that comes from inside the self. Intrinsic motivation exists without the presence of external motivating factors. But when extrinsic motivations are relied on too heavily, when those motivating factors are removed, the behaviors they shaped are more likely to decrease or disappear as well.

Effective classroom management techniques use a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors. Teachers can incorporate operant conditioning with other strategies for a more holistic approach.

Operant conditioning examples that teachers can use as part of their overall classroom management strategy are helpful. Operant conditioning examples can include positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment. Reinforcements, by definition, increase the targeted behavior, and punishments decrease targeted behaviors.

Operant Conditioning Examples for the Classroom

Positive Reinforcement: Students who line up quietly receive a smiley sticker.

Negative Reinforcement: The teacher ignores a student who shouts out answers but calls on him when he raises his hand.

Positive Punishment: A student gets detention after being late for class too many times.

Negative Punishment: The teacher moves a student away from her friend because she was talking during a test.

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How to Use Operant Conditioning in the Classroom | Synonym

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Using operant conditioning in the classroom can be an effective part of any holistic classroom management approach. Done correctly, operant conditioning can reinforce positive behaviors and decrease negative behaviors. However, operant conditioning should not be the only kind of behavior management.

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Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Alexis Walters

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Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Alexis Walters

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The Brown V. Board of Education was such an important time in history. The case determined that racially segregating schools was unconstitutional. African-American children were not getting acceptable quality education like white children were. This case ruling lead to an equal education for all children.

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For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

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Eisenhower and the Little Rock Crisis 1957 - Amelia Medina

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Eisenhower and the Little Rock Crisis 1957 - Amelia Medina

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In 1957, a federal court orders integration of Little Rock, Arkansas public schools. Governor Orval Faubus sends his National Guard to physically prevent nine African American students from enrolling at all-white Central High School. Reluctantly, President Eisenhower sends federal troops to enforce the court order not because he supports desegregation, but because he can't let a state governor use military power to defy the U.S. federal government. The Supreme Court had just came to the realization that segregated schools should be abolished because they were unequal and here is the governor and national guard trying to prevent young African American students from getting there education and the president only fighting back because he sees it as a threat to his power not because he supported desegregation and wanted to equality for all.

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Arkansas National Guard troops and large crowd outside of Little Rock's Central High School, September 5, 1957.

Can you imagine armed troops blocking you from going to school? That's what happened in Little Rock, Arkansas in the fall of 1957. Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent African American students from enrolling at Central High School. Central High was an all white school. Eisenhower and the Little Rock Crisis

The 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Topeka made segregation in public schools illegal. Governor Faubus defied this decision. He also defied a 1955 ruling (Brown II). The 1955 decision ordered that public schools be desegregated with all deliberate speed.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was presented with a difficult problem. He wanted to uphold the Constitution and the laws, but also avoid a possible bloody confrontation in Arkansas, where emotions ran high. What do you think Eisenhower did?

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Arkansas National Guard troops and large crowd outside of Little Rock's Central High School, September 5, 1957. Can you imagine armed troops blocking you from going to school? That's what happened in Little Rock, Arkansas in the fall of 1957. Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent African American students from enrolling at Central High School.

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The first ACT was administered (1959) Alexis Walters 

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The first ACT was administered (1959) Alexis Walters 

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The ACT was administered for the first time to 75,460 students. That was the first version ever made and served as the test for 30 years. Then in 1989 the ACT was updated to the version we all take today.

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How did the ACT get started? And how did it become the test it is today? Read on to learn more about ACT history, its successes and failures, and how things might change for it in the future.

Early Days

In 1959, an education professor at the University of Iowa named Everett Franklin Lindquist developed the ACT as a competitor for the SAT, which had been around for about 20 years as a mainstream college admissions test.

The ACT originally stood for American College Test and was based off of the Iowa Tests of Educational Development. The goal for the ACT as an alternative to the SAT was that it wouldn't just test cognitive reasoning; it would test information actually learned in school. It was the first standardized test to include a science section. It was also more focused on identifying strengths and weaknesses to guide student placement rather than determining cognitive reasoning strength across the board like the SAT.

The first ACT was administered to 75,460 students in 1959. The original sections were English, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Natural Sciences, with 45 minutes for each section and scores on a scale of 0-36. It gained popularity as a college admissions exam in the central and midwestern US where the SAT had not yet established its dominion. In fact, part of the purpose of the ACT was to provide other colleges and public universities with an admissions exam to use since the SAT was only used by selective institutions in the northeast.
By 1972, the number of students taking the ACT had grown to over a million!

Changes

In 1989, the "enhanced ACT" was released, bringing us nearly up to speed with the current version of the test that we all know and love.

The Natural Science section was replaced with Science Reasoning. This was a move towards de-emphasizing specific scientific knowledge and instead just testing core analytical and problem-solving skills.

Social Studies was also replaced with Reading. This was when the Reading section really moved closer to the SAT. The Social Studies section had tested specific information about US History, whereas the new Reading section was only supposed to test pure reading ability and comprehension.

There were also some changes to the Math and English sections. In math, trigonometry and pre-algebra were added as topics. In english, the test began to focus less on grammar and more on writing skills like coherent organization of thoughts.

Scores from the old test to the new test were not directly comparable. On the new test, average composite scores rose two points, and the range of scores became 1-36 rather than 0-36.

After this big change, some minor changes continued to be implemented. In 1996, the ACT redefined its name so the letters no longer stood for anything, and in 2005, the ACT added an optional Writing section (a 30 minute essay) so that it could more directly compete with the essay requirement on the SAT.

Starting in 2015, the format of the essay was changed slightly. Students are now given 40 minutes to write, and the Writing section is scored out of 36 rather than out of 12. Prompts deal with how students interpret big changes that are going on in the world, opening up the essay to a broader focus than previous prompts that focused on issues specifically related to high school.

The ACT has now surpassed the SAT as the most popular college admissions test.

Successes and Failures of the ACT

The ACT today has many of the same problems as the SAT in terms of the achievement gap between minority/low-income students and white/high-income students. The percent difference between black and white students meeting the ACT's benchmarks for college readiness across subjects ranges from 35-42%. According to the chart below, the percentage of African American students passing 3 or more ACT benchmarks lingers around 10%, whereas for white students it's about 50% and for Asian students it's almost 60%.

The ACT, just like the SAT, has had little success in terms of leveling the playing field between races and income levels and creating an objective test.

The ACT does seem to have recognized that this battle needs to be fought at a lower level in education. Many students who do poorly on the test are victims of years of subpar learning experiences. ACT Aspire is a system created by the ACT to track students from a young age based on Common Core standards to make sure they are reaching appropriate goals. So far, however, it has not had a very broad reach.
The ACT overall does have much more straightforwardness and consistency in its testing model than the SAT, which makes it a better option for many students. Some people might argue that it's a fairer test, and it's definitely less tricky in a lot of ways. However, it still hasn't overcome the achievement gap.
The ACT may be less entrenched in notions of elitism than the SAT, but it still contributes to the same problematic systems.

ACT, Inc.: Non-Profit?

It's tempting to think of the ACT as a lovable underdog that overcame all odds to beat the snobby SAT in the college admissions test market. However, ACT, Inc. has almost as many issues with its supposed non-profit status as the College Board.

In 2009, the CEO of ACT, Inc. was compensated over a million dollars. Just like the College Board, ACT, Inc. pays its executives at levels that are much higher than the average for most nonprofits. ACT, Inc. also sells test prep materials for its exams to increase revenue. The goal of the ACT is the same as that of the College Board: get as many people to buy into their tests and programs as possible.

The ACT has surpassed the SAT as the most prevalent admissions test, so it has been pretty successful with this goal. Still, it may have to play catch up again after the SAT revamps its test model in 2016. The new SAT is going to be more similar to the ACT (less confusing question phrasing, trigonometry in the math section) so it should be interesting to see which one ends up dominating the market.

Overview

The ACT was created in 1959 as competition for the SAT. It was supposed to be an achievement test that dealt with content learned in school rather than just cognitive reasoning skills. However, it moved closer to the SAT as time went on, especially when the Science and Reading sections were created in 1989.

The ACT has similar problems to the SAT in terms of the achievement gap and its questionable non-profit status. Even though it is often thought of as a fairer and less confusing alternative to the SAT, it's really a pretty similar test at this point.

It's possible that the release of the new SAT and increased pressure from colleges for a more reliable performance assessment will catalyze changes to the ACT. Hopefully we're getting closer to creating assessments that are both fair to students and reliable as higher education standards.

What's Next?

Wondering whether you should take the ACT over the SAT? Check out these comparison charts to see the differences between them.

If you want to try your hand at an ACT practice test, here's a link to some free full tests!

You should also take a look at this list of test dates for the upcoming school year so you can start thinking about when to register for the ACT.

Want to improve your ACT score by 4+ points? Download our free guide to the top 5 strategies you need in your prep to improve your ACT score dramatically.

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How did the ACT get started? And how did it become the test it is today? Read on to learn more about ACT history, its successes and failures, and how things might change for it in the future.

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The Civil Rights Act banned all segregation in all public places, including schools. It became a law that no-one could be discriminated due to race, gender religion or culture.

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Black History - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Civil Rights Act of 1964, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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The Association for Children with Learning Disabilities (1964) (Maggie Weidner) 

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The Association for Children with Learning Disabilities (1964) (Maggie Weidner) 

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The Association for Children with Learning Disabilities was founded with the goal of making public education free for students with special needs and providing special education programs.

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Dec. 4, 1964-Nova Southeastern University opens 

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Dec. 4, 1964-Nova Southeastern University opens 

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Project Head Starter was a preschool education program for children from low-income families. This program continues to this day as the longest- running anti-poverty program in the U.S

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The bilingual education act was put into place to help students whose first language wasn't English to better understand the content being taught to them, while also improving their English. This was super important because it was the first time the government recognized that students, with limited English, had some needs that weren't being supported. There was tons of controversy with this act and it was later replaced with the No Child Left Behind Act.

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Title IX is a law put into place that doesn't allow for anyone to be denied participation, or benefits, nor can they be subject to discrimination based on their sex. Before this law many women weren't allowed to take certain courses in school, there was separate entrances for men and women, and women even had a midnight curfew if they lived on campus while the men had no curfew. There is still room for improvement to see more inclusion, however this law helps.

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It was a law more like a insult. This law prohibited discrimination based on sex in all aspects and not just in deports.

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A federal civil rights investigation has found the city school system has not been playing a fair game when it comes to girls high school sports. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed this report.
The playing field has not been even.

Neither has the basketball court, the swimming pool, nor the tennis court.

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights says the city is shortchanging girls, with nearly 4,000 fewer spots on high school sports teams for girls than there should be. It adds up to a violation of Title IX, the landmark 1972 federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

Now, the city has agreed to make things right, which coaches and students say is welcome news.

"Girls should have equal opportunity to everything-not only sports. It shouldn't stop there, but sports is definitely a great way to level the playing field and for girls to be integrated into their communities and have the same advantages that boys have in schools," says Brooklyn Tech volleyball and lacrosse player Monica Garlinska.

"For girls, every chance that they have, they'll more likely participate in sports," says James Franco, athletic director at the Young Women's Leadership School.

The federal investigation found that in high school sports, the city failed to treat girls the same as boys.

For example, girls represent 48 percent of all high school students, but just 44 percent of student athletes.

The school system has cut almost as many girls teams as it has added in recent years-while the number of boys teams has continued to climb.

Meanwhile, investigators discovered that city has rejected hundreds of requests to start new girls teams.

"If there is a demand for something, those demands should be met. And if girls like us are showing interest, then I think city legislators should do as much as they can to provide those sports," Garlinska says.

"There shouldn't be any reason why girls don't have an opportunity," says Franco.

Although the city agreed to make things right for girl athletes, it admitted no violations of Title IX.

A spokesperson says the city has made enormous progress and plans to put an additional $1 million toward school sports over the next four years-enough for almost 100 new girls teams.

This spring, the school system will begin surveying girls to see what sports they would like to be able to play.

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Federal Investigation Finds City Favors Boys Sports Over Girls Teams

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A federal civil rights investigation has found the city school system has not been playing a fair game when it comes to girls high school sports. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed this report. The playing field has not been even. Neither has the basketball court, the swimming pool, nor the tennis court.

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Milliken v. Bradley 1974 - Amelia Medina

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Milliken v. Bradley 1974 - Amelia Medina

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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 from white students in wealthier white suburban districts. The article argues that if the children and students of all color weren't able to learn together how could they possibly learn to live together. Just a few years prior the Supreme Court realized that segregated schools were unequal and should be abolished and now Nixon rules that schools shouldn't desegregate. It feels like a step backward.

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Roughly 9 million children - nearly 1 in 5 public school students in the U.S. - attend schools that are racially isolated and receive far less money than schools just a few miles away. That's according to a sweeping new review of the nation's most divisive school district borders from EdBuild, a nonprofit that investigates school funding inequities.

"Inequality is endemic" in America's public schools, the report says, identifying nearly 1,000 school district borders where schools on one side receive at least 10% less money per student than schools on the other side and where the racial makeup of the two sides' students varies by 25 percentage points or more. It is the story of segregation, in 2019.

EdBuild says the disadvantaged districts in these cross-district comparisons receive, on average, about $4,200 less per student than their wealthier neighbors, largely because of differences in what they're able to raise through local property taxes. To put that gap into perspective, schools spent an average of $12,000 per student in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This means that disadvantaged districts have about one-third fewer dollars per student than their peers up the street.

Imagine you're a principal with one-third less funding to pay for teachers, textbooks, buses and counselors.

Now imagine you're a child living at the center of that inequity.

"You know it as soon as you look at the school. You know it the minute you walk into a classroom," says Rebecca Sibilia, EdBuild's founder and CEO, of these funding differences. "There are kids who see this every day, and they understand."

They understand, Sibilia says, that the scales are tipped against them. Their schools are still segregated and underfunded more than 60 years after the Supreme Court issued one of its most famous rulings, in Brown v. Board of Education, unanimously declaring that separate but equal schools are neither equal nor constitutional. So why are so many U.S. schools still so separate and unequal?

"That's all thanks to Milliken," Sibilia says.
"No hope of achieving actual desegregation"
EdBuild timed the release of its report to coincide with the 45th anniversary of another Supreme Court ruling, one not nearly as well-known as Brown but a case that has had just as much impact: Milliken v. Bradley. This case posed an essential question in 1974: Who should be responsible for desegregating America's schools?

The case arrived two decades after Brown began the push for school desegregation. In those intervening years, the federal government achieved meaningful progress in the South, and the movement ultimately worked its way north, to cities like Detroit. But many white voters grew anxious, even angry, about these efforts.

That anger helped propel Richard Nixon to the White House in 1969. In just a few years, he filled not one but four vacancies on the Supreme Court. And it was this new court that would hear oral arguments in Milliken.

Leaders from the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit had been sued for policies that had helped segregate Detroit's schools. At the time, two-thirds of students there were African American, while growing suburbs were almost exclusively white.

The plaintiffs argued that school policies reinforced racist housing practices that had trapped black families inside the city. It was a story playing out across the United States.

"The story was the story of American apartheid," says Michelle Adams, a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York City. She's writing a book on Milliken and says federal redlining of neighborhoods and race-based restrictions on house sales, known as covenants, had made it nearly impossible for black families to move to the suburbs.

"Over and over and over again, the plaintiffs used this phrase, 'contained.' "

While black parents had been contained by racist housing policies, their children were being contained by school district lines. The state was pouring money into new suburban schools but was building them behind district lines that acted like fences. A lower court judge ruled that the only way to meaningfully desegregate Detroit was to tear down those lines - those fences - and to bus students between the city and 53 suburban school districts. The suburbs fought that ruling in the Supreme Court.

"There is no evidence in this case that any school district in the state of Michigan, including Detroit, was established or created for the purpose of fostering racial segregation in the public schools," said attorney William M. Saxton in oral arguments on Feb. 27, 1974.

The suburban districts did not deny that their schools - and Detroit's - were segregated. But, they countered, that segregation was not the result of discrimination. It was not intentional.

"[The suburbs were] making this issue a question of white guilt or innocence," says Elise Boddie, a professor at Rutgers Law School. She says they were essentially saying: "We know there may be a problem of segregation, but it's not our fault. We're not responsible for it."

Unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together and understand each other.

The fight in Milliken was over who was responsible. Because the state had opposed an earlier desegregation effort, it seemed liable. But what about those dozens of booming, largely white suburbs? Should the federal courts do as they had done in the South for years: step in and force these communities to share their schools with black children?

The suburbs argued that their school district lines had been drawn without malice and that the federal courts had no right to interfere in the local control of schools unless the black parents who brought the case could show that the suburbs were responsible for school segregation in Detroit.

A divided court agreed, finding in a 5-4 ruling that if these suburbs weren't actively hurting Detroit's students, then they couldn't be forced to help them either. Of the five justices in that majority, four had been appointed by Nixon. Ultimately, Detroit was told to somehow desegregate itself.

An unrealistic demand, said the court's only African American justice:

"The Detroit-only plan simply has no hope of achieving actual desegregation," said Justice Thurgood Marshall in his dissent. "Under such a plan, white and Negro students will not go to school together. Instead, Negro children will continue to attend all-Negro schools. The very evil that Brown was aimed at will not be cured but will be perpetuated."

Marshall knew that because schools are funded through local property taxes, these segregated big-city schools weren't just separate but were also clearly unequal. As an attorney in the early 1950s, Marshall had argued - and won - the historic Brown v. Board case, and he called the Milliken ruling a "giant step backwards."

"Our nation, I fear, will be ill served by the court's refusal to remedy separate and unequal education," Marshall warned, "for unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together and understand each other."

Nearly half a century later, EdBuild's new report affirms Marshall's fear. Milliken established the sacredness of school district lines and severely limited federal courts' ability to change the status quo. Today, Detroit is even more segregated than it was back in 1974. And that's the case not just in Detroit.
On the island
Often called the first modern suburb in America, Long Island stretches out from New York City, north and east toward the sea, with water on both sides. In between the waves, it's one of the most racially and economically segregated places in the United States.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the school districts that dot the island (there are more than 125 districts). One example of this stark contrast: Hempstead Union Free School District and Garden City Union Free School District. Enrollment in Hempstead's schools is 2% white, while immediately to the north, the school district in Garden City is 87% white, according to the state. You can drive from the high school in Hempstead to the high school in Garden City in about 15 minutes.
Don't see the graphic above? Click here.
Just south of Hempstead's district line is Rockville Centre, another village and yet another school district, where enrollment is 76% white, according to the state.

There's a stark difference in funding too. Compared with schools in Hempstead, Garden City's schools get almost $5,000 more per student per year, and Rockville Centre's schools get about $7,000 more.

"What Long Island shows us is how Milliken has been used to reinforce all of these negative and detrimental policies of the past," explains Sibilia. "What I'm talking about here specifically is housing segregation."

On a drive through Nassau County, it's easy to see what Sibilia means.

"You know immediately when you've left Garden City and you're in Hempstead," explains Elaine Gross, who runs a local nonprofit called Erase Racism. On one side of the line: big houses and tree-lined streets. On the other: laundromats, gas stations and apartment buildings right up against the sidewalks.

Gross says what really astonishes her is the quality of the road between the two communities. On one side, potholes. On the other, "the pavement is just so smooth."

This division, Gross says, "was baked into the beginning of Long Island." This area was once potato fields, but then housing developers arrived and started building homes. Many of those communities sold new homes only to white families, and often restrictions, or covenants, in the deeds kept the discrimination going, saying original owners could resell those houses only to other white people.

"The intention was to forever keep out black people," says Gross. "Talk about a structural impediment. You can't get more obvious than that."

Because school funding is largely tied to local wealth - for example, through property taxes - these invisible yet powerful district lines create unequally resourced schools.

"All of this is very connected. The schools. The housing. The government," says Gross. "All of this is a part of the structural racism which is still very much in place in Long Island."

In most places, states have not been able to make up the difference in that local money, despite decades of funding formulas designed to do just that.

On Long Island, the state of New York does give more money to Hempstead, but it's not enough to make it equal to its neighbors. "In essence," says Sibilia, "states are upholding not just separate school systems but unequal school systems."

"It takes a lot to change the way people think," says Daraeno Ekong, a recent graduate of Hempstead High School. She went to Hempstead's public schools her whole life, and in the fall, she'll start as a freshman at Yale University. This spring, she visited Yale's campus, meeting other students from districts across the country, and in conversation, she picked up that many of them had more resources at their high schools. It's making her a bit nervous, she says, "so I'm kind of finding a way to catch up to them."

The fact that some of these students were also from Long Island but went to very different schools came as a surprise. Ekong says she has never been to any of the schools in Garden City or ever spent time with any of their students.

It's a missed opportunity, she says, for all the students. "They could see from our perspective, and we could see from their eyes," she says. "We might be thinking the same way, or we might do the same thing, you know."

Ekong's words echo those of Justice Thurgood Marshall's dissent in Milliken v. Bradley, 45 years later.

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This Supreme Court Case Made School District Lines A Tool For Segregation

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Roughly 9 million children - nearly 1 in 5 public school students in the U.S. - attend schools that are racially isolated and receive far less money than schools just a few miles away. That's according to a sweeping new review of the nation's most divisive school district borders from EdBuild, a nonprofit that investigates school funding inequities.

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Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975) Alexis Walters

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Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975) Alexis Walters

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The Education for All Handicapped Children Act is now referred to as IDEA and is also a federal law. It states all public school must provide to appropriate education for all students ages 3-21.

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1975 The Education for all Handicapped Children Act (EACHA) This is known today as IDEA Requires free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment possible for children with disabilities. http://www.mwcil.org/ilhist/chronological

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Education of All Handicapped Children Act (1975)- Briana M. 

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Education of All Handicapped Children Act (1975)- Briana M. 

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in 1975 this act become law providing free, public education for hanidcapped students individual needs. States had 3 years to implement programs to accomidate to the law.

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The federal Tribal Colleges Act establishes a community college on every Indian reservation, which allows young people to go to college without leaving their families.

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In 1983, the Standard Movement emphasized the students ability to move to the next grade based on their level of knowledge. It also gave teachers academic standards on what each grade level should know.

Kella Noncent

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The University of Phoenix establish their campus "online", the first offer a bachelor´s and master´s degree.

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There are a lot of unlikely things about John Sperling's story -- like the fact that he even made it to college at all.

He did not expect to go. Sperling was born in 1921 in the Missouri Ozarks. His family was poor.

"We always lived in tiny houses," Sperling writes in a memoir, Rebel with a Cause, published in 2000. "We ate mostly what came out of the garden, the henhouse, and two milk cows." His mother was constantly worried that her children -- three boys and two girls -- would starve.

Sperling's father was an unsuccessful farmer who spent a lot of time looking for other ways to make money. At one point he "sold drinks and snacks on a train that ran between Kansas City and somewhere," writes Sperling.

No one in Sperling's family had gone to college. "I had no idea that college was even a possibility," he said in an interview with American RadioWorks.

After high school Sperling joined the Merchant Marine. It was 1939, the tenth year of the Great Depression, and he writes that his fellow seamen were "socialists plus a sprinkling of communists." Sperling came from a family of Republicans, but the culture of the left appealed to him and he became a socialist.

Socialism ignited an intellectual curiosity in Sperling that led him to enroll at a community college in San Francisco when he got out of the Merchant Marine. He went to class during the day and worked at a gas station at night. He had always hated school, but "this time school was different," he writes in his memoir. "All the classes were easy for me and I got straight A's."

Community college didn't last long. He had started in the fall of 1941. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December, Sperling enlisted in the Navy Air Corps. While he waited to be called, he enrolled at Reed, a prestigious liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon; his family was now living in Portland. "Had it not been for my one semester of junior college A's plus the fact that Reed desperately wanted males to replace the ones leaving daily, I would not have made it in," he writes.

Class Conflict

Reed College was John Sperling's first interaction with people from the middle and upper classes, and he hated them.

"I loathed them," he said, "because of their privilege. They were always saying, 'I got where I did because of hard work,' and I thought, 'You stupid son of a bitch, you don't know how privileged you are.'"

Sperling found the coursework at Reed more challenging than at San Francisco City College. His classmates were from private high schools or very good public schools, and they were much better prepared than he was. In his memoir Sperling writes that he spent a lot of time "brooding over the fact that, as someone born poor with a lousy education, I was in an unfair competition... these students had been acculturated to value education and they looked forward confidently to future careers in academe, government, business, and the professions."

Sperling was eventually called up for flight training but never saw action in the war. He returned to Reed after his military service and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1948. He didn't know what to do after that. He says if he'd had the right connections, he might have gone to work on Wall Street. But he didn't, so he decided to go to graduate school.

Sperling went to the University of California, Berkeley for a Ph.D. in history. While at Berkeley he won a fellowship to study for three years at King's College Cambridge in England, completing his Ph.D. at Cambridge. He says the only thing all that education prepared him for was life as a professor. He got a faculty job in the humanities program at San Jose State in California. But he was perpetually unhappy in what he saw as the bourgeois world of academia.

Sperling's passion was union organizing. He became president of the faculty union, and in 1968 he organized a professors' strike. It was a huge failure. Very few professors were willing to walk. Sperling says he become the most hated man on campus because of all the trouble he had caused with the administration. But he learned a valuable lesson that he says later allowed him to become a successful entrepreneur. "The lesson was simple," he writes in his memoir. "Ignore your detractors and those who say that what you are doing is wrong, against regulations, or illegal."

Sperling's experience with the strike cemented his hatred for the higher-education establishment. He was convinced the establishment would always be against the things he believed in. The only way forward was to fight.

The Beginning of a New Career

Reflecting on the 1968 professors' strike in his memoir, John Sperling called it "one of the most liberating experiences of my life" because he no longer cared what anyone in academia thought about him. And he decided he was going to find a way out.

The opportunity to leave traditional academia arrived in the form of a federal grant designed to lower the juvenile delinquency rate among working-class kids in the city of Sunnyvale, Calif. Sperling thought the best way to do that would be to work with local teachers and police officers.

He enrolled 30 teachers and police officers in a class and divided them into groups. Each group had to design, conduct and evaluate a project that addressed the problem of juvenile delinquency. Sperling encouraged them to use their experiences at work to inform their research. At the end of the class, all but two of the students signed up for another class. When that class was done, they told Sperling they wanted to take more classes.

"They got fascinated with the process of education," he says. "It grabbed their minds and they said, 'Oh my God, this is fascinating. And we want to stay. Not only do we want to stay, we want degrees.'"

The police officers wanted bachelor's degrees -- they all had associate's degrees already. The teachers wanted master's degrees.

"In 1970, adults lacked effective access even to ineffective higher education," writes Sperling. "Supposedly, the mission of my own university was to serve the entire community, but a working adult wanting to pursue a degree was offered courses designed for kids just out of high school, taught by professors who considered it their job to deliver the subject matter in lectures scheduled for two or three nights per week. With great persistence, an adult learner could expect to earn a degree in 6 to 10 years -- for some, it took 20."

Sperling decided what higher education needed was a new way for working adults to go to school. So he sketched out a degree program that looked a lot like what he'd been doing with the teachers and police officers. "The students loved it and insisted it would draw hundreds of working adults," he writes.

But when he went to San Jose State administrators with his idea, they said no. "The people who would have to approve the program didn't like me, and didn't give a damn about having more students, especially adults," writes Sperling.

A colleague told Sperling that if he wanted to invent something new in higher education, he was going to have to find a school that was struggling and needed new students. At the time, an established university like San Jose State had plenty of taxpayer funding and plenty of students who wanted the degrees they already offered.

Sperling saw the university's rejection of his idea for a degree program as a form of class bias, and he was not going to be deterred. So he took his idea to a Jesuit university in California that was in financial trouble and needed new students. Soon Sperling got a contract with another struggling college, and then another. His business was called The Institute for Professional Development, or IPD. At the age of 53, Sperling had begun his career as an entrepreneur. He took a year's leave from San Jose State, and, "because fortune smiled," he never returned.

Founding the University of Phoenix

Sperling's new career as an entrepreneur was anything but secure. The organization that accredits colleges and universities in California, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), opposed what Sperling was doing. Documents quoted in Sperling's memoir indicate that WASC officials were uncomfortable with the number of group projects IPD allowed; WASC thought only individual projects should be permitted. IPD was giving students college credits for their work experience and WASC believed IPD was giving too much credit. WASC was also concerned that IPD was "making excess profits." WASC officials threatened to strip accreditation from the schools Sperling was working with.

By the time Sperling started IPD, he was no longer a socialist. He believed the free market was the best way to bring innovation to higher education. He writes that being for-profit imposed a kind of "discipline" that was missing at traditional universities. "It left us no alternative but to produce a service for which customers were willing to pay a price high enough to sustain a growing concern."

The pushback that Sperling got from WASC and from people at traditional schools, some of whom called IPD a "diploma mill," was par for the course, in Sperling's opinion. He writes in his memoir:

The battles fought by IPD... against the educational establishment were... largely proxies for cultural battles between defenders of 800 years of educational tradition, and an innovation that was based on values of the marketplace -- transparency, efficiency, productivity, and accountability. To me, the defenders of academic traditions were protecting undeserved middle-class entitlements.

Sperling eventually decided that the only way he would be successful was to start his own university. That is no small task. The layers of regulatory and political approval are immense. Sperling determined there was no way he would be able to do it in California, where the higher education accrediting association was already against him. So he moved to Arizona, where a different accrediting body had control and where laws made it easier to start a new university.

In 1976, Sperling rented space in a Boilermakers' union hall in Phoenix, hired lawyers and a lobbyist, and opened for business. He had eight students to start. They were all working adults who had some college already and were looking for a way to finish their degrees.

Muriel Duncan was one of the first students. She had started college when she was 18 but quit because it was too expensive. When someone -- she can't remember who -- told her about this new school, Duncan was 50 years old. She was working for the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections. Her husband was on disability and they relied mostly on her income. She traveled a lot for her job and says she couldn't take time off to finish her degree.

"At that point I didn't see myself going back to a four-year college," she says.

But the University of Phoenix made her think again. Classes were just one night a week. She could manage that with her travel schedule and family demands. And Phoenix was offering her college credit for her work experience. It was an opportunity too good to pass up. She paid cash for the classes because when Sperling opened for business the University of Phoenix was not yet accredited. That meant students weren't eligible for federal grants or student loans. The classes were about $200 each. It was worth it for Muriel Duncan. She was a member of the first graduating class, in 1979. She says her University of Phoenix degree allowed her to move up at work.

Becoming One of the World's Biggest Universities

There was a big demand for what the University of Phoenix offered.

A decade after opening, Phoenix had 6,000 students -- more than many colleges in America. But John Sperling wanted his university to get much bigger.

Phoenix started online classes in 1989, long before most other universities were doing it.

"Online learning was the craziest idea I thought John Sperling ever had," says Terri Bishop, who has been working with Sperling since the early days in Arizona and is now a senior advisor to the company CEO.

Sperling tapped Bishop to start the online program. At that point, most people didn't even have email, but there was an electronic communication service called Prodigy that techies and business people were starting to use. Bishop developed an online MBA program and targeted the growing community of Prodigy users. She took out what she calls a "teeny, tiny ad" on Prodigy. "I think we received like 200,000 requests for information in a week," she says, laughing. "And we were, of course, sending out [information] in the mail."

Sperling also created a parent company called the Apollo Group that would allow him to expand his business. In 1994, he decided to take the Apollo Group public.

"Apollo was a rocket ship of a stock," says Trace Urdan, an equity analyst at Wells Fargo Securities who covers the for-profit education sector.

The capital from Wall Street allowed the University of Phoenix to grow quickly. Within five years of going public, the school had more than 100,000 students. Enrollment was growing by more than 25 percent a year.

Seeing the success of the University of Phoenix, several other for-profit colleges went public during the 1990s, too. Many of them were small trade schools that had been around for decades -- even longer. The University of Phoenix proved higher education could be big business. Phoenix and other for-profits rode a huge wave propelled by the rising demand for higher education and one of the greatest bull markets in U.S. stock market history.

Once it went public, the University of Phoenix was under intense pressure from investors to keep growing. "The management team now faced the iron law of the quarter," writes Sperling in his memoir. "Every quarter, the company must meet or beat analysts' expectations, or the stock tanks." Wall Street wanted bottom line growth of 30 to 35 percent per year, he writes, "no excuses accepted."

To grow, Sperling expanded the school's online degree programs and built campuses in more states and also overseas. By the year 2000, Apollo stock had increased in value by 1,700 percent since its IPO. It was the nation's largest and fastest-growing private university, with operations in 35 states and a growing population of students from all over the world taking classes online. John Sperling was a billionaire.

The University of Phoenix Changes Direction

In 2004, Apollo stock hit an all-time high of nearly $100 a share. And then the company's business started slowing.

"Part of it was that they had really been serving a baby boomer audience, and the baby boomer was starting to age out of the market where going back to school was even relevant," explains Wells Fargo equity analyst Trace Urdan. "So they decided that they needed a product for Generation Y, the children of the baby boomers."

The University of Phoenix believed what that generation needed was associate's degrees. These degrees -- which typically cost less and take less time to earn -- had been gaining in popularity as more people began to pursue postsecondary education. Phoenix created a new college called Axia that offered associate's degrees online. The degrees were priced so that students could cover the full cost using just government grants and loans. "And they enrolled a lot of students," says Urdan.

But Axia ended up causing a big problem -- one the University of Phoenix is still trying to recover from.

Most of the students who started in the online associate's degree program ended up dropping out. An investigation by the U.S. Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Democrat Tom Harkin, found that in 2008 and 2009 more than 177,000 people enrolled in the online associate's degree program. A year later, 66 percent of them had left.

Senator Harkin says the business model of the University of Phoenix -- and the business model at other for-profits -- is to sign up as many students as possible. "What drives the profits is how many students they enroll," says Harkin. "The school gets the money. They pay their shareholders, they pay their school administrators. And the student drops out and has this debt hanging over his or her head for the rest of their life," says Harkin. "It's unfair."

Harkin is particularly concerned about how much money the University of Phoenix gets from the government. In 2011, 86 percent of revenue at the University of Phoenix came from the federal government in the form of student loans and Pell Grants. That's not unusual in the industry. Senator Harkin's Senate committee estimates that in 2009, the nation's 15 publicly traded for-profit education companies received 86 percent of their revenue from taxpayers. That total includes federal loans and Pell Grants, as well as government money that helps military members and veterans pay for school.

This is a big change from the early days of the University of Phoenix, when students like Muriel Duncan had to pay with cash or a credit card because there was no way of getting federal aid. Once the university was accredited, in 1978, students could begin getting federal student loans and grants. Still, as recently as 2001, the University of Phoenix got less than half its revenue from federal financial aid programs. Most of the money came from students paying out of pocket and employers helping through tuition assistance programs.

The University of Phoenix gets a higher proportion of its money from student aid programs because it serves more low-income students than it used to, and low-income students are eligible for both Pell Grants and the maximum student loan amount. In recent years the federal government has increased the amount of aid low-income students can get. More than half of undergraduate students at the University of Phoenix used Pell Grants in 2010. Nationally, 27 percent of undergraduates received Pell Grants.

This shift towards more low-income students has been happening at other for-profits too. Research by the Institute for Higher Education Policy finds that in the last decade, low-income students have been increasingly drawn to for-profit colleges. They now attend for-profits at four times the rate of other students.

John Sperling's Legacy

Critics of for-profits are concerned that so many low-income and military students choose for-profit schools. Compared to community colleges and state universities, for-profits are expensive. The investigation by Senator Tom Harkin's Senate Committee found that bachelor's degree programs average about 19 percent more at for-profits than at flagship public universities; associate's degree programs cost four times as much at for-profits as they do at community colleges.

Senator Tom Harkin would like to see more students, especially low-income students, choose public colleges and universities.

But that is becoming increasingly difficult for some students. California is a prime example. Drastic state budget cuts in recent years have forced colleges and universities to turn away hundreds of thousands of students because there is not enough money to educate them. Thousands more can't get the classes they need because of overcrowding.

What's happening in California is a more dramatic version of what's happening all over the country: State support for higher education is going down, tuition is going up, and students are being turned away, or can't get the classes or the counseling they need to be successful.

John Sperling looks at what is happening, especially in California, and sees the same problem he was trying to solve back in the 1970s.

"Traditional education has slammed the door," he says. "Where in the hell are you going to educate these people?"

His answer, of course, is the University of Phoenix.

But critics are uncomfortable with the fact that John Sperling can make so much money when the traditional system fails. Sperling has no patience for that kind of criticism.

"Why should [people] be critical?" he says. "What are you supposed to do in life? Am I supposed to work hard to be a failure?"

Sperling is in many ways the epitome of the American Dream. He was born with nothing and through education and hard work became wildly successful. That path to success is more expensive today. College tuition has been rising faster than inflation for decades, and students at all schools are being asked to pay more of the cost. The only way most of them can do it is to borrow lots of money.

Critics of for-profit colleges say that, with tuition so high already, there's no room for big profits in higher education. But advocates for the University of Phoenix and other for-profit schools say they're good for the country because their business model allows them to expand and innovate rapidly.

Even many experts who have mixed feelings about for-profits say America needs them in order to meet the growing demand for higher education.

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University of Phoenix founder John Sperling was born poor and built a huge company that made him a billionaire. This is the story of what motivated him to invent a new kind of college -- and why the industry he pioneered is so controversial.

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Jones International University (1993) (Maggie Weidner)

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Jones International University (1993) (Maggie Weidner)

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In 1993, Jones International University was the first to "exist entirely online." This was the beginning of using only technology as a form of educating students.

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Improving America's Schools Act (1994) (Tati D.)

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Improving America's Schools Act (1994) (Tati D.)

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The IASA was signed. This act aimed to reform elementary and secondary education by boosting funding for bilingual and immigrant educations, allowing for public charter schools, and taking strides toward preventing drop outs and incorporating education tech. in the classroom.

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Improving America's Schools Act (1994)                                                               -Bailey Shanahan

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Improving America's Schools Act (1994)                                                               -Bailey Shanahan

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This act was signed by  President Bill Clinton. This act aimed to decrease the drop out rate and increase the introduction of technology in the classroom. This act also worked to fund immigrants and bilingual educations. It was an important factor in creating a comprehensive education framework for all students that was standard.

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In 1996, Bright Futures was created as a way to give students, with great academic standing, funds to continue off into college. They provided full scholarships and partial that would go to books, classes, housing, and etc.

Kella Noncent

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California again! This time a multi-millionaire named Ron Unz manages to put a measure on the June 1998 ballot outlawing bilingual education in California.

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For those of you who haven't previously heard, we are in the process of placing an initiative on the June 1998 ballot which would more-or-less end "bilingual education" in California once and for all. The program have been a disaster, the legislature has been gridlocked for ten years, and a statutory ballot initiative is necessary to finally solve the problem.

For those of you who aren't aware, the current system of teaching English to children in California public schools has an annual failure rate of 95%! Immigrant parents in Los Angeles and elsewhere have even had to begin public boycotts of schools in order to try to pressure school administrators to teach their children English rather than Spanish.

Our initiative is currently awaiting title and summary at the Attorney General's office, and the signature drive should begin around the beginning of July. If any of you wish to help put this initiative on the ballot or support our efforts in any way, just send us an e-mail, or get more information by visiting our web site at http://www.OneNation.org. Also, send us the names of any other individuals who you think should be put on our e-mail distribution list.

Help get the word out, and this next school year will be the last burdened by the failure of bilingual education.

Let's get the job done!

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"English for the Children" Initiative to End Bilingual Education by June 1998

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For those of you who haven't previously heard, we are in the process of placing an initiative on the June 1998 ballot which would more-or-less end "bilingual education" in California once and for all. The program have been a disaster, the legislature has been gridlocked for ten years, and a statutory ballot initiative is necessary [...]

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Columbine School Shooting (1999) (Cami Matusky)

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Columbine School Shooting (1999) (Cami Matusky)

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The massacre occurs in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Becomes the deadliest school shooting at this point in time. It sparks conversations about school safety and safety procedures.

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The 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School transformed the way American schools and law-enforcement agencies prepare for violent or deadly incidents.

Though school shootings are still relatively rare, fear that one could occur has sparked a number of preventative efforts - some that have saved lives, and others that may have gone too far.

Now, schools and law-enforcement agencies know what to do and what to expect when a gunman opens fire.

Yet some fear that advents like the now-ubiquitous active-shooter drill are harming more than they are helping.

Visit INSIDER.com for more stories.

Twenty years ago, two students clad in black trench coats and armed with sawed-off shotguns approached Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and opened fire on dozens of their classmates.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and left more than 20 others injured that day. The shooting itself took just 16 minutes, and Harris and Klebold turned their weapons on themselves within the hour.

But in a devastating flurry of miscommunication and chaos among the law-enforcement agencies that responded, a wounded teacher slowly bled out in a classroom after waiting four hours for paramedics to arrive, as desperate students put up a sign in the window that read "1 bleeding to death."

The shooting highlighted the lack of preparation and strategy needed to respond to a fast-moving massacre that was over in minutes, but left a trail of destruction and death.

During the Columbine shooting, an array of disparate law-enforcement agencies responded to the scene, communicating on more than a dozen different radio channels, unaware of one another's plans, while a growing number of 911 calls jammed the lines, according to The Denver Post.
Read more: Americans look to Columbine to better understand school shootings - but myths about the shooters have persisted for years
Unfamiliar with the high school's layout and unaware that the gunmen had already killed themselves, the SWAT teams painstakingly searched the school room by room, traveling east on the lower floor and west on the upper floor. Dave Sanders, the teacher who bled to death, was located in a room on the west end of the upper floor - one of the very last places first responders reached.

Now, law enforcement goes in immediately to stop a shooting

In the wake of what was then the country's deadliest high-school shooting, American schools and law-enforcement agencies have since transformed their response to a phenomenon now known as an "active shooting."

Though school shootings are still rare, they have killed an estimated 143 people in the years since Columbine, according to The Washington Post. The fear that one could occur has prompted schools and law-enforcement agencies across the country to plan for the worst and strategize the most effective ways to prevent - and, if necessary, halt - active shootings.

Twenty years ago, authorities waited outside Columbine for SWAT teams to arrive, leaving Harris and Klebold to finish their spree and take their own lives. Tactical officers didn't enter the building until 47 minutes after the first gunshots rang out. They didn't declare the scene under control until five hours had lapsed.

Today, officers responding to an active shooting have a much simpler mandate: go in immediately, alone if need be, and stop the gunfire.

Most schools have a trained professional present to prevent and stop shootings

In a growing number of schools across America, armed guards known as school resource officers (SROs) are already inside the building - ideally working to prevent shootings in the first place by identifying troubled kids who might be planning something violent.

"I think that everyone who was in this business knew that the way that went down was going to have some serious ramifications for how we address this moving forward," Mo Canady, the executive director for the National Association of School Resource Officers, told INSIDER.

During the Columbine shooting, the school actually employed an armed school resource officer. But he was on his way back from lunch at a nearby Subway when the first 911 calls came in, and ended up exchanging fire with Harris from 60 to 70 yards away.

Canady said SROs' roles in responding to shootings was overhauled after Columbine, and officers now have much clearer protocols on what to do in the event of an active shooter.

"An SRO in the school building hears gunfire, becomes aware of where it's coming from, and basically, in as tactically sound a way as possible, pursues the shooter with the intent of ending the shooting - bottom line," Canady told INSIDER.

The protocols aren't foolproof - mistakes or failures do still occur. Most notably, the school resource officer employed by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, became a pariah after he failed to enter the building during the February 14, 2018 shooting. Security video showed him waiting outside the school during the shooting for 4 minutes.

But Canady said he's seen a number of instances in which heroic school resource officers staved off potential shootings before they even happened, or halted an attack as it was occurring. Last May, for instance, two school resource officers in Santa Fe were widely praised after rushing into the school and confronting a shooter, likely saving lives.

Though Canady said the data's unclear on exactly how many schools across the country do or do not employ school resource officers, his organization recommends that each school employ longtime police veterans who have been trained to work in educational environments.

"This is the most unique assignment in law enforcement," he said. "And so certainly we are of the strong belief that every single school in this country needs at least one carefully selected, specifically trained SRO."

Active shooter drills are commonplace

Another post-Columbine advent has been the active shooter drill, which has become a ubiquitous part of American childhood. Now, students and teachers regularly practice procedures for how to handle such an incident, typically locking doors, shutting off lights, and sheltering in place until police arrive.
Read more: Active shooter drills could reshape how a generation of students views school
The drills have come under scrutiny recently for traumatizing - and even injuring - students and staff. Last month, elementary school teachers in Indiana were shot "execution style" with pellet guns during a drill.

Canady said "balance" is the key to any active-shooter preparation, and a number of faulty, "knee-jerk reactions" occurred after Columbine that schools and law-enforcement agencies need to be mindful of. Some schools, for instance, tried to implement a "zero tolerance" approach to weapons in schools, triggering unfairly harsh punishments for students who mistakenly or innocuously violated the rules.

"It got school administrators in a situation where they had to take a specific action on every knife found, whether it was a dangerous knife, or it was a small boy scout knife that a kid on a campout over the weekend left in their backpack," he said. "We didn't have an opportunity to let each case stand on its own and bring fairness."

The fear that you could be next

Statistically speaking, the odds of a child experiencing a school shooting in his or her lifetime is extraordinarily low. But incidents like Columbine, and the series of successive mass shootings that followed, have for years propelled an ongoing fear among students and parents.

Though researchers say it's nearly impossible to tell whether active-shooter drills are actually effective at saving lives or lowering risk, concerns that the drills are psychologically harming children have been growing.

Gallup, which has measured parents' concerns about school safety since 1998, has found that fear for "physical safety" often spikes right after a major school shooting.

The day after the Columbine massacre, 55% of parents said they feared for their children's safety at school. After the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, 33% of parents expressed fear. After the Parkland and Santa Fe shootings, 35% did, up from 24% the previous year.

Beyond that, 20% of parents in 2018 said their children themselves had expressed concerns about feeling unsafe at school.

That fear follows children throughout their teenage years, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2018, 57% of teens said they were worried about a shooting at their school, and one in four said they were "very worried."

After the Sante Fe high school shooting, one student at the school named Paige Curry put this fear into haunting words:

"It's been happening everywhere," she said. "I always felt like eventually, it was going to happen here, too."

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How Columbine changed American schools forever

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The 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School transformed the way American schools and law-enforcement agencies prepare for violent or deadly incidents. Though school shootings are still relatively rare, fear that one could occur has sparked a number of preventative efforts - some that have saved lives, and others that may have gone too far.

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Diane Ravitch's book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, criticizes progressive educational policies and argues for a more traditional, academically-oriented education. Her views, which are reminiscent of the "back to the basics" movement of the late 1970s and 1980s, are representative of the current conservative trend in education and the nation at large.

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No Child Left Behind Act (2001) Alexis Walters

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No Child Left Behind Act (2001) Alexis Walters

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The main goal of The No Child Left Behind Act was to give students fair and equal education opportunities for all children to get a higher education.

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When the Every Student Succeeds Act won bipartisan support from a famously polarized Congress in 2015, it was less a sign of the two parties' ability to work together than an indictment of what they were replacing: No Child Left Behind.

NCLB had grown increasingly unpopular, blamed for setting impossible-to-reach goals, inciting test-prep frenzy, and unfairly targeting high-poverty schools. (The law has defenders, too, who point to evidence that it increased student achievement in math and provided important new breakdowns of performance data by race.)

ESSA gave states a chance to start fresh. To date, 16 states and Washington, DC have submitted their plans to implement the law; one plan, Delaware's, has been approved by the Department of Education.

With some plans in hand, it's worth asking: Are states really changing course? Are they learning from what many viewed as the problematic aspects of the law ESSA replaced?

Here are some of the sharpest criticisms levied at No Child Left Behind - and what we know about whether states are now planning to go in a different direction.

Criticism #1: States put too much focus on testing.

No Child Left Behind became closely associated with high-stakes testing. ESSA continues to require annual testing in grades three through eight, but allows states to use metrics other than test scores in their plans for evaluating schools.

Indeed, every state that has submitted a plan so far has added - or plans to add - at least one additional measure. The most popular has been chronic absenteeism.

"States are broadening their accountability systems beyond reading and math," according to a review of state plans by Bellwether Education Partners, an education consulting firm generally aligned with the education reform movement. "Most states added science and a more accurate measure of student attendance, not to mention indicators measuring physical education, art, and school climate."

But, particularly in elementary and middle school, it remains true that test scores will be the major driver of which schools are deemed low-performing.

That's partially because the law requires "much greater" weight to be placed on test scores - and on graduation rates for high schools - than on non-academic measures like absenteeism or student engagement.

Still, states have interpreted that in different ways. Delaware's system will base 70 percent of its ratings for elementary and middle schools on state tests. In Louisiana, 75 percent of scores for elementary schools will be determined by state math and English tests and 25 percent will come from science and social studies exams. (Eventually, Louisiana plans to add "access to a well-rounded curriculum" as a measure, though it will only account for 5 percent.)

Other states are making greater efforts to scale back testing. In Maryland, according to a draft plan, only 45 percent of elementary-school scores will be based on state tests - though it remains to be seen whether the feds will approve this approach.

Criticism #2: Schools serving lots of poor students were unfairly penalized.

No Child Left Behind used student proficiency to measure schools - and one all-but-inevitable consequence is that school ratings are tightly associated with poverty.

A number of researchers have argued that this approach unfairly penalizes schools for the students they serve and deters teachers from working in those schools. Certain civil rights groups, though, say this method is important in order to maintain high standards and identify schools that need the most help.

Under ESSA, this positive correlation is likely to remain. High-poverty schools will probably still be far more likely to be identified as low-performing, since states, as required by the statute, will continue to use proficiency or overall performance.

Most states also plan to use measures of student growth, which are less tightly associated with poverty. But even when it comes to growth, a number of states are using hybrid approaches that don't break the link between performance and poverty. Other common indicators, like chronic absenteeism and high school graduation rates, are also tightly related to student income.

A review by the Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank, found that only a handful of states would likely be fair to high-poverty schools. Matthew Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute, a think tank affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, came to a similar conclusion.

"ESSA perpetuates long-standing measurement problems that were institutionalized under No Child Left Behind," Di Carlo wrote. "The ongoing failure to distinguish between student and school performance continue to dominate accountability policy to this day."

Criticism #3: Schools were pushed to focus on kids near the proficiency bar and ignore others.

Another problem many identified under No Child Left Behind was that proficiency created an all-or-nothing definition of academic performance - that is, a school was penalized if a student fell short of the proficiency bar by a single question, yet didn't get extra credit for those who scored far above proficiency. In other words, schools had less incentive to help kids far above and far below proficiency.

A number of states seem to have taken this to heart. The Fordham Institute report gave eight out of 16 states a strong rating in whether there are incentives to "focus on all students."

To do that, some state plans emphasize student growth or judge schools based on average overall test scores. Several states plan to use those measures for a majority of their elementary and middle school ratings.

Still, proficiency continues to play a major role in many state plans. Moreover, the use of chronic absenteeism risks replicating the problem: schools will have an incentive to focus on kids just short of the bar to be deemed chronically absent (often 15 days out of school).

That said, there remains significant debate about whether this downside actually exists. Although older research on accountability systems in Chicago and Texas showed that teachers focused more on "bubble kids" - that is, those near proficiency - a study of several states during the NCLB era did not find evidence of this.

Criticism #4: States didn't do a good job helping low-performing schools improve.

The mission of NCLB - and now ESSA - was to identify schools that need help, incentivize them to improve, and if that doesn't work, require states to intervene. Perhaps the most troubling legacy of No Child Left Behind, as well as the Obama-era school turnaround program, is what we didn't learn: what interventions truly improve a struggling school.

States have tried a variety of strategies - including improving support for teachers, adding social services, closure, and conversion to charters - and have found mixed success. ( There is some evidence that dismissal of a critical mass of teachers and the principal, combined with hiring flexibility and additional resources, is a promising approach.)

Perhaps because the research is so inconclusive - as well as due to political considerations - many states have been vague about how they plan to intervene in schools in the future.

"Instead of taking the opportunity to design their own school improvement strategies, the state produced plans that are mostly vague and non-specific on how they will support low-performing schools," according to the review by Bellwether.

One exception, the report notes, is New Mexico, which created a menu of specific options - including closure, charter takeover, or significant restructuring - for schools that are persistent low-performing. This is similar to the federal School Improvement Grant program, which produced inconsistent results.

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No Child Left Behind is dead. But have states learned from it?

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When the Every Student Succeeds Act won bipartisan support from a famously polarized Congress in 2015, it was less a sign of the two parties' ability to work together than an indictment of what they were replacing: No Child Left Behind. NCLB had grown increasingly unpopular, blamed for setting impossible-to-reach goals, inciting test-prep frenzy, and unfairly targeting high-poverty schools.

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(2002)The North American Reggio Emilia Alliance

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(2002)The North American Reggio Emilia Alliance

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The North American Reggio Emilia Alliance is an International Network that speaks up and pushes and defends the rights of families, teachers and children of all cultures. They do this by collaboration inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach. Which is an educational philosophy that is centered around primary education.

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The North American Reggio Emilia Alliance (NAREA) is formally launched as an organization. Its goals include promoting the rights of young children and providing information about the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education.

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the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act- 2004

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the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act- 2004

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reauthorizes and modifies IDEA included changes to the IEP process and procedural safeguards, increased authority for school personnel in special education placement decisions, and aligned the act with the No Child Left Behind Act. Requires school districts to use the Response to Intervention approach to detect students with learning disabilities and provides a three-tier system for screening, monitoring, and providing increasing degrees of intervention with the goal of reducing the need for special needs services by detecting them early and making plans to help that student before it progresses.

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The U.S. economy was at a major decline after the housing market crashed. This led to economic uncertainty and many budget cuts in education. Thus many schools had a decrease in funding and many teachers face layoffs.

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2010-Michelle Obama encourages healthy eating!

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2010-Michelle Obama encourages healthy eating!

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FASA, meaning Free Application for Federal Student Aide is provided to ensure a opportunity for middle and lower class students to still be able to have an education. This program provides financial aide in scholarships and reduces the cost to attend college.

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The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) must be completed to apply for federal and state financial aid. Many colleges and universities, especially public institutions, also require the FAFSA. The FAFSA must be submitted every year to obtain financial aid for college.

Obtaining a FAFSA
The FAFSA is available in several formats, including online, PDF and paper versions. The best option is to complete the web-based version of the FAFSA known as FAFSA on the Web. It includes step-by-step instructions for completing the online FAFSA as well as pre-application worksheets. Obtain a FSA ID at https://fsaid.ed.gov/npas/index.htm. Students can started on the right track with Fastweb's FAFSA Checklist to help prepare for filling out the FAFSA.

All eligible students should fill out the form to create a FSA ID and follow all instructions. FAFSA on the Web benefits:
- Get Student Aid Report (SAR) sooner than with the paper or PDF forms. Your FAFSA will be more accurate, since the FAFSA on the Web has built-in edit checks to catch simple errors and you avoid errors introduced by the OCR process.
- Save the federal government money by reducing their processing costs. The online FAFSA allows you to list up to ten colleges, while the paper FAFSA has space only for four colleges.
- Use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool to pre-fill the answers to some questions on the FAFSA by transferring data from your federal income tax returns. This will save time and may reduce the likelihood that your FAFSA will be selected for verification.
- Obtain the PDF format FAFSA in both English and Spanish. Students may also obtain up to three paper copies by calling 1-800-4-FED-AID (1-800-433-3242) or 1-391-337-5665. (Hearing impaired individuals should call the TTY number 1-800-730-8913.) Paper FAFSAs can be ordered.
Helpful Financial Aid Tools:
EFC Calculators
Finaid's Financial Aid Estimation Form may be used to calculate your EFC and an estimate of your eligibility for financial aid. This may help you understand a bit about how the federal need analysis system works. Finaid's EFC calculator, the US Department of Education's FAFSA4CASTER tool also provides an early estimate of financial aid eligibility.

FAFSA Deadlines
The FAFSA submission period opens on October 1st each year. Financial aid applications, such as the FAFSA, should be submitted as soon as possible after the date they open each year. You cannot submit the form before this deadline because the need analysis process uses your financial information from the prior tax year when calculating eligibility for the upcoming award year. To meet the deadlines for most states you should submit the form no later than March 1st, with February 15th being ideal.

Some states want more students to fill out the FAFSA to qualify for aid and are making completing the FAFSA mandatory in order to graduate from high school. Check for your State deadline: Find my State's FAFSA deadline. Do not wait until income tax returns are filed with the IRS. You should either estimate your income - you'll have a chance to correct errors later - or complete your tax returns early.

For Financial Aid Administrators: 2022-2023 Changes to the FAFSA
The Department of Education released the new Summary of Changes for the Application Processing System is designed to meet the reference needs of financial aid administrators (FAAs), National College Attainment Network (NCAN), Federal TRIO program staff, guidance counselors, programmers, and data processing staff. The guide describes updates and enhancements to the 2022-2023 application processing system and to student and school Web products. See report: Summary of Changes for the Application Processing System - 2022-23

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The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) must be completed to apply for federal and state financial aid. Many colleges and universities, especially public institutions, also require the FAFSA. The FAFSA must be submitted every year to obtain financial aid for college.

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“Too much testing movement”(2015)brianna w.

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“Too much testing movement”(2015)brianna w.

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President Obama joins this movement as his plans call for limiting standardized testing to no more than 2% of classroom time.

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Though Columbia University had been awarding graduate and professional degrees to women for many years, this change of allowing women to enroll in Columbia College as undergraduates makes it the last Ivy League school to become completely coeducational.

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The Class of 1987 broke ground by ending a more than 200-year tradition and becoming the first fully coed class. In 1989, those women, and others who followed, helped establish Columbia College Women.

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Coral Way elementary school was the first school to open a bilingual program because the Spanish community was growing.

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CORAL WAY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

In 1963, Miami's Spanish-speaking immigrant community was growing. In response to the needs of those children, Coral Way Elementary became the first publicly-funded dual language two-way immersion program in the United States. As part of the program, both Spanish- and English-speaking children would learn in both languages. Becoming bilingual and biliterate.

Although some of their original methods changed, Coral Way's visionary program has had lasting effects. The school is a celebrated bilingual institution in the community and beyond. It was recognized as "School of the Year" by the Spanish Consulate in 2018 and what started as a temporary "experiment," continues to impact educational policy today. In 2019, there were more than 2,000 dual language programs across the US. In Florida alone, there were over 125.

The Coral Way Dual Language Experiment, a book authored by Dr. Maria Coady, will be released in fall 2019 (Multilingual Matters Publishers). It shares the story of Coral Way's extraordinary experiment using materials from the Coral Way Digital Collection, housed at the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries.

In 1961, Dade County Public Schools (DCPS) hired Dr. Pauline Martz Rojas as a consultant. Dr. Rojas created guidelines for Cuban refugee students known as the "Basic Program for Cuban Pupils." In addition to the guidelines, Dr. Rojas recommended that DCPS submit a proposal to the Ford Foundation for financial assistance. DCPS Superintendent Joseph Hall and Dr. Rojas worked together to submit the proposal for "a comprehensive approach and medium term solutions to support Cuban students and American teachers." The project was awarded $278,000 in 1962. Its two main objectives were "to create materials for teaching English, using the Fries series as a foundation for English as a Second Language (ESL) students and to prepare teachers for English-learning students."

To achieve those objectives, Coral Way staff prepared reading materials for non-English speaking students. They created guides and audio-visual materials for teachers of bilingual students. They also revised or adapted books in the Fries American English Series. But most importantly they established the first bilingual school.

1962 | Teacher Preparation

Coral Way classroom teachers were assigned Aides who were recently arrived bilingual Cuban teachers. Due to language and certification differences, their professional experience and training went unrecognized by Dade County Public Schools (now Miami-Dade County Public Schools). Aides worked alongside teachers to help Spanish-speaking children learn and adjust to life in the United States.

The Ford Foundation funded the Cuban Retraining Program through nearby University of Miami to give Cuban Aides the possibility to obtain their Florida teaching license. All 33 teachers that were accepted into the first round passed the state certification test.

In fall 1963, Coral Way Elementary launched the bilingual program with twelve teachers and three teacher aides. The program was divided equally among three grade levels (first, second, and third grade) with four groups in each grade. Within each grade, there were two groups of native Spanish speakers and two groups of native English speakers.

Although the initial offering was small, the intention was to start a system that exposed students to bilingual education for the remainder of their elementary school experience.

1964-1965 | Evolving Program

Reaction to the program was mostly positive. People who supported it highlighted the benefits of cultural diversity exposure. Those who did not agree, spoke about the ways it was "un-American." Yet the program continued to grow, gaining national and international attention.

Over time, the program evolved and changed. The dual language component expanded from the primary grades to include all levels at Coral Way, Kindergarten through 6th grade.

1966-1967 | Coral Way Visitors

The innovations at Coral Way Elementary attracted visitors from other school districts, counties, states, and even other countries. In 1966 Luis Morales Chua and Manuel Eduardo Rodriguez visited from Guatemala as well as Dr. Frances Klein from the University of California, Los Angeles. The following year, Cecilio Contreras Caraballo, a Zone Supervisor of English from Puerto Rico, visited Coral Way. Caraballo was looking for strategies he could use in Puerto Rico's English as a Second Language Program. He later stated in a letter to Coral Way's Principal Logan, "Your new approach to bilingualism and team teaching gave us a whole new vision on how to tackle team planning and cooperative teaching."

1968-1969 | Concerns About the Future

At the end of the 1967-1968 school year, Principal J. L. Logan wrote a letter to the Superintendent of the South Central District, J. J. Norton. In it he requested a meeting concerning the future of Coral Way as a bilingual school. He explained the problems that Coral Way had experienced that year. "These problems, both organizational and curriculum, have come about as a result of the shift in pupil population from English to Spanish." When the program began in 1963, there was an equal number of English and Spanish speaking students. But as the situation in Cuba worsened, the number of refugees arriving in Miami increased. At the beginning of the 1968-1969 school year, Spanish speaking students were 74% of the school's population. Principal Logan stated that "if this school population shift continues Coral Way will become a bilingual school for the Spanish with just a few English speaking pupils participating. Then the real purpose of the school having been established will have been lost."

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CORAL WAY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL In 1963, Miami's Spanish-speaking immigrant community was growing. In response to the needs of those children, Coral Way Elementary became the first publicly-funded dual language two-way immersion program in the United States. As part of the program, both Spanish- and English-speaking children would learn in both languages.

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Florida passes legislation to provide a minimum salary of $47,500 for all K-12 teachers. Without that legislation, Florida's teacher salaries would have been among the lowest in the United States. Hooray for everyone in Fischler Academy!

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In 2020-present COVID took a turn for the worst in schools. It forced kids to be virtual with no option of in person learning. It created an atmosphere of uncertainty in schools. Which cause the inability to have standardize testing and SAT\ACT.

Kella Noncent