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Dance has occupied a central place in educational theory since the times of the ancient philosophers Plato and Aristotle, who believed that dance contributes to aesthetic, moral, and intellectual values as well as to enhancing physical adeptness and overall well-being. Plato asserted, for example, that dance trains the mind and soul to differentiate among those forms of actions, feelings, and ideas capable of producing nobility of character and refinement of the mind. Aristotle ranked dance among the educational activities qualifying as ends or things of value for themselves. As such, these activities help cultivate the mind. Subsequent philosophers including Lucian (100-200 A.D.), Castiglione (1478-1529), and John Locke (1632-1704), representing (Carter, 1984).

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

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From colonial times and into the early decades of the 19th century, most teachers were men. There were, of course, career schoolmasters, but, especially in smaller and rural schools, the people who stood in front of the classroom might well be farmers, surveyors, even innkeepers, who kept school for a few months a year in their off-season. The more educated and ambitious schoolmasters were young men who made the schoolroom a stepping-stone on their way to careers in the church or the law. The connections they made with local ministers and school committees in securing teaching jobs often helped them when they moved on to their real professions (Levin, 2001).

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Thomas Jefferson proposes a two-track educational system, with different tracks in his words for “the laboring and the learned.” Scholarship would allow a very few of the laboring class to advance, Jefferson says, by “raking a few geniuses from the rubbish.”

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

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

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

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Industrialization changed America’s economy by leading men in new directions that involved business and more money – trading in the stock market, planning railroads and managing factories. According to Hoffman, the sudden change in economic opportunity left thousands of vacant teaching positions available. Educators of the 19th century took this opportunity to declare that women were the “natural” teachers, and that they should take the place of men in grade schools. Catharine Beecher, a passionate spokesperson for women in education helped with this movement. Not only was she concerned with child development, but Beecher had other motives, too. Promoting women as teachers meant that females could hold a “high and honorable profession”. Women of the 1800s were economically vulnerable due to limited choices of work, and teaching meant that they could be independent. As more and more young girls took seats in lecture halls to be educated as teachers, less and less men were thought appropriate for the job. According to Hoffman, the late 19th century ideology was, “If the common schools were to form character… the male teacher was inadequate" (LeQuire, 2016).

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

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

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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.

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

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

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By the 20th century, nearly 75 percent of America’s teachers were female, but according to PBS, males dominated in administrative positions. The 1890s through the 1910s was a period of teacher rebellion; women teachers were closely watched, and their work in the classroom was strictly monitored. Moreover, pay was meager and luxuries like benefits and job security were nearly nonexistent.

According to PBS, teachers began to rebel and unions started to emerge. It took a while, but by 1930, female teachers were largely successful. Their annual pay grew and some women began to rise to principal and superintendent rankings (LeQuire, 2016).

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

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

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

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

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

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The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) lawyers implement such a strategy to challenge school segregation in California filed by Mexican-American parents in Orange County, California. NAACP lawyers followed the Mendez v. Westminster case closely and modeled the strategy in Brown vs. Board of Education
in 1954.

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

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Supreme Court unanimously agrees that segregated schools are “inherently unequal” and must be abolished. Almost 45 years later in 1998, schools, especially in
the north, were as segregated as ever. In 2020, the impact of race and poverty as well as charter schools and school boundary policies continue to impede progress towards the reality of this landmark decision.

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

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

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

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

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Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 is enacted into law. Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against students or employees based on sex. It begins: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be
subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” As a result of Title IX, any school that receives any federal money from the elementary to university level–in short, nearly all schools–must provide fair and equal treatment of the sexes in all areas, including athletics.

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

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

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President Gerald Ford signed into law the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142), now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In adopting this landmark civil rights
measure, Congress opened public school doors for millions of children with disabilities and laid the foundation of the country’s commitment to ensuring that children with disabilities have opportunities to develop their talents, share their gifts, and contribute to their communities. The law guaranteed access to a free appropriate public education
(FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE) to every child with a disability. Subsequent amendments, as reflected in the IDEA, have led to an increased emphasis on access to the general education curriculum,
the provision of services for young children from birth through five, transition planning, and accountability for the achievement of students
with disabilities. The IDEA upholds and protects the rights of infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities and their families.

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

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Impressions formed during the preparation of this report on the state of dance in education suggest that dance has entered substantially into the life of American educational institutions, as it has into American life. It is now recognized as an art form comparable to music, drama, and the visual arts, and equally worthy of study. Like these other subjects, however, dance is vulnerable to unfavorable economic conditions and changing emphases in education. Tensions between nonverbal performance requirements and the verbal emphasis that dominates education in general are unresolved in present dance education programs and likely to be a continuing issue. Scholarship in dance is moving in positive directions, but is by no means firmly established. Teaching positions are not plentiful and publication opportunities for scholarly materials on dance are limited by a relatively small audience. Nevertheless, those artists, teachers, and scholars who care will find a way to continue their pursuit of this important art. And our civilization will be richer for it (Carter, 1984).

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

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

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State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell delivered his fifth annual State of Education Address and unveiled an ambitious, comprehensive plan aimed at closing California’s pernicious achievement gap that exists between students who are
white and students of color, as well as with English learners, students in poverty, and students with disabilities.

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The Texas School Board adopts
revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum. The revised curriculum plays down the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, questions
the separation of church and state, and claims that the U.S. government was infiltrated by Communists during the Cold War.

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

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California Governor, Jerry Brown, signs AB 2016, which modifies existing education code requirements around pupil instruction. It requires an ethnic studies model to be offered in grades 9-12. It is the intent of the legislation that local educational agencies submit course outlines for ethnic studies for approval as A-G courses.

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AB 2772 is amended to mandate one semester of ethnic studies to be included in high school graduation requirements commencing in 2023-2024. Although this bill was vetoed, several school districts have offered ethnic studies courses. The SBE is currently working on releasing an Ethnic Studies Curriculum Model to support these efforts.

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While the exact number of schools offering dance programs is challenging to pinpoint, organizations like the Arts Education Data Project (AEDP) are working to gather and analyze this data. Dance is taught in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools in the United States. While dance is available at every grade level, according to data compiled through AEDP, it is most commonly offered in high schools. The data collected from 17 states during the 2018-2019 school year showed that dance was offered in 15% of High Schools, compared to 4% of Elementary Schools, 6% of Middle Schools, and 10% of mixed grade schools.

NDEO believes that in-school dance programs are a vital part of the dance education community. They ensure that all students have access to dance education, regardless of their background, ability, and socioeconomic status. Moreover, the inclusion of dance in the PreK-12 curriculum increases exposure to dance that benefits the entire field.

Students who discover dance as part of the school curriculum often seek out further instruction at studios and in after-school programs. They may choose to attend college dance programs. They can become lifelong fans of dance, attending dance concerts as audience members, supporting dance in their communities and advocating for the future of dance and dance education (Nando, 2022).