History of Education Expanded by Sam Munoz

1647

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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.

1779

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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.”

1790

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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.

1820-1860

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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.

1837

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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.

1848

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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.

1851

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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.

1865-1877

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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.

1870s

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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.

1900s

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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.

1917

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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.

By 1870

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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.

1921

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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.”

1924

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

1930-1950

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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.

1945

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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.

1948

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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.

1954

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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.

1957

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

1965

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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.

1968

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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

1972

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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.

1974

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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.

1974

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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.

1975

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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.

Late 1970s

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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.

1996

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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.

2001

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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.

2008

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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.

2010

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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.

2013

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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.

2016

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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.

2018

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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.

1821

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The founding of the first public school in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, and was created to prepare boys for a future in business and industry work.

1837

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Cheyney University is established in Pennsylvania as the first historically black college in the nation. It was founded under the legacy of Richard Humphreys.

1852

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Massachusetts creates the first obligatory attendance law. The law required students of elementary age to attend school.

1867

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Before the establishment of the U.S. Department of Education, there was the Office of Education. The program was signed under President, Andrew Johnson, it served to collect data on schools around the nation as well as support states in creating their individual systems of education.

1879

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Carlisle Indian Industrial School is established in Pennsylvania. It was an off-reservation, government-run school, that held to the philosophy of "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." It lead to similar schools across 37 states to open in the century following its establishment. These schools forced students to abandon their culture and assimilate into American society. The school eventually closed in 1918.

1929

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The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was created, as a civil rights group that aimed to fight for the rights of Hispanics to be given basic human rights. The formation of this activist group was organized to specifically combat against discrimination and segregation. It is considered the largest and longest-lasting civil rights group for Latino Americans in the United States.

1945

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Gonzalo Mendez, as well as three other Mexican-American parents, got together and sued Westminster and 3 other school districts in Orange County. The issue reached the federal court and surrounded the violation of the 14th Amendment. The parents claimed that the segregation of students on the basis of ethnic background or nationality was not ethical. This ended in the first federal school desegregation decision in the nation.

1963

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Coral Way School became the first educational institution to implement a two-way language immersion program. It not only has a bilingual education track, but it also began a bicultural program. This led the trajectory towards dual-immersion instruction.

1994

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President Clinton signed the Improving America's School Act (IASA). This act created reforms for Title 1, which included an increase in funding for bilingual and immigrant education. This led to the effort to develop and implement bilingual education programs.

2015

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Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which substitutes the No Child Left Behind Act. ESSA was implemented to increase the autonomy of the individual states. It focused on upholding equity and critical protections for minority and in-need communities.

1912

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New Mexico entered the union while being known as an official bilingual state. The state constitution, Article XII, prohibited children of "Spanish descent" from being segregated based on their identity.

1968

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Latino High School students in Los Angeles County were performing walkouts to protest the school districts, as they were not being treated equally. At the time, students were being reprimanded for speaking Spanish at school, were denied access to the restroom during school breaks, and were not being encouraged to seek education beyond high school. This led to 13 students being arrested and charged with counts of conspiracy and disorderly conduct.

1970

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A memorandum stating that non-English speaking students cannot be denied access to educational programs was put forth by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

2006

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Latino students, as well as students of other ethnic backgrounds, stage walkouts in Los Angeles County, Houston, and other cities to raise their voices about immigration rights and equality. Several students were arrested and schools restored to issuing suspensions or truancy marks on students.