History timeline.

1900 - The Association of American Universities is founded to promote higher standards and put U.S. universities on an equal footing with their European counterparts.

1905- The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is founded. It is charted by an act of Congress in 1906, the same year the Foundation encouraged the adoption of a standard system for equating "seat time" (the amount of time spent in a class) to high school credits.

1916 - John Dewey's is published. Dewey's views help advance the ideas of the "progressive education movement." An outgrowth of the progressive political movement, progressive education seeks to make schools more effective agents of democracy. His daughter, Evelyn Dewey, coauthors with her father, and goes on to write several books on her own.

1919 - The Progressive Education Association is founded with the goal of reforming American education.

1920 - The 19th Amendment is ratified, giving women the right to vote.

1922 - Abigail Adams Eliot, with help from Mrs. Henry Greenleaf Pearson, establishes the Ruggles Street Nursery School in Roxbury, MA, one of the first educational nursery schools in the U.S. It becomes the Eliot-Pearson Children's School and is now affiliated with the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University.

1929 - The Great Depression begins with the stock market crash in October. The U.S. economy is devastated. Public education funding suffers greatly, resulting in school closings, teacher layoffs, and lower salaries.

1941 - The U.S. enters World War II after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor on December 7. During the next four years, much of the country's resources go to the war effort. Education is put on the back burner as many young men quit school to enlist; schools are faced with personnel problems as teachers and other employees enlist, are drafted, or leave to work in defense plants; school construction is put on hold.

1954 - On May 17th, the U.S. Supreme Court announces its decision in the case of Brown v. Board. of Education of Topeka, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," thus overturning its previous ruling in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Brown v. Board of Education is actually a combination of five cases from different parts of the country. It is a historic first step in the long and still unfinished journey toward equality in U.S. education.

1955 - Rosa Parks, a Montgomery, Alabama seamstress, refuses to give up her seat on the bus to a Caucasian passenger and is subsequently arrested and fined. The Montgomery bus boycott follows, giving impetus to the Civil Rights Movement. A year later, in the case of Browder v. Gale, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregated seating on buses is unconstitutional.

1960 -First grader Ruby Bridges is the first African American to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. She becomes a class of one as parents remove all Caucasian students from the school.

1963 - President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Schools close as the nation mourns its loss. Lyndon Johnson becomes president.

1965 - Lyndon Johnson signs the Immigration Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, on October.3rd. It abolishes the National Origins Formula and results in unprecedented numbers of Asians and Latin Americans immigrating to the United States, making America's classrooms much more diverse.

1968 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Nobel Prize winner and leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, observed on the third Monday of January, celebrates his life and legacy.

1980 - The Refugee Act of 1980 is signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on March 18th. Building on the Immigration Act of 1965, it reforms immigration law to admit refugees for humanitarian reasons and results in the resettlement of more than three-million refugees in the United States including many children who bring special needs and issues to their classrooms.

1980 - Ronald Reagan is elected president, ushering in a new conservative era, not only in foreign and economic policy, but in education as well. However, he never carries out his pledge to reduce the federal role in education by eliminating the Department of Education, which had become a Cabinet level agency that same year under the Carter administration.

1989 - President Georg H. W. Bush calls together the nation's governors for an education summit in Charlottesville, Virginia . The meeting sows the seeds for national standards for K-12 education.

1990- The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990, the first comprehensive reform since 1965, is enacted on 29 November and increases annual immigration to 700,000 adding to the diversity of our nation and its schools.

2008 - Barack Obama defeats John McCain and is elected the 44th President of the United States. Substantial changes in the No Child Left Behind Act are eventually expected, but with two ongoing wars as well as the current preoccupation with our nation's economic problems, reauthorization of NCLB is unlikely to happen any time soon.

2017 - President Donald Trump signs the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law on December 22nd. The bill lowers corporate taxes as well as those for most individuals. Educational implications include maintaining the $250 limit on deductions teachers can take for school supplies and expanding the use of 529 savings plans for K-12 private and homeschool costs

On March 11, President Joe Biden signs the 1.9-trillion dollar COVID-19 relief bill into law. In addition to providing stimulus payments to most Americans, the bill also extends federal unemployment benefits, increases child tax credits, and provides 125 billion dollars to help schools reopen.

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