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¨Free School¨
The first ¨free school¨ is open in Virginia opens. However, education in the Southern colonies is most typically at home. -
Massachusetts Law of 1647
It decrees that every town of at least 50 families hire a schoolmaster who would teach the town's children to read and write and that all towns of at least 100 families should have a Latin grammar schoolmaster who will prepare students to attend Harvard College. -
Teaching Book
Christopher Dock, a Mennonite and one of Pennsylvania's most famous educators, arrives from Germany and later opens a school in Montgomery County, PA. Dock's book, published in 1770, is the first book about teaching printed in colonial America. -
English Academy
Benjamin Franklin helps to establish the first "English Academy" in Philadelphia with a curriculum that is both classical and modern, including such courses as history, geography, navigation, surveying, and modern as well as classical languages. The academy ultimately becomes the University of Pennsylvania. -
English Textbooks
Because of his dissatisfaction with English textbooks of the day, Noah Webster writes A Grammatical Institute of the English Language consisting of three volumes: a spelling book, a grammar book, and a reader. They become very widely used throughout the United States. -
Blackboard
James Pillans invents the modern blackboard. -
Deaf School
The Connecticut Asylum at Hartford for the Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons opens. It is the first permanent school for the deaf in the U.S. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc are the school's co-founders. In 1864, Thomas Gallaudet's son, Edward Miner Gallaudet, helps to start Gallaudet University, the first college specifically for deaf students. -
Blind School
The New England Asylum for the Blind, now the Perkins School for the Blind, opens in Massachusetts, becoming the first school in the U.S. for children with visual disabilities. -
ACT
The ACT Test is first administered -
Learning Disability
Samuel A. Kirk uses the term "learning disability" at a Chicago conference on children with perceptual disorders. The term sticks, and in 1964, the Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, now the Learning Disabilities Association of America, is formed. Today, nearly one-half of all students in the U.S. who receive special education have been identified as having learning disabilities.