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The Civil Rights Act becomes law.
It prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion or national origin. -
The Higher Education Act is signed at Southwest Texas State College on November 8.
It increases federal aid to higher education and provides for scholarships, student loans, and establishes a National Teachers Corps. -
On April 30th, the number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam stands at 543,482, the most at any time during the war.
College enrollments swell as many young men seek student deferments from the draft; anti-war protests become commonplace on college campuses, and grade inflation begins as professors realize that low grades may change male students' draft status. -
1971 - Michael Hart, founder of Project Guttenberg, invents the e-Book.
Project Gutenberg began life in 1971 after Hart was given free use of University of Illinois computers
Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart, who created the first ever ebook after deciding on a whim to type the US Declaration of Independence into a computer, has died at home in Urbana, Illinois, aged 64. -
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. -
1985 - Microsoft Windows 1.0, the first independent version of Windows, is released, setting the stage for subsequent versions that make MS-DOS obsolete.
The first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1.0, released on November 20, 1985, achieved little popularity. The project was briefly codenamed "Interface Manager" before the windowing system was developed - contrary to popular belief that it was the original name for Windows and Rowland Hanson, the head of marketing at Microsoft, convinced the company that the name Windows would be more appealing to customers.[4] Windows 1.0 was not a complete operating system, but rather an "ope -
1990 - Teach for America is formed, reestablishing the idea of a National Teachers Corps.
The organization was founded by Wendy Kopp based on her 1989 Princeton University undergraduate thesis. Members of the founding team include value investor Whitney Tilson, former U.S. Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Douglas Shulman and Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) President and CEO Richard Barth. Since the charter corps was established in 1990, more than 28,000 corps members have completed their commitment to Teach For America. -
President Bill Clinton signs the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 into law on September 30th..
It prohibits states from offering higher education benefit based on residency within a state (in-state tuition) to undocumented immigrants unless the benefit is available to any U.S. citizen or national. This law conflicts, however, with practices and laws in several U.S. states. -
The controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is approved by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002.
The law, which reauthorizes the ESEA of 1965 and replaces the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, mandates high-stakes student testing, holds schools accountable for student achievement levels, and provides penalties for schools that do not make adequate yearly progress toward meeting the goals of NCLB. -
On January 9, President Barack Obama announces a plan to allow two years of free community college for all American students.
However, with Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, there seems little hope that this proposal will be implemented any time soon.
