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Principles of Religion and The Captial Laws of Commonwealth
The Puritans of the Massechusetts Bay Colony mandated that parents teach children the principles of religion and the capital laws of the commonwealth. Within five years, it had passed America's earliest law relating to schooling, the "Old Deluder Satan Act" of 1647, which required taht every town of fifty or more families hire a primary school teacher for young children. (Teaching on Principle and Promise: The Foundations of Education, pg. 219) -
Normal Schools
Horace Mann promoted the establishment of special state-funded post-secondary institutions called normal schools. these were established as a model for the training of elementary teachers. The first normal school was founded in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1839. (Teaching on Principle and Promise: The Foundations of Education, pg. 227) -
Organized School Systems
The Northeast, led by Massachusetts and Connecticut, was moving toward teh establishment of organized school systems that were free and accessible to all children. (Teaching on Principle and Promise: The Foundations of Education, pg. 225) -
Elected School Committees to Oversee Schools
In 1826 the Massechusetts Great and General Court (the state legislature) enacted a law requireing that all cities and towns elect a school committee to oversee schools. The following year, the legislature expanded publicly funded education by requireing that communities provide a high school education for their children. (Teaching on Principle and Promise: The Foundations of Education, pg. 224-225) -
Wisconsin's 1848 School Law
The law stipulated that elementary education shoudl be free to everyone between the ages of four and twenty. Financing would come from the sale of the sixteenth section, from other federal sources, and from state, township, and district taxes. -
Laboratory School at the University of Chicago
Dewey established the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago to test his theories. It allowed university faculty and students to study how children learn and to try out new methods of instruction. He united the "academic" and the "vocational" allowing the subject areas into projects that related to real-world. -
Chicago Teachers' Federation
Margaret Haley, an education reformer, labor activist, and feminist, cofounded the Chicago Teachers' Federation with Catherin Goggin as the first labor union for teachers. This dramatically altered the future of teaching as a profession and teachers as a plitical force. (Teaching on Principle and Promise: The Foundations of Education, pg. 231) -
Bachelor's Degrees
Most states elevated the status of normal schools to college level and began granting bachelor's degrees. -
First American Indian Commissioner
President Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act included specially marked funding for Indian Education, and the president also appointed the first American Indian commissioner of Indian Affairs, Robert Lafollette Bennett. -
ESEA and Opportunity Act
ESEA and the 1964 Opportunity Act would provide compensatory education, special programs that would compensate for the educational disadvantages of the home lives of poor children. These children were presumed to suffer from cultural deprivation, to lack the knowledge, habits of behavior, and values they would need to succeed in school.