A brief history of public education

School should be free and mandatory for all kids. It's obvious, right?

Actually, it's kind of a new idea.

This lesson summarizes major milestones in history of public education in the United States.

Large-scale public education in America began in Massachusetts in the 1850s under the leadership of Horace Mann (pictured). Mann developed an organization of over a thousand compulsory schools modeled on the Prussian system of common schools.

Public education expanded further under President Ulysses S. Grant, who in 1875 campaigned for a constitutional amendment to mandate free public schools and prohibit public funding of religious schools. This amendment (known as the Blaine Amendment) failed, but the policy was adopted in most state constitutions. The idea that free public schools should be widely available and separate from religious institutions began to become part of the fabric of America.

Free public education and the end of child labor

Tuition-free basic education has been generally required in America for more than 100 years. It was a big transition. In 1910, more than a quarter of children in America did not attend school. At the time, even radicals in America viewed tuition-free universal education as a dream.

Tuition-free basic education has been universal in America for more than 100 years.

Putting children in school required first extracting them from fields and factories, where the poorest endured horrifying conditions with few protections. Around the turn of the 20th century, American journalists drew attention to the dreadful working conditions in factories. Women organized in protest, collaborating with the labor movement to press for policy changes.

By 1916 most states, following examples in Europe and Massachusetts, had passed laws to outlaw, discourage or at least regulate childhood labor. As states developed laws regarding child labor, they also changed public expectations about public schooling.

Milestones in the history of universal education

Over the last hundred years, a broad theme in the evolution of public education has been to make access to it more universal.

Since the 1970s, state and national education policies have increasingly reflected this principle of universal access, including a growing sense that students should have equal access to not just a school, but a good school. Students must also have equal opportunity to succeed at school: they are protected from discrimination in the classroom and on the athletic field. Issues of funding equity and adequacy have driven policy decisions for more than four decades.

A century of steadily expanding and improving access to education has fundamentally changed America, both economically and socially. Universal public education is a major proof point for America's self-image: this is a land of opportunity for all.

Education is a strategy for national defense

National security concerns have strongly influenced the history of America's educational system.

Sputnik

In the early years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik sparked concern that America was falling behind, and failing to produce the scientists and inventors needed for a nuclear age. This sparked a wave of investment in science programs in America's schools and universities. Today it is widely accepted that education is connected not only to economic and military security, but social aims as well.

In 1983, "A Nation at Risk" called for sweeping changes in U.S. education, and kicked off a series of national conversations about standards. The goal was to improve what children know and are able to do at each grade level so the U.S. could stay safe and competitive in a global economy. A widespread consensus led to passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), passed in 2001. The big-picture goal of NCLB was to gradually raise the achievement bar, year by year, so that all children, including those usually "left behind", would receive a solid education. The law required each state to establish grade-level standards and to test all students annually in order to evaluate each school’s success.

As the bar rose, many schools did not meet the expectations, especially for their students living in poverty. Popular support for the law collapsed. In 2015, a bipartisan consensus in Congress replaced NCLB with the Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA), which kept the requirement for annual testing but significantly reduced the federal role in pressing for measurable improvement in test scores.

Education is a strategy for national inclusion

NCLB revealed that the 50 states expected widely different things from their students. Many states' standards had been written clumsily, with a narrow definition of success. In 2009, the National Governors Association initiated a project to make standards more meaningful and useful by defining a new set of shared standards that became known as the Common Core State Standards. (More about that in Lesson 6.1.)

These standards originated with the states, but federal funding was key to their adoption. The Obama administration used a competitive federal matching grant program called Race to the Top (RTT) to challenge states to develop strong implementation plans. California set 2015 as the year it would begin evaluating the performance of its students and schools based on these new standards.

How the pandemic changed education

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly changed education for virtually all students in at least three ways. First, it evaporated the notion that all children must always attend school in person. Second, it demonstrated that relationships matter for learning. Third, it further widened the educational gap between students of different backgrounds.

When the Pandemic hit, school districts scrambled to provide children with ways they could continue learning at home — especially with digital resources for distance learning. Their efforts were partially successful, but it quickly became clear that the internet had become the new #2 pencil — school just doesn't work without it.

Access to computing devices and high speed internet is unequal across socioeconomic classes. Online learning works pretty well for students who have experience with technology, access to tutors, and a quiet place to work. Rich kids have all that. Poor kids don't.

The lessons of the Pandemic for education will take years to be clearly understood, but it is already clear that it widened the educational gap between students of different backgrounds.

Education is a bipartisan issue

Like national defense and social security, America has enjoyed a rough national consensus that education is important and worth investing in. This consensus is vital because universal public education costs serious money and requires serious taxes. As discussed in Lesson 1.1, most developed nations and states commit about 3% to 5% of their economy to public education through high school. California falls on the low end of this spectrum, but 3% of the economy is still serious money.

Why have lawmakers over time cared about education policies? Because their constituents care about them. Policymaking is hard. People disagree vehemently, and the path to wise policy is rarely clear. Lawmakers choose their point of view with expert advice from advocacy organizations and think tanks (Lesson 7.7), of course, but when parent leaders and student leaders present a clearly developed point of view they listen with attention.

What’s Ed100’s role in this scrum, you ask? We help members of parent organizations and student organizations become well-informed constituents. With knowledge, they can develop their own point of view, empathize with other points of view, and prepare to have a voice in the room where it happens.

Reason for hope

People disagree about public education policies in a way that has become noisy and partisan. Disagreements simmer about charter school policies, for example, or the role of unions, or how much money to spend.

But it's worth noting how little we argue these days about the basic principle that all children should have the chance to attend quality schools and meet high academic standards. Horace Mann would be pleased.

Last updated September 2023
Previous updates include:
September 2022
December 2021
July 2021
December 2020
December 2019
August 2018
May 2017