Runninghead:ARTIFACT

EDU 202 Educational Timeline

Ryan Moore
College of Southern Nevada

ARTIFACT

2
EDU 202 Educational Timeline

1600s: Christopher Lambs colonial classroom was unorthodox. He focused on using the
children to provide rewards and punishments rather than the traditional rod approach. The
focus of schools in the 1600s was religious teachings. Teachers focused on teaching
children how to read and write all based around the bible. Family was the major
educational resource for children, they taught them values, manners, social graces and
vocational skills. These households became known as dame schools after a wellrespected woman became a community teacher for a fee.
1635: Boston Latin Grammar School was created 15 years after the puritans arrived in
America. It was an exclusive school for boys of wealth.
1636: Harvard College is founded specifically to prepare ministers.
1647: Old Deluder Satan Law or The Massachusetts Law of 1647 was created to thwart
Satans trickery. This law required every town of 50households to appoint and pay a
teacher of reading and writing. Every town of one hundred households must provide a
Latin grammar school to prepare the children for the university.
1687: New England Primer published, and was a small 50 to 100-page book of alphabet,
words and small verses.
1700s: The 18th-century is when a national interest in education arose. Secondary
education began to grow as states took on the responsibility of providing education.
Private teachers as well as night schools were functioning throughout Philadelphia and
New York. Accounting, navigation, French and Spanish were all taught, as apposed to the
strictly religious teachings of the previous century. Thomas Jefferson wanted to educate
more than just the small elite class or only provide religious instruction.

ARTIFACT

1740: South Carolina Denies education to blacks, appropriating the mistreatment of

minorities in education.
1749: Ben Franklin penned Proposals Relating to the Youth of Pennsylvania, which
suggested the replacement of Latin grammar schools.
1751: Franklin Academy opens in Philadelphia; it was free of religious influence and
offered a wide range of courses, which was the beginning of elective classes. This
sparked the establishment of six thousand academies nationwide. The Franklin Academy
went on to become the University of Pennsylvania.
1783: Noah Websters American Spelling Book is published.
1785 and 1787: Land Ordinance Act and Northwest Ordinance provided established
public education in the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi
River.
1800s: The importance of secondary schools arose. There was increased emphasis on
secondary education, however segregated education from women and minorities was a
big part of the 19th century.
1821: The first secondary school for girls opens, Emma Willards Troy Female Seminary.
This is also the year that the first public high school opens in Boston, the English
Classical School.
1823: The first private but normal school opens in Vermont.
1827: Massachusetts requires public high schools.
1828: Andrew Jackson is elected, and the demands for educational access from the poor,
white population were heard.

ARTIFACT
1837: The father of the public school Horace Mann, becomes the Massachusetts State
Board of Educations Secretary. Friedrich Froebel also found the first kindergarten
1839: The first public normal school opens in Lexington, Massachusetts.
1855: The first German language elementary school opens in the United States.
1862: The Morrill Land Grant College Acts helped established sixty-nine institutions of
higher education in many states. Many of these institutions are still alive today, as some
of the states universities.
1874: The Kalamazoo case legalized the taxes for high school establishment.
1896: The court case Plessy v. Ferguson ruled in support of separate but equal schools.
1900s: The focus was on eliminating segregation in schools. Educational rights for
underachieving and minority students were established. There was an increase in federal
support of educational programs.
1909: The first junior high school was established in Columbus, Ohio, and included
grades 7, 8, and 9.
1919: Progressive education programs passed.
1932: New deal education programs passed.
1950: First middle school opens in Bay City, Michigan
1954: The case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision outlaws the racial
segregation of children in schools.
1957: The launching of the Russian satellite Sputnik leads to the federal government
granting more educational funds in order to advance science and education in the United
States.

ARTIFACT

1958: The National Defense Education Act is passed, which gives funding to science,
math, and foreign language programs.
1964-1965: Job Corps and Head Start are founded, which provided medical, social,
nutritional, and educational services for low-income children that are ages 3 to 6.
1972: Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in schools.
1975: Public Law 94-142 is passed. It guaranteed free appropriate education to all
children with disabilities. It was late renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act.
1979: Cabinet-level Department of Education is established.
1983: The National Commission on Excellence in Education release the report A Nation
at Risk: The Importance for Educational Reform. The report cited declining test scores,
the weak performance of students in the United States as opposed to other industrialized
countries, fear that the U.S. is losing its economic standpoint to other countries, and
discussed the high number of functionally illiterate Americans.
2000s: The focus shifted towards raising standardized test scores, regular test scores and
accountability.
2001: The No Child Left Behind Act, which calls for standards and annual testing in
subjects such as math, reading and science. If a schools scores poorly on such tests, they
face a possibility of closure as well as the firing of teachers.
2011: The federal government response to the backlash against the NCLB Act by giving
states more freedom to hold schools and teachers responsible.