History of education in the United States

19th century

After the Revolution, northern states especially emphasized education and rapidly established public schools. By the year 1870, all states had tax-subsidized elementary schools. The US population had one of the highest literacy rates in the world at the time. Private academies also flourished in the towns across the country, but rural areas (where most people lived) had few schools before the 1880s.

In 1821, Boston started the first public high school in the United States. By the close of the 19th century, public secondary schools began to outnumber private ones.

Over the years, Americans have been influenced by a number of European reformers; among them Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Montessori.

Academies

In the nineteenth century an academy was what later became known as a high school; in most places in the U.S. there were no public schools above the primary level. Some older high schools, such as Hopkins Academy, retain the term in their names. In 1753, Benjamin Franklin established the academy and Charitable School of the Province of Pennsylvania. In 1755, it was renamed the college and Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia. Today, it is known as the University of Pennsylvania.

The academy movement in the US in the early nineteenth century arose from a public sense that education in the classic disciplines needed to be extended into the new territories and states that were being formed in the new western states. Thousands of academies were started using local funds and tuition; most closed after a few years and others were established. In 1860 there were 6,415 academies in operation. When the Civil War erupted in 1861 they generally closed down temporarily; most in the South never reopened.

A number of colleges began as (high school) academies, then became a college by adding post-secondary unit, and then finally dropped the pre-collegiate academy. Several colleges were indirectly influenced by the academy model, including Brown University in Rhode Island and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

By 1840, 3,204 academies and similar secondary schools were in operation. Most lasted only a few years but others were created and by 1860 6,415 were in operation nationwide. The first public secondary schools started around the 1830s and 40s within the wealthier areas of similar income levels and greatly expanded after 1865 into the 1890s.

High school enrollment increased when schools at this level became free tuition, laws required teenagers to attend until a certain age, and it was believed that every American student had the opportunity to participate regardless of their ability.

• Opal, J. M. "Exciting Emulation: Academies and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1780s–1820s." Journal of American History 91#2 (2004), pp. 445–70. doi:10.2307/3660707

Military academies

An American innovation was the military academy. These were private high schools for men featuring ranks, drills and uniforms copied after the US Military Academy at West Point. They were not supported by the national government, but some were sponsored by state or local governments. Graduates had no obligation to enter the military. Norwich University, founded by Alden Partridge under the name "American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy" was the first one. Opened in Vermont in 1819, it is still in operation. Patridge established a number of these academies, and others were copied after his model. Most closed after a few years. Famous military academies that became universities include Virginia Military Institute (VMI) set up by the Virginia state government in 1839, and The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, set up by the state government in 1843.

Female academies

By the 1840s, New England writers such as Lydia Maria Child, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Lydia Sigourney became respected models and advocates for improving and expanding education for females. Greater educational access meant formerly male-only subjects, such as mathematics and philosophy, were to be integral to curricula at public and private schools for girls. By the late 19th century, these institutions were extending and reinforcing the tradition of women as educators and supervisors of American moral and ethical values. The relative emphasis on decorative arts and refinement of female instruction which had characterized the colonial era was replaced after 1776 by a program to support women in education for their major role in nation building, in order that they become good republican mothers of good republican youth. Fostered by community spirit and financial donations, private female academies were established in towns across the South as well as the North.

About 200 private female academies and seminaries at the high school level were established in the United States between 1790 and 1830. Rich planters were particularly insistent on having their daughters schooled, since education often served as a substitute for dowry in marriage arrangements. The academies usually provided a rigorous and broad curriculum that stressed writing, penmanship, arithmetic, and languages, especially French. By 1840, the female academies succeeded in producing a cultivated, well-read female elite ready for their roles as wives and mothers in southern aristocratic society.

Emma Willard was a New York educator and writer who dedicated her life to women's education. She founded the first school for women's higher education, the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York, which is now Emma Willard School. With the success of her school, she was able to travel across the country and abroad, to promote education for women. Willard pioneered the teaching of science, mathematics, and social studies to young women. She believed in establishing her own guidelines for better education for women, and her book proceeds helped improve female education throughout the world. Willard wrote one of the most widely used textbooks of American history and created the first historical atlas of the U.S. Her maps, graphs, and pictures added the details of the nation's geography into the broad popular image of the country as a large, powerful complex nation.

Religion and schools

Across the country, Protestant ministers (especially Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Methodists) took the lead in promoting public schools. The Second Great Awakening of religious revivals stimulated the rapid growth of membership, and to foster that religiosity they felt that Sunday Schools were not enough. They decided that universal education in public schools were needed to promote standards of morality. They assumed there would be Bible Reading (from the Protestant King James Bible), but the schools would not be linked to any particular denomination.

As the majority of the nation was Protestant in the 19th century, most states passed a state constitutional amendment, called Blaine Amendments, forbidding tax money be used to fund parochial schools. This was largely directed against Catholics, as the heavy immigration from Catholic Ireland after the 1840s aroused nativist sentiment. There were longstanding tensions between Catholic and Protestant believers, long associated with nation states that had established religions. Many Protestants believed that Catholic children should be educated in public schools in order to become American. By 1890 the Irish, who controlled the Church hierarchy in the U.S., had built an extensive network of parishes and parish schools ("parochial schools") across the urban Northeast and Midwest. The Irish and other Catholic ethnic groups intended parochial schools not only to protect their religion, but to enhance their culture and language.

German Lutherans, and Norwegian Lutherans as well as Dutch Protestants, organized and funded their own elementary parochial schools. Episcopalians built elite boarding schools.

Catholic communities also raised money to build colleges and seminaries to train teachers and religious leaders to head their churches. In the 19th century, most Catholics were Irish or German immigrants and their children; in the 1890s new waves of Catholic immigrants began arriving from Italy and Poland. The parochial schools met some opposition, as in the Bennett Law in Wisconsin in 1890, but they thrived and grew. Catholic nuns served as teachers in most schools and were paid low salaries in keeping with their vows of poverty. In 1925 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Pierce v. Society of Sisters that students could attend private schools to comply with state compulsory education laws, thus giving parochial schools an official blessing.

Attendance

The 1840 census indicated that about 55% of the 3.68 million school age children between the ages of five and fifteen attended primary schools or academies. Many families could not afford to pay for their children to go to school or to spare them from farm work. Beginning in the late 1830s, more private academies were established for girls for education past primary school, especially in northern states. Some offered classical education similar to that offered to boys.

But by 1870, 49 percent of all public schools students were girls, and among girls aged 10–14, literacy rates were often higher than among their male counterparts. Even if many private academies and colleges at the time were single-sex based, most children attended co-educational schools. As the 19th century progressed, maintaining separate schools and classes for girls and boys was expensive and impractical, as very few cities could afford it.

Data from the indentured servant contracts of German immigrant children in Pennsylvania from 1771 to 1817 show that the number of children receiving education increased from 33.3% in 1771–1773 to 69% in 1787–1804. Additionally, the same data showed that the ratio of school education versus home education rose from .25 in 1771–1773 to 1.68 in 1787–1804. While some African Americans managed to achieve literacy, southern states largely prohibited schooling to blacks.

Teachers, early 1800s

Teaching young students was not an attractive career for educated people. Adults became teachers without any particular skill. Hiring was handled by the local school board, who were mainly interested in the efficient use of limited taxes and favored young single women from local taxpaying families. This started to change with the introduction of two-year normal schools starting in 1823. Normal schools increasingly provided career paths for unmarried middle-class women. By 1900 most teachers of elementary schools in the northern states had been trained at normal schools.

One-room schoolhouses

Given the high proportion of population in rural areas, with limited numbers of students, most communities relied on one-room school houses. Teachers would deal with the range of students of various ages and abilities by using the Monitorial System, an education method that became popular on a global scale during the early 19th century. This method was also known as "mutual instruction" or the "Bell-Lancaster method" after the British educators Dr Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster, who each independently developed it about 1798. As older children in families would teach younger ones, the abler pupils in these schools became 'helpers' to the teacher, and taught other students what they had learned.

Horace Mann promotes Prussian model

Upon becoming the secretary of education of Massachusetts in 1837, Horace Mann worked to create a statewide system of professional teachers, based on the Prussian model of "common schools." Prussia was attempting to develop a system of education by which all students were entitled to the same content in their public classes. Mann initially focused on elementary education and on training teachers. The common-school movement quickly gained strength across the North. Connecticut adopted a similar system in 1849, and Massachusetts passed a compulsory attendance law in 1852. Mann's crusading style attracted wide middle-class support. Historian Ellwood P. Cubberley asserts:

No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends.

An important technique which Mann had learned in Prussia and introduced in Massachusetts in 1848 was to place students in grades by age. They were assigned by age to different grades and progressed through them, regardless of differences of aptitude. In addition, he used the lecture method common in European universities, which required students to receive professional instruction rather than teach one another. Previously, schools had often had groups of students who ranged in age from 6 to 14 years. With the introduction of age grading, multi-aged classrooms all but disappeared. Some students completed all courses the secondary school had to offer. These were "graduated," and were awarded a certificate of completion. This was increasingly done at a ceremony imitating college graduation rituals.

Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn the nation's unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval for building public schools from modernizers, especially among fellow Whigs. Most states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal schools" to train professional teachers.

Free schooling was available through some of the elementary grades. Graduates of these schools could read and write, though not always with great precision.

Compulsory laws

By 1900, 34 states had compulsory schooling laws; four were in the South. Thirty states with compulsory schooling laws required attendance until age 14 (or higher). As a result, by 1910, 72 percent of American children attended school. Half the nation's children attended one-room schools. By 1930, every state required students to complete elementary school.

Native American Missionary Schools

As religious revivalism swept through the United States in the early 1800s, a growing group of evangelical Christians took on the role of missionaries. These missionaries were, in many cases, concerned with converting non-Christians to Christianity. Native Americans were a nearby and easy target for these missionaries. According to the scholars Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, these Christian missionaries believed that the Native Americans were uncivilized, and were in need of help from the missionaries to make them more civilized and more like Anglo-Americans.

Missionaries found great difficulty converting adults, but, according to Perdue and Green's research, they found it much easier to convert Native American children. To do so, missionaries often separated Native American children from their families to live at boarding schools where the missionaries believed they could civilize and convert them. Missionary schools in the American Southeast were first developed in 1817. Perdue and Green's research has shown that these children did not only learn the basic subjects of education that most American children experienced, but also were taught to live and act like Anglo-Americans. Boys learned to farm, and girls were taught domestic labor, and according to Perdue and Green, they were taught that Anglo-American civilization was superior to the traditional Native American cultures that these children came from. David Brown, a Cherokee man who converted to Christianity and promoted the conversion to Christianity of Native Americans, went on a fundraising speaking tour to raise money for missionary societies and their boarding schools. Brown, in his speech, described the progress that he believed had been made in civilizing Native American children in missionary schools. "The Indians," he claimed, "are making rapid advances toward the standard of morality, virtue and religions."

Colleges in 19th century

Many new colleges were begun, thanks to the lively competitions among rival religious denominations following the widespread religious upsurge of the Second Great Awakening. However, they were typically small operations with a president and two or three faculty and a few dozen students. The curriculum was overwhelmingly focused on Latin and Greek classics and mathematics. Yale's famous report on 1828 was the lynchpin of conservatism relied on by most colleges. It argued that the role of a college education was to discipline the mind by developing the ability to articulate classical ideas, and there was no need to expand the curriculum to cover ideas from recent times. For example, very few colleges taught any history before the 1860s. According to Richard Hofstadter, the old time college was a dreary place:

The students were subjected to a curriculum which rarely gave them any choice of courses, hardly ever a choice of teachers. They were submitted to a teaching routine consisting almost entirely of tedious daily recitations, and governed in detail by disciplinary rules that were excessively demanding. Since their instructors were set over them as policemen, outbursts of mutual hostility were a perennial motif. Term time was frequently punctuated by student riots, and putting the cow in the chapel was a standard college plank.

Summarizing the research of Colin Burke and Peter Hall, Michael Katz concludes that in the 19th century:

1. The nation's many small colleges helped young men make the transition from rural farms to complex urban occupations.
2. These colleges especially promoted upward mobility by preparing ministers, and thereby provided towns across the country with a core of community leaders.
3. The more elite colleges became increasingly exclusive and contributed relatively little to upward social mobility. By concentrating on the offspring of wealthy families, ministers and a few others, the elite Eastern colleges, especially Harvard, played an important role in the formation of a Northeastern elite with great power.

Women in college

Before 1860, coeducation was rare. A few private schools followed Oberlin's 1833 example of enrolling women along with men, but notably the inexpensive state schools restricted admission to men. The second half of the 19th century, on the other hand, produced relatively rapid gains as colleges for women were founded in New York and Massachusetts. Vassar in 1865 was followed by Wellesley in 1875, Smith in the same year, Bryn Mawr in 1885, Radcliffe in 1879, and Barnard in 1889. The Mount Holyoke Female Seminary was founded by Mary Lyon in 1837, and reached full collegiate status in 1888. Such institutions were fed by a steady stream of female high school graduates, who throughout this period comprised a majority of graduates. High school enrollment trebled in the 1890s, with girls continuing to represent the lion's share. The expansion of both secondary and tertiary public education that began in 1867 and lasted until the early 20th century created greater opportunities for women. Between 1867 and 1915, 304 new colleges and universities were established, bringing the national total to 563. In the liberal arts departments of some state universities including Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Washington, women students outnumbered men.

South

In the decades immediately following the American Revolution, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina started small public universities. However, many wealthy families continued to send their sons North to college. In Georgia, public county academies for white students became more common. After 1811, South Carolina opened a statewide system of "free schools", where white children could learn literacy and basic math at public expense. Other Southern states imitated this system. Before the Civil War it became a primary mode of organizing what became known as basic "poor schools." In the 1850 census, South Carolina had a literacy rate that rivaled Rhode Island.

Republican governments during the Reconstruction era rebuilt the South's public school systems—establishing the first such schools in some places—and supported them with general taxes. For the first time, both whites and blacks would be educated at the expense of the state, but legislators agreed on racially segregated schools. (The few integrated schools were located in New Orleans).

Particularly after white Democrats regained control of the state legislatures in former Confederate states, they consistently underfunded public schools for blacks which continued until the 1940s. In the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision the United States Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. That began a complex process of desegregation.

Generally public schooling in rural areas did not extend beyond the elementary grades for either whites or blacks. This was known as "eighth grade school" After 1900, some cities began to establish high schools, primarily for middle class whites. In the 1930s roughly one fourth of the US population still lived and worked on farms and few rural Southerners of either race went beyond the 8th grade until after 1945.

Schools for Black students

In the early days of the Reconstruction era, the Freedmen's Bureau opened 1000 schools across the South for black children. This was essentially building on schools that had been established in numerous large contraband camps. Freedmen were eager for schooling for both adults and children, and the enrollments were high and enthusiastic. Overall, the Bureau spent $5 million to set up schools for blacks. By the end of 1865, more than 90,000 freedmen were enrolled as students in these schools. The school curriculum resembled that of schools in the North.

Many Bureau teachers were well-educated Yankee women motivated by religion and abolitionism. W.E.B. DuBois wrote of the zealous spirit and success of what he referred to as "the crusade of the New England schoolma'am." Half the teachers were southern whites; one-third were blacks, and one-sixth were northern whites. Most were women but among African Americans, male teachers slightly outnumbered female teachers. In the South, people were attracted to teaching because of the good salaries, at a time when the societies were disrupted and the economy was poor. Northern teachers were typically funded by northern organizations and were motivated by humanitarian goals to help the freedmen. As a group, only the black cohort showed a commitment to racial equality; they were also the ones most likely to continue as teachers.

When the Republicans came to power in the Southern states after 1867, they created the first system of taxpayer-funded public schools. Southern Blacks wanted public schools for their children but they did not demand racially integrated schools. Almost all the new public schools were segregated, apart from a few in New Orleans. After the Republicans lost power in the mid-1870s, conservative whites retained the public school systems but sharply cut their funding.

Almost all private academies and colleges in the South were strictly segregated by race. The American Missionary Association supported the development and establishment of several historically black colleges, such as Fisk University and Shaw University. In this period, a handful of northern colleges accepted black students. The Oneida Institute of Science and Industry (founded 1827) was the first institution of higher education to routinely admit African-American men and provide mixed-race college-level education. Oberlin College (founded 1833) was the first mainly white, degree-granting college to admit African-American students. However, before the Civil War it is likely that only 3–5% of Oberlin students were African-American. By 1900, 400 African-Americans had earned B.A. degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oberlin, and 70 other "leading colleges." Northern denominations and their missionary associations especially established private schools across the South to provide secondary education. They provided a small amount of collegiate work. Tuition was minimal, so churches supported the colleges financially, and also subsidized the pay of some teachers. In 1900, churches—mostly based in the North—operated 247 schools for blacks across the South, with a budget of about $1 million. They employed 1600 teachers and taught 46,000 students. Prominent schools included Howard University, a federal institution based in Washington; Fisk University in Nashville, Atlanta University, Hampton Institute in Virginia, and many others. Most new colleges in the 19th century were founded in northern states.

In 1890, Congress expanded the land-grant program to include federal support for state-sponsored colleges across the South. It required states to identify colleges for black students as well as white ones in order to get land grant support. This second Morrill Land-Grant Act thus simultaneously provided increased higher educational opportunities for African Americans but encouraged segregation.

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was of national importance because it set the standards for what was called industrial education. Booker T. Washington, one of its graduates, founded the influential Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers in 1881. Washington championed industrial education for African Americans on the basis of its practicality, whereas W.E.B. DuBois emphasized the importance of offering African Americans the opportunity to prove themselves equal to whites by succeeding in traditional, classically-oriented B.A. degree programs. In 1900 relatively few black students were enrolled in college-level work because their schools were understaffed and underfunded and the students needed remedial study. The alumni of Keithley became high school teachers. However, some HBCUs—such as Howard University, Fisk University, and Atlanta University—had standard B.A. programs with classical curricula.

While the colleges and academies were generally coeducational, until the late 20th century, historians had taken little notice of the role of women as students and teachers.

20th century

Progressive Era

The American economy was growing steadily every decade from the 1880s to 1930, despite occasional recessions and depressions. The population was growing as well, and with immigrants from Europe as well as farmers' sons moving to urban areas. At the same time state child labor laws removed most younger children from factory jobs. Productivity was moving up as well. The challenge was for the educational system to support this growth.

The progressive era in education was part of a larger Progressive Movement, extending from the 1890s to the 1930s. The era was notable for a dramatic expansion in the number of schools and students served, especially in the fast-growing metropolitan cities. After 1910, smaller cities also began building high schools. By 1940, 50% of young adults had earned a high school diploma.

Committee of Ten

The National Education Association convened the Committee of Ten in 1892. The resulting report was influential in structuring grades 1 through 12 across school districts and states, as well as what subjects would be taught.

Bureaucracies

By the 1890s state legislatures organized local school districts under the general supervision of a statewide superintendent of public instruction, assisted by an appointed state board of education. The system remains in effect in the 21st century. The state superintendents were business managers more than educators. They identified with the business community, and made frequent analogy to making schools a business-like bureaucracy, with maximum efficiency and minimum waste, at reasonable expense to the taxpayer, with a long term benefit of enhanced economic growth. They believe that students should be tightly controlled and teachers closely supervised. The superintendents emphasized the need for uniformity, strict adherence to elaborate rules, and avoiding local variations.

As early as 1880 Charles Francis Adams Jr. called school superintendents, "drill sergeants " and likened their overcontrolled schools to "a combination cotton mill and railroad." Radical historians in the 1960s, steeped in the anti-bureaucratic ethos of the New Left, deplored the bureaucratic school systems. They argued its purpose was to suppress the upward aspirations of the working class. But other historians have emphasized the necessity of building non-politicized standardized systems. The reforms in St. Louis, according to historian Selwyn Troen, were, "born of necessity as educators first confronted the problems of managing a rapidly expanding and increasingly complex institutions." Troen found that the bureaucratic solution removed schools from the bitterness and spite of ward politics. Troen argues:

In the space of only a generation, public education had left behind a highly regimented and politicized system dedicated to training children in the basic skills of literacy and the special discipline required of urban citizens, and had replaced it with a largely apolitical, more highly organized and efficient structure specifically designed to teach students the many specialized skills demanded in a modern, industrial society. In terms of programs this entailed the introduction of vocational instruction, a doubling of the period of schooling, and a broader concern for the welfare of urban youth.

The social elite in many cities in the 1890s-1920s led the progressive movement. Their goal was to permanently end political party control of the local schools for the benefit of patronage jobs and construction contracts, which had arisen out of ward politics that absorbed and leveraged the millions of new immigrants. Reformers installed a bureaucratic system run by experts, and demanded expertise from prospective teachers. The reforms opened the way for hiring more Irish Catholic and Jewish teachers, who proved adept at handling the civil service tests and gaining the necessary academic credentials. Before the reforms, schools had often been used as a means to provide patronage jobs for party foot soldiers. The new emphasis concentrated on broadening opportunities for the students. New programs were established for the physically handicapped; evening recreation centers were set up; vocational schools were opened; medical inspections became routine; programs began to teach English as a second language; and school libraries were opened. New teaching strategies were developed, such as the shifting the focus of secondary education towards speaking and writing, as outlined by the Hosic Report in 1917.

Responding to discussions about the advantages of copying business style managerial controls in the field of public schooling, some key leaders were explicitly opposed. Ellwood P. Cubberley , Dean of the Stanford School of Education, in 1926 warned in a standard textbook for school superintendents that:

A superintendent whose conception of educational administration is that of clockwork, machinery, inspections, and uniform output, and who runs the educational department much as he would run a factory...will not only fail to develop strength and individuality on the part of those who do the real work of the schools, but will crush out what of these qualities the workers may possess.

Dewey and progressive education

The leading educational theorist of the era was John Dewey, a philosophy professor at the University of Chicago (1894–1904) and at Teachers College (1904 to 1930), of Columbia University in New York City. Dewey was a leading proponent of "Progressive Education" and wrote many books and articles to promote the central role of democracy in education. He believed that schools were not only a place for students to gain content knowledge, but also as a place for them to learn how to live. The purpose of education was thus to realize the student's full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good.

Dewey noted that, "to prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities." Dewey insisted that education and schooling are instrumental in creating social change and reform. He noted that "education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.". Although Dewey's ideas were very widely discussed, they were implemented chiefly in small experimental schools attached to colleges of education. In the public schools, Dewey and the other progressive theorists encountered a highly bureaucratic system of school administration that was typically not receptive to new methods.

Dewey viewed public schools and their narrow-mindedness with disdain and as undemocratic and close minded. Meanwhile, laboratory schools, such as the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, were much more open to original thought and experimentation. Not only was Dewey involved with laboratory schools, but he was also deeply involved with the emerging philosophy of pragmatism, which he incorporated within his laboratory schools. Dewey viewed pragmatism critical for the growth of democracy, which Dewey did not view as just a form of government, but something that occurred within the workings of the laboratory schools as well as everyday life. Dewey utilized the laboratory schools as an experimental platform for his theories on pragmatism, democracy, as well as how humans learned.

Black education

Booker T. Washington was the dominant black political and educational leader in the United States from the 1890s until his death in 1915. Washington not only led his own college, Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but his advice, political support, and financial connections proved important to many other black colleges and high schools, which were primarily located in the South. This was the center of the black population until after the Great Migration of the first half of the 20th century. Washington was a respected advisor to major philanthropies, such as the Rockefeller, Rosenwald and Jeanes foundations, which provided funding for leading black schools and colleges. The Rosenwald Foundation provided matching funds for the construction of schools for rural black students in the South. Washington explained, "We need not only the industrial school, but the college and professional school as well, for a people so largely segregated, as we are. ... Our teachers, ministers, lawyers and doctors will prosper just in proportion as they have about them an intelligent and skillful producing class." Washington was a strong advocate of progressive reforms as advocated by Dewey, emphasizing scientific, industrial and agricultural education that produced a base for lifelong learning, and enabled careers for many black teachers, professionals, and upwardly mobile workers. He tried to adapt to the system and did not support political protests against the segregated Jim Crow system. At the same time, Washington used his network to provide important funding to support numerous legal challenges by the NAACP against the systems of disenfranchisement which southern legislatures had passed at the turn of the century, effectively excluding blacks from politics for decades into the 1960s.

Atlanta

In most American cities, Progressives in the Efficiency Movement looked for ways to eliminate waste and corruption. They emphasized using experts in schools. For example, in the 1897 reform of the Atlanta schools, the school board was reduced in size, eliminating the power of ward bosses. The members of the school board were elected at-large, reducing the influence of various interest groups. The power of the superintendent was increased. Centralized purchasing allowed for economies of scale, although it also added opportunities for censorship and suppression of dissent. Standards of hiring and tenure in teachers were made uniform. Architects designed school buildings in which the classrooms, offices, workshops and other facilities related together. Curricular innovations were introduced. The reforms were designed to produce a school system for all students according to the best practices of the day. Middle-class professionals instituted these reforms; they were equally antagonistic to the traditional business elites and to working-class elements.

Gary plan

The "Gary plan" was implemented in the new industrial "steel" city of Gary, Indiana, by William Wirt, the superintendent who served from 1907 to 1930. Although the U.S. Steel Corporation dominated the Gary economy and paid abundant taxes, it did not shape Wirt's educational reforms. The Gary Plan emphasized highly efficient use of buildings and other facilities. This model was adopted by more than 200 cities around the country, including New York City. Wirt divided students into two platoons—one platoon used the academic classrooms, while the second platoon was divided among the shops, nature studies, auditorium, gymnasium, and outdoor facilities. Then the platoons rotated position.

Wirt set up an elaborate night school program, especially to Americanize new immigrants. The introduction of vocational educational programs, such as wood shop, machine shop, typing, and secretarial skills proved especially popular with parents who wanted their children to become foremen and office workers. By the Great Depression, most cities found the Gary plan too expensive, and abandoned it.

Vocational education

In 1914 the Commission on National Aid to Vocational Education led by Senator Hoke Smith and Charles A. Prosser called for vocational education to be included in the high school curriculum.

It argued that vocational education:

(1) met the individual needs of students for a meaningful curriculum,

(2) provided opportunity for all students to prepare for life and work,

(3) helped foster a better teaching-learning process-learning by doing,

(4) introduced tbe idea of utility into education.

According to John Hillison, supporters of vocational education ridiculed the traditional academic emphasis on courses in Greek, Latin and ancient philosophy. Prosser led the design team so that the Smith-Hughes Act would give federal money to support specialized state government programs that worked with public high schools to train students for industrial, and agricultural jobs, as well as home economics for wives of workers. They saw education as a means to maximize productivity and meet the demands of a rapidly industrializing economy. They wrote a bill that Congress passed: the Smith-Hughes National Vocational Education Act of 1917. It established a federal partnership with the states for a highly detailed program of vocational education in agriculture, trades, industries, and home economics. It aimed to equip students with practical skills for the changing job market. To secure passage it organized a temporary coalition that pushed it through. Prosser, Smith and the other key leaders were based in the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education (NSPIE). They secured statements of support and lobbying help from many organizations. Those included the skilled workers of the unions represented by the American Federation of Labor (AFL); the teachers represented by the National Education Association (NEA); big business as represented by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM); local business as represented by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce; the national Democratic Party; the Progressive Bull Moose Party and its leader former president Theodore Roosevelt; women teachers represented by American Home Economics Association; middle class women of the General Federation of Women's Clubs; and the agricultural community represented by several major farm journals, the National Grange and the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations.

The most dramatic support came from President Woodrow Wilson. With World War I raging in Europe, the U.S. was still neutral. Wilson made military preparedness an urgent top priority, telling Congress in January 1916:

There are two sides to the question of preparation. There's not merely the military side; there is the industrial side. . . .We ought to have in this country a great system of industrial and vocational education under Federal guidance, and with Federal aid, in which a very large percentage of the youth of this country will be given training in the skillful use and application of the principles of science in maneuver and business.

Great Depression and New Deal: 1929–39

Public schools across the country were badly hurt by the Great Depression, as tax revenues fell in local and state governments shifted funding to relief projects. Budgets were slashed, and teachers went unpaid. During the New Deal, 1933–39, President Franklin Roosevelt and his advisers were hostile to the elitism shown by the educational establishment. They refused all pleas for direct federal help to public or private schools or universities. They rejected proposals for federal funding for research at universities. But they did help poor students, and the major New Deal relief programs built many schools buildings as requested by local governments. The New Deal approach to education was a radical departure from educational best practices. It was specifically designed for the poor and staffed largely by women on relief. It was not based on professionalism, nor was it designed by experts. Instead it was premised on the anti-elitist notion that a good teacher does not need paper credentials, that learning does not need a formal classroom and that the highest priority should go to the bottom tier of society. Leaders in the public schools were shocked: They were shut out as consultants and as recipients of New Deal funding. They desperately needed cash to cover the local and state revenues that had disappeared during the depression, they were well organized, and made repeated concerted efforts in 1934, 1937, and 1939, all to no avail. The conservative Republican establishment headed collaborated with for so long was out of power and Roosevelt himself was the leader in anti-elitism. The federal government had a highly professional Office of Education; Roosevelt cut its budget and staff, and refused to consult with its leader John Ward Studebaker. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) programs were deliberately designed to not teach skills that would put them in competition with unemployed union members. The CCC did have its own classes. They were voluntary, took place after work, and focused on teaching basic literacy to young men who had quit school before high school.

The relief programs did offer indirect help. The Civil Works Administration (CWA) and Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) focused on hiring unemployed people on relief, and putting them to work on public buildings, including public schools. It built or upgraded 40,000 schools, plus thousands of playgrounds and athletic fields. It gave jobs to 50,000 teachers to keep rural schools open and to teach adult education classes in the cities. It gave a temporary jobs to unemployed teachers in cities like Boston. Although the New Deal refused to give money to impoverished school districts, it did give money to impoverished high school and college students. The CWA used "work study" programs to fund students, both male and female.

The National Youth Administration (NYA), a semi-autonomous branch of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) under Aubrey Williams developed apprenticeship programs and residential camps specializing in teaching vocational skills. It was one of the first agencies to set up a "Division of Negro Affairs" and make an explicit effort to enroll black students. Williams believed that the traditional high school curricula had failed to meet the needs of the poorest youth. In opposition, the well-established National Education Association (NEA) saw NYA as a dangerous challenge to local control of education NYA expanded Work-study money to reach up to 500,000 students per month in high schools, colleges, and graduate schools. The average pay was $15 a month. However, in line with the anti-elitist policy, the NYA set up its own high schools, entirely separate from the public school system or academic schools of education. Despite appeals from Ickes and Eleanor Roosevelt, Howard University–the federally operated school for blacks—saw its budget cut below Hoover administration levels.

Consolidation: the passing of the one room schoolhouse

In 1930, the nation had 238,000 elementary schools, of which 149,000 were one-room schools wherein one teacher simultaneously handled all students, aged 6 to 16. The teacher was typically the daughter of a local farm family. She averaged four years of training in a nearby high school or normal school. On average, she had two and a half years of teaching experience and planned to continue for another two or three years until she married. She had 22 students enrolled, but on average day only 15 were in attendance. She taught 152 days a year, and was paid $874. The students were not divided into grades 1 to 8, but grouped loosely by age. The teacher spent the day moving from group to group, giving them texts to memorize and then listening to their recitations. They did not have homework or tests. The condition of the school buildings ranged from poor to mediocre; they were lucky to have an outhouse. Andrew Gulliford says, "Rural schools were frequently overcrowded, materials were hard to obtain, and repairs and improvements were subject to the financial whims of parsimonious school boards hesitant even to replace dogeared textbooks."

Sharp debates took place in most of the local districts about merging into a consolidated district. Proponents had a bundle of arguments that especially appealed to ambitious parents and efficiency-oriented businessmen:

(1) a reduction of per-class or per-capita costs; (2) a greater equalization of local tax burdens; (3) a decrease in the number of teachers needed; (4) an increase in the preparation, experience, and tenure of teachers; (5) better educational achievement by pupils; (6) broader curricula; (7) an increase in the instructional time for each pupil or each class; (8) a longer school term; (9) improved attendance; (10) better school plants and equipment; and (11) greater economy and efficiency in the administration and supervision of schools.

The opposition fought back hard, fearful of new taxes, a loss of local autonomy and moral decay:

(1) the necessity for pupil transportation with its attendant expense and difficulties; (2) loss of the one-room school as a community center; (3) construction of new buildings or additions to present buildings; (4) increased tax rates; (5) decreased land values in the district losing its school; (6) greater danger of epidemics of disease among pupils because of the concentrated school population; (7) decrease in attention given individual pupils because of the increase in class size; (8) lessening of cooperation by school patrons; (9) need for better clothing for children to attend a consolidated school; (10) less freedom for the pupil to advance at a rate best suited to his abilities; (11) the possibility of jealousy among the various communities comprising the consolidated district; and, (12) increased danger to children's physical and moral well being because of poorer supervision during the recess periods.

Consolidation began in the Northeast by 1900, spread to every state, and everywhere its coverage escalated after 1945. The process of centralization leveled off by 1970, when the nation had 18,000 districts with 66,000 elementary schools, of which only 2000 were one-room. Local communities did not disintegrate—they also consolidated into a larger entity, as shown by Indiana high school basketball. The consolidated schools—even in small towns like Milan—could field competitive basketball teams which became the focus of community spirit. A Hoosier historian reports:

Almost every town had a high school gym that could seat the entire student body several times over. A few could hold the entire town....Family members screamed through cupped hands and the whole town was exhausted on Saturday morning from the effort of rooting on Friday night.

Today Milan High School with 390 students fields 12 varsity teams, though none has matched the 1954 miracle win of the state basketball champsionship when it had only 161 students.

Secondary schools

In 1880, American high schools were primarily considered to be preparatory academies for students who were going to attend college. But by 1910 they had been transformed into core elements of the common school system and had broader goals of preparing many students for work after high school. The explosive growth brought the number of students in public high schools from 203,000 in 1890 to 915,000 in 1910, to 2,200,000 in 1920, and 6,600,000 in 1940. Of youths aged 14 to 17, 7% were enrolled in 1890, rising to 32% in 1920 and 83% in 1950. The graduates found jobs especially in the rapidly growing white-collar sector. Cities large and small across the country raced to build new high schools. Few were built in rural areas, so ambitious parents moved close to town to enable their teenagers to attend high school. After 1910, vocational education was added, as a mechanism to train the technicians and skilled workers needed by the booming industrial sector.

In the 1880s the high schools started developing as community centers. They added sports and by the 1920s were building gymnasiums and stadiums that attracted large local crowds to basketball and football games, especially in small town schools that served nearby rural areas.

College preparation

In the 1865–1914 era, the number and character of schools changed to meet the demands of new and larger cities and of new immigrants. They had to adjust to the new spirit of reform permeating the country. High schools increased in number, adjusted their curriculum to prepare students for the growing state and private universities; education at all levels began to offer more utilitarian studies in place of an emphasis on the classics. John Dewey and other Progressives advocated changes from their base in teachers' colleges.

Before 1920 most secondary education, whether private or public, emphasized college entry for a select few headed for college. Proficiency in Greek and Latin was emphasized; in 1910, almost half of all high school students were taking Latin. Abraham Flexner, under commission from the philanthropic General Education Board (GEB), wrote A Modern School (1916), calling for a de-emphasis on the classics. The classics teachers fought back in a losing effort.

Prior to World War I, German was preferred as a subject for a second spoken language. Prussian and German educational systems had served as a model for many communities in the United States and its intellectual standing was highly respected. Due to Germany being an enemy of the US during the war, an anti-German attitude arose in the United States. French, the international language of diplomacy, was promoted as the preferred second language instead. French survived as the second language of choice until the 1960s, when Spanish became popular. This reflected a strong increase in the Spanish-speaking population in the United States, which has continued since the late 20th century.

Growth of human capital

By 1900 educators argued that the post-literacy schooling of the masses at the secondary and higher levels, would improve citizenship, develop higher-order traits, and produce the managerial and professional leadership needed for rapid economic modernization. The rapid expansion of education past age 14 set the U.S. apart from Europe for much of the 20th century.

From 1910 to 1940, high schools grew in number and size, reaching out to a broader clientele. In 1910, for example, 9% of Americans had a high school diploma; in 1935, the rate was 40%. By 1940, the number had increased to 50%. This phenomenon was uniquely American; no other nation attempted such widespread coverage. The fastest growth came in states with greater wealth, more homogeneity of wealth, and less manufacturing activity than others. The high schools provided necessary skill sets for youth planning to teach school, and essential skills for those planning careers in white collar work and some high-paying blue collar jobs. Claudia Goldin argues this rapid growth was facilitated by public funding, openness, gender neutrality, local (and also state) control, separation of church and state, and an academic curriculum. The wealthiest European nations, such as Germany and Britain, had far more exclusivity in their education system; few youth attended past age 14. Apart from technical training schools, European secondary schooling was dominated by children of the wealthy and the social elites.

American post-elementary schooling was designed to be consistent with national needs. It stressed general and widely applicable skills not tied to particular occupations or geographic areas, in order that students would have flexible employment options. As the economy was dynamic, the emphasis was on portable skills that could be used in a variety of occupations, industries, and regions.

Public schools were funded and supervised by independent districts that depended on taxpayer support. In dramatic contrast to the centralized systems in Europe, where national agencies made the major decisions, the American districts designed their own rules and curricula.

Teachers and administrators

Early public school superintendents emphasized discipline and rote learning, and school principals made sure the mandate was imposed on teachers. Disruptive students were expelled.

Support for the high school movement occurred at the grass-roots level of local cities and school systems. After 1916, the federal government began to provide for vocational education funding as part of support for raising readiness to work in industrial and artisan jobs. In these years, states and religious bodies generally funded teacher training colleges, often called "normal schools". Gradually they developed full four-year curriculums and developed as state colleges after 1945.

Teachers organized themselves during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1917, the National Education Association (NEA) was reorganized to better mobilize and represent teachers and educational staff. The rate of increase in membership was constant under the chairmanship of James Crabtree—from 8,466 members in 1917 to 220,149 in 1931. The rival American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was based in large cities and formed alliances with the local labor unions. The NEA identified as an upper-middle-class professional organization, while the AFT identified with the working class and the union movement.

Great Society

When liberals regained control of Congress in 1964, they passed numerous Great Society programs supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson to expand federal support for education. The Higher Education Act of 1965 set up federal scholarships and low-interest loans for college students, and subsidized better academic libraries, ten to twenty new graduate centers, several new technical institutes, classrooms for several hundred thousand students, and twenty-five to thirty new community colleges a year. A separate education bill enacted that same year provided similar assistance to dental and medical schools. On an even larger scale, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 began pumping federal money into local school districts.

Segregation and integration

For much of its history, education in the United States was segregated (or even only available) based upon race. Early integrated schools such as the Noyes Academy, founded in 1835, in Canaan, New Hampshire, often were met with fierce local opposition. For the most part, African Americans received very little to no formal education before the Civil War. Some free blacks in the North managed to become literate. In cities, such a Philadelphia and New York City, they founded literary societies for self-education, as well as some academies for their children. The most prominent of the latter was Philadelphia's Institute for Colored Youth, the nation's first coeducational high school for African Americans. A few institutions of higher education also were available to African Americans in the North. The Oneida Institute of Science and Industry was the first such entity to recruit and commonly admit African American men. New York Central College also was mixed race, and Oberlin College was the first B.A. degree-granting, white college to accept African Americans. In 1840, Oberlin bestowed the first known B.A. degree on an African American--George B. Vashon, who later was a founding member of the Howard University faculty.

In the South where slavery was legal, many states had laws prohibiting teaching enslaved African Americans to read or write. A few taught themselves, sometimes in secret schools, others learned from white playmates or more generous masters, but most were not able to learn to read and write. Schools for free people of color were privately run and supported, as were most of the limited schools for white children. Poor white children did not attend school. The wealthier planters hired tutors for their children and sent them to private academies and colleges at the appropriate age.

During Reconstruction a coalition of freedmen and white Republicans in Southern state legislatures passed laws establishing public education. The Freedmen's Bureau was created as an agency of the military governments that managed Reconstruction. It set up schools in many areas and tried to help educate and protect freedmen during the transition after the war. With the notable exception of the desegregated public schools in New Orleans, the schools were segregated by race. By 1900 more than 30,000 black teachers had been trained and put to work in the South, and the literacy rate had climbed to more than 50%, a major achievement in little more than a generation.

Many colleges were set up for blacks; some were state schools like Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, others were private ones subsidized by Northern missionary societies.

Although the African-American community quickly began litigation to challenge such provisions, in the 19th century Supreme Court challenges generally were not decided in their favor. The Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld the segregation of races in schools as long as each race enjoyed parity in quality of education (the "separate but equal" principle). However, few black students received equal education. They suffered for decades from inadequate funding, outmoded or dilapidated facilities, and deficient textbooks (often ones previously used in white schools).

Starting in 1914 and going into the 1930s, Julius Rosenwald, a philanthropist from Chicago, established the Rosenwald Fund to provide seed money for matching local contributions and stimulating the construction of new schools for African American children, mostly in the rural South. He worked in association with Booker T. Washington and architects at Tuskegee University to have model plans created for schools and teacher housing. With the requirement that money had to be raised by both blacks and whites, and schools approved by local school boards (controlled by whites), Rosenwald stimulated construction of more than 5,000 schools built across the South. In addition to Northern philanthropy and state taxes, African Americans went to extraordinary efforts to raise money for such schools.

The Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s helped publicize the inequities of segregation. In 1954, the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education unanimously declared that separate facilities were inherently unequal and unconstitutional. By the 1970s segregated districts had practically vanished in the South.

Integration of schools has been a protracted process, however, with results affected by vast population migrations in many areas, and affected by suburban sprawl, the disappearance of industrial jobs, and movement of jobs out of former industrial cities of the North and Midwest and into new areas of the South. Although required by court order, integrating the first black students in the South met with intense opposition. In 1957 the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, had to be enforced by federal troops. President Dwight D. Eisenhower took control of the National Guard, after the governor tried to use them to prevent integration. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, integration continued with varying degrees of difficulty. Some states and cities tried to overcome de facto segregation, a result of housing patterns, by using forced busing. This method of integrating student populations provoked resistance in many places, including northern cities, where parents wanted children educated in neighborhood schools.

Although full equality and parity in education has still to be achieved (many school districts are technically still under the integration mandates of local courts), technical equality in education had been achieved by 1970.

The federal government's integration efforts began to wane in the mid-1970s, and the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations later launched several attacks against desegregation orders. As a result, school integration peaked in the 1980s and has been gradually declining ever since.

Education in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Many school reform efforts of the mid-twentieth century were driven by local school districts with the support of private philanthropy. For example, the All-Day Neighborhood Schools program in New York City, which provided additional teachers, after-school activities, social workers, and other improvements, operated from 1936 to 1971 as a partnership between the city's board of education and local philanthropists.

During this period, there was intense interest in using institutions to support the innate creativity of children. It helped reshape children's play, the design of suburban homes, schools, parks, and museums. Producers of children's television programming worked to spark creativity. Educational toys proliferated that were designed to teach skills or develop abilities. For schools there was a new emphasis on arts as well as science in the curriculum. School buildings no longer were monumental testimonies to urban wealth; they were redesigned with the students in mind.

The emphasis on creativity was reversed in the 1980s, as public policy emphasized test scores, school principals were forced to downplay art, drama, music, history and anything that was not being scored on standardized tests, lest their school be labelled "failing" by the quantifiers behind the "No Child Left Behind Act.

Inequality

The Coleman Report, by University of Chicago sociology professor James Coleman proved especially controversial in 1966. Based on massive statistical data, the 1966 report titled "Equality of Educational Opportunity" fueled debate about "school effects" that has continued since. The report was widely seen as evidence that school funding has little effect on student final achievement. A more precise reading of the Coleman Report is that student background and socioeconomic status are much more important in determining educational outcomes than are measured differences in school resources (i.e. per pupil spending). Coleman found that, on average, black schools were funded on a nearly equal basis by the 1960s, and that black students benefited from racially mixed classrooms.

The comparative quality of education among rich and poor districts is still often the subject of dispute. While middle class African-American children have made good progress; poor minorities have struggled. With school systems based on property taxes, there are wide disparities in funding between wealthy suburbs or districts, and often poor, inner-city areas or small towns. "De facto segregation" has been difficult to overcome as residential neighborhoods have remained more segregated than workplaces or public facilities. Racial segregation has not been the only factor in inequities. Residents in New Hampshire challenged property tax funding because of steep contrasts between education funds in wealthy and poorer areas. They filed lawsuits to seek a system to provide more equal funding of school systems across the state.

Special education

In 1975 Congress passed Public Law 94–142, Education for All Handicapped Children Act. One of the most comprehensive laws in the history of education in the United States, this Act brought together several pieces of state and federal legislation, making free, appropriate education available to all eligible students with a disability. The law was amended in 1986 to extend its coverage to include younger children. In 1990 the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) extended its definitions and changed the label "handicap" to "disabilities". Further procedural changes were amended to IDEA in 1997.

Reform efforts in the 1980s

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released a report titled A Nation at Risk. Soon afterward, conservatives were calling for an increase in academic rigor including an increase in the number of school days per year, longer school days and higher testing standards. English scholar E.D. Hirsch made an influential attack on progressive education, advocating an emphasis on "cultural literacy"—the facts, phrases, and texts that Hirsch asserted are essential for decoding basic texts and maintaining communication. Hirsch's ideas remain influential in conservative circles into the 21st century. Hirsch's ideas have been controversial because as Edwards argues:

Opponents from the political left generally accuse Hirsch of elitism. Worse yet in their minds, Hirsch's assertion might lead to a rejection of toleration, pluralism, and relativism. On the political right, Hirsch has been assailed as totalitarian, for his idea lends itself to turning over curriculum selection to federal authorities and thereby eliminating the time-honored American tradition of locally controlled schools.

By 1990, the United States spent 2 percent of its budget on education, compared with 30 percent on support for the elderly.

21st century

As of the 2017–18 academic year, there are approximately 4,015,000 K–12 teachers in the United States (3,300,000 traditional public school teachers; 206,000 teachers in public charter schools; and 509,000 private school teachers).

Policy since 2000

"No Child Left Behind" was a major national law passed by a bipartisan coalition in Congress in 2002, marked a new direction. In exchange for more federal aid, the states were required to measure progress and punish schools that were not meeting the goals as measured by standardized state exams in math and language skills. By 2012, half the states were given waivers because the original goal that 100% students by 2014 be deemed "proficient" had proven unrealistic.

By 2012, 45 states had dropped the requirement to teach cursive writing from the curriculum. Continuing reports of a student's progress can be found online, supplementing the former method of periodic report cards.

By 2015, criticisms from a broad range of political ideologies had cumulated so far that a bipartisan Congress stripped away all the national features of No Child Left Behind, turning the remnants over to the states.

Beginning in the 1980s, government, educators, and major employers issued a series of reports identifying key skills and implementation strategies to steer students and workers towards meeting the demands of the changing and increasingly digital workplace and society. 21st century skills are a series of higher-order skills, abilities, and learning dispositions that have been identified as being required for success in 21st century society and workplaces by educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies. Many of these skills are also associated with deeper learning, including analytic reasoning, complex problem solving, and teamwork, compared to traditional knowledge-based academic skills. Many schools and school districts are adjusting learning environments, curricula, and learning spaces to include and support more active learning (such as experiential learning) to foster deeper learning and the development of 21st century skills.

A study by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research observed a long-term decline in students' test scores between 2013 and 2026.

Career and technical education (CTE)

In the realm called "vocational education" before 2006, the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act provides funding for "Career and Technical Education" (CTE) state programs. Congress enacted the first version in 1984 and it has been reauthorized multiple times, with the latest version being Perkins V, in 2018.

Key Features of Perkins V:

• Funding: Provides nearly $1.4 billion annually to support CTE programs.
• Flexibility: Allows states to tailor programs to meet local workforce needs.
• Work-Based Learning: Encourages apprenticeships and hands-on training.
• Comprehensive Needs Assessment: Requires schools to evaluate local industry demands.
• Teacher Recruitment & Retention: Supports efforts to attract and retain skilled educators.

Higher education since 1860s

Led by Harvard in the late 19th century, liberal arts colleges cut back on the rigid curriculum focused on Latin and Greek classics and gave students electives in various subjects, depending on the availability of faculty expertise. New courses appeared in the sciences, humanities, social sciences and the arts. Recitations became less common. Professors now lectured and gave exams.

At the beginning of the 20th century, about a thousand colleges taught about with 160,000 students. Explosive growth in the number of colleges occurred at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, supported in part by Congressional land grant programs.

Land Grant universities

Each state used federal funding from the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890 to set up "land grant colleges" "to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanical arts" ("without excluding other sciences and classical studies"). The 1890 act required states that had segregation also to provide all-black land grant colleges, many of which ended up being dedicated primarily to teacher training. These colleges contributed to rural development, including the establishment of a traveling school program by Tuskegee Institute in 1906. Rural conferences sponsored by Tuskegee also attempted to improve the life of rural blacks. In the late 20th century, many of the schools established in 1890 have helped train students from less-developed countries to return home with the skills and knowledge to improve agricultural production.

Iowa State University was the first existing school whose state legislature officially accepted the provisions of the Morrill Act on September 11, 1862. Other universities soon followed, such as Purdue University, Michigan State University, Kansas State University, Cornell University (in New York), Texas A&M University, Pennsylvania State University, The Ohio State University, and the University of California. Few alumni became farmers, but they did play an increasingly important role in the larger food industry, especially after the federal extension system was set up in 1916 that put trained agronomists in every agricultural county.

Engineering graduates played a major role in rapid technological development. The land-grant college system produced the agricultural scientists and industrial engineers who constituted the critical human resources of the managerial revolution in government and business, 1862–1917, laying the foundation of the world's pre-eminent educational infrastructure that supported the world's foremost technology-based economy.

Representative was Pennsylvania State University. The Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania (later the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania and then Pennsylvania State University), was chartered in 1855. Its mission was to uphold declining agrarian values and show farmers ways to prosper through more productive farming. Students were to build character and meet a part of their expenses by performing farm labor. By 1875 the compulsory labor requirement was dropped, but men were required to have an hour a day of military training. In the early years, the agricultural curriculum was not well developed, and politicians often considered the land-grant college a costly and useless experiment. The college was a center of middle-class values that served to help young people on their journey to white-collar occupations.

Emergence of the modern university

Many American scholars and scientists studied at German universities before 1914. They appreciated how Germany was the world leader in research and the PhD. They returned home eager to implement an American version of the Humboldtian model of higher education. The first results were exemplified at new universities and upgraded established schools like Harvard, Columbia and Wisconsin. Philanthropists endowed many of the research institutions including Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Vanderbilt University and Duke University. John D. Rockefeller funded the University of Chicago without attaching his name to it. At the new schools (especially Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Chicago and Stanford), the undergraduate program was less important than the graduate school, but the tuition the students brought in was needed, and the undergraduate courses could be taught by graduate students. At the older schools, especially Yale and Columbia, the well-established undergraduate colleges persisted in the old classical model. At Columbia, for example, first elective anyone was allowed was the option for senior to take one semester of elementary calculus in place of semester eight of Greek. At Yale's undergraduate college the traditional classical curriculum reigned supreme—electives were made possible for additional work in Latin and Greek. Yale opened a separate college for undergraduates in science and engineering.

Historian Laurence Veysey in his book The Emergence of the American University (1965) explained how higher education was revolutionized in the late 19th century by the creation of the modern university. Stressing Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Clark, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Michigan, Chicago, Stanford and Berkeley, Veysey showed how the newly created and newly reformed schools were influenced by German approaches that taught new findings based on experimental and empirical research techniques. The new model rejected the British model that reiterated over and over the Latin and Greek classics. The new university introduced new teaching methods such as lectures and seminars. It made graduate school training, culminating in the PhD, the mark of the true scholar. The doctoral dissertation required students to create new knowledge, preferably through experimental methods or research in original sources. The new land grant state universities generally followed the new model and deemphasized classical Latin and Greek white adding science, technology, industrial engineering and agricultural science.

GI Bill after 1945

Rejecting liberal calls for large-scale aid to education, Congress in 1944 passed a massive program of aid limited to veterans who had served in World War II. These were grants that did not have to be repaid. Daniel Brumberg and Farideh Farhi state, "The expansive and generous postwar education benefits of the GI Bill were due not to Roosevelt's progressive vision but to the conservative American Legion." The GI Bill made college education possible for millions by paying tuition and living expenses. The government provided between $800 and $1,400 each year to these veterans as a subsidy to attend college, which covered 50–80% of total costs. This included foregone earnings in addition to tuition, which allowed them to have enough funds for life outside of school. The GI Bill helped create a widespread belief in the necessity of college education. It opened up higher education to ambitious young men who would otherwise have been forced to immediately enter the job market after being discharged from the military. When comparing college attendance rates between veterans and non-veterans during this period, veterans were found to be 10% more likely to go to college than non-veterans.

In the early decades after the bill was passed, most campuses became heavily male thanks to the GI Bill, since only 2% of wartime veterans were women. But by 2000, female veterans had grown in numbers and began passing men in rates of college and graduate school attendance.

Historiography

For much of the 20th century, the dominant historiography, as exemplified by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley at Stanford, emphasized the rise of American education as a powerful force for literacy, democracy, and equal opportunity, and a firm basis for higher education and advanced research institutions. Cubberley argued that the foundations of the modern education system were influenced by processes of democratization in Europe and the United States. It was a story of enlightenment and modernization triumphing over ignorance, cost-cutting, and narrow traditionalism whereby parents tried to block their children's intellectual access to the wider world. Teachers dedicated to the public interest, reformers with a wide vision, and public support from the civic-minded community were the heroes. The textbooks help inspire students to become public schools teachers and thereby fulfill their own civic mission.

New evidence from historical education trends challenges Cubberley's assertion that the spread of democracy led to the expansion of public primary education. While the U.S. was one of the world leaders in the provision of primary education during the late-19th century, so was Prussia, an absolutist regime. Democratization appears to have no effect on levels of access to primary education around the world, based on an analysis of historical student enrollment rates for 109 countries from 1820 to 2010.

The crisis came in the 1960s, when a new generation of New Left scholars and students rejected the traditional celebratory accounts, and identified the educational system as the villain for many of America's weaknesses, failures, and crimes. Michael Katz states they:

tried to explain the origins of the Vietnam War; the persistence of racism and segregation; the distribution Of power among gender and classes; intractable poverty and the decay of cities; and the failure of social institutions and policies designed to deal with mental illness, crime, delinquency, and education.

The old guard fought back in bitter historiographical contests. The younger scholars largely promoted the proposition that schools were not the solution to America's ills, they were in part the cause of Americans problems. The fierce battles of the 1960s died out by the 1990s, but enrollment declined sharply in education history courses and never recovered.

Most histories of education deal with institutions or focus on the ideas histories of major reformers, but a new social history has recently emerged, focused on who were the students in terms of social background and social mobility. Attention has often focused on minority, and ethnic students. The social history of teachers has also been studied in depth.

Historians have recently looked at the relationship between schooling and urban growth by studying educational institutions as agents in class formation, relating urban schooling to changes in the shape of cities, linking urbanization with social reform movements, and examining the material conditions affecting child life and the relationship between schools and other agencies that socialize the young.

The most economics-minded historians have sought to relate education to changes in the quality of labor, productivity and economic growth, and rates of return on investment in education. It is very important to keep in mind that during the gradual progression of history, the focus of the country's changes with each elected president. Historians now ask the questions of what economics was the center of the thought process in the first besides driving capitalistic gain. A major recent exemplar is Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, The Race between Education and Technology (2009), on the social and economic history of 20th-century American schooling.