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This is one of a multi-part series on the progression of education policies in the U.S. from its founding. Click here to see a list of all the posts in this series. 

By Matthew Lynch

During the 1980s, American educators and the public first became concerned in a sweeping way about the quality of education in tax-funded schools. In 1981, the National Commission on Excellence in Education was formed and the group released A Nation at Risk, an in-depth report that warned against the future dangers that could result from mere mediocrity in U.S. public schools. With the help of the national media who sunk its teeth into the story, the report seemed to awaken concern from sea to shining sea – in every school room and around every dining room table. Though the concern should have been purely based on the learning aspect of American students, there were even larger worries that loomed, mainly the future economy. It marked the first time in the history of public schools in America that citizens began to compare students to those in other developed countries like Japan, China and even England. The assumption that America the Beautiful was also the best at everything, including educating its kids, was turned on its head. People started to worry, really worry, about where the youth of the nation would guide them in coming years.

Reform started to take place but on local levels. Schools took it upon themselves to correct the problem of incompetent and uncaring students by adding graduation requirements, and raising teacher salaries. Universities jumped in by heightening the requirements for young educators to earn their degrees in an attempt to give K-12 students an advantage through the resource of stronger teachers.  Books written by reformers like Allan Bloom emphasized the need for stronger curriculum that emphasized the ideas behind things, not just the facts. Simply teaching what was on a page was clearly not working when it came to teaching the whole student and getting young Americans prepared for the workforce and citizenship.

One big push of the late 1980s when it came to reform, as pointed out by reformer and educator Diane Ravitch in a piece about the decade in public education, was the elimination of multiple choice tests as forms of assessments. Free response items and short-essay options were beginning to gain favor with educators across the country as true indicators of what students had really comprehended. While multiple choice options started to fade from routine school exams, it is interesting to note that they are still the main way state assessments are delivered today. As a matter of efficiency, these easily scanned answer sheets make the most sense. As a way to truly assess what students do and do not know, they are lacking.

Ravitch also points out in her essay that “one of the most promising developments” of public education in the 1980s was the recognition from the business community that the schools needed its help. Businesses provided funding to schools, set up scholarship programs and looked for other opportunities to give students the help they needed to feel encouraged in their educational pursuits.

That momentum carried over into the 1990s but instead of a renewed dedication to the goals of public education, the American public and reformers looked outside for answers. The phrase “school choice” began to resonate throughout the country, with people wondering what could be done to funnel public dollars to alternatives to public schools. Funding for schools with a religious theme had actually been discussed in the past, over 100 years earlier when it was first suggested that parochial schools receive a government stipend to help with expenses. Fearing the rising Irish Catholic population, state lawmakers put the kibosh on any such plans, citing separation of church and state. As parents began to question the value of the public school education provided to their kids, they began to feel entitled to different choices for their kids when the provided tax-funded school performed under par.

A new ideology began to take shape in the form of charter schools – publicly funded, non-religious schools that were given freedoms to innovate outside the constraints of public school regulations. To some, it seemed like a smart way to provide more educational options while fueling the fire under public schools which up until then, had faced no real competition. To critics, the plan to use taxpayer dollars to fund new schools only focused the money away from the place where it was really needed: actual public schools.

The school choice debate still rages on today, with a renewed call for vouchers for religious schools thrown in the mix. Some states, like Texas and Florida, allow wide-ranging options in school choice while others like Mississippi have virtually none. The effectiveness of all this “choice” is also difficult to determine. According to a Stanford University document, there were 6,000 charter schools in 42 states and the District of Columbia that served 2.3 million students in 2013– a number that rose 80 percent from 2009. Yet the unaccountability that charter schools are afforded, in comparison with traditional public schools, can cause them to be pretty unreliable too. During 2013, 17 charter schools closed in Columbus, Ohio alone. Nine of those schools only hung around for a few months before being forced to shut down. Students who left their own public schools, and even private ones, to give the shiny new charter schools a chance were forced to go back to their original spots.

The closing of 17 public schools in one city is completely unheard of and for good reason. Public schools are investments in more than just the students who attend. They represent the communities where they are established, and even if they have a rough year or two, they continue to strive for excellence for their students. It’s not that charter and other schools of choice do not share this passion for their students, but with the freedom to wander any direction they choose, these schools can be very volatile.

The 1990s also ushered in a new age of accountability in public schools, triggered by the quality concerns in the 1980s. The roots for the No Child Left Behind Act that was established in 2002 were planted in 90s educational reform movements. NCLB was a reenactment of the very outdated Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Both acts focused on ways to bring higher levels of equality to public education but NCLB also had a strong focus on bolstering student test scores and making teachers liable. In ways that were completely groundbreaking, NCLB put pressure on every educator from top education policy-makers to teachers in the classroom to heighten achievement.

While the basic tenets of NCLB have been scrutinized, and questioned at every turn, the truth remains that they are still a very large part of the educational system in today’s public school classrooms. The release and adoption of Common Core Standards in 2013 took the ideology of NCLB to a new level. Though voluntary based on state, these new accountability measures strike eerily similar to the federally mandated ones of NCLB. Instead of getting away from empty assessments that often take the shape of multiple choice questions it seems that public school systems are simply adding to the void. It’s not a pretty picture but the reality of what educators are facing right now, and it will certainly impact this generation of K-12 students. Follow my series on the progress of the U.S. educational system to learn more about where we’ve been, and where we need to go, as collective educators.

This is one of a multi-part series on the progression of education policies in the U.S. from its founding. Click here to see a list of all the posts in this series. 

By Matthew Lynch

Public education in the U.S. remained primarily unchanged throughout the first and second World Wars. Improvements in communication, particularly through radio transmissions, brought schools into the worldwide on goings of the battles. Though not part of any textbooks or measured testing, wartime knowledge became something of value in public schools and patriotism grew in its role as a virtue. Unlike the Civil War, which divided the nation, the World Wars in the first half of the 20^th century knit the union more tightly together. As millions of men fought outside U.S. soil, women filled in job roles and kids continued to attend school. Going to school and learning was in its own way a sign of solidarity.

The united feel of public education was all but destroyed in the 1950s and 1960s as issues of desegregation plagued the nation. Many Americans cheered the changes, of course, but there were enough opposing desegregation to make it a bleak time in U.S. public school history. If public education was, after all, meant to provide common knowledge, and life skills, in equal ways to all children in America then the theory of “separate but equal” certainly needed to be disposed. Change is difficult though, even in one of the most progressive nations in the world. The World War I and II-era solidarity in public school classrooms faded, replaced for arguably the first time in U.S. history with controversy within the schools. As the adults of the nation debated what should be allowed in schools and what was best for students, the children lived it out.

These two decades mark an important change in the role and perception of public schools in America. Before schools started taking on bigger issues like desegregation, and abuse, and childhood hunger, they were places that served the needs of the nation. That tide turned in the mid-1900s as public schools began to lead instead of just follow. Public schools stopped adhering to what was dictated for its next generation in terms of learning and citizenship and began to blaze a trail for the rest of society where collective belief systems were concerned. It may have been too late to change the minds of disenfranchised adults who had grown up accepting their worlds in a particular way, but it was still early for students. Needed change was not going to happen overnight but it was needed just the same.

Schools became the vehicles for future change, starting with the youth of the nation. The focus was no longer just on economics, or raising ideal citizens; core ideologies were being shaped in public school classrooms across the nation.

This characteristic of public schools is still evident today. Take anti-bullying campaigns, for example, particularly as they relate to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. While many parents (and even some school boards) are fighting against anti-bullying policies that are designed to protect LGBT students, schools across the country are adopting them at a rapid pace anyway. The same is true of healthy eating programs and the push to get kids away from television and computers and involved in active pursuits instead. Schools cannot change what is being taught at home, or even what students themselves believe. Yet by leading change through example and actual policy, the thought is that future generations will have a different approach to important issues than their parents did. Like the socially conscious efforts of Dewey, public schools establish principles that then govern a particular group of K-12 students as adults.

The 1970s brought even more equality in public schools with the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This was the first federal regulation that mandated that public schools accepting federal funding also provide a free education, and meals, to children with mental or physical disabilities. It was not enough to simply accept the students; schools had to create a teaching plan that would give these students as close to a typical education as their non-handicapped peers. Though separate classrooms were inherent to the plan, schools were instructed to keep special education students as near to their peers as possible. By this token, public schools became even stronger when it came to truly opening their doors for all students, and being a right of American life. Follow my series on the progress of the U.S. educational system to learn more about where we’ve been, and where we need to go, as collective educators.

This is one of a multi-part series on the progression of education policies in the U.S. from its founding. Click here to see a list of all the posts in this series. 

By Matthew Lynch

There were public schools in America as far back as the mid-1600s in the Massachusetts Bay Colony but the first truly American public schools began appearing in Pennsylvania at the end of the 18^th century. Money was no object as the even the poorest of citizens were welcomed through the schoolhouse doors and offered a public education. The New York Public School Society came soon after in 1805, and by 1870 all states had at least a minimal public program in place to educate students en masse. These programs were voluntary, though.

What was taught in these early schools varied by region but was grounded in a basic set of ground rules for bringing up American students right. Public education was meant to unite American families through a common interest: raising educated children who would soon be at the helm of the nation’s future. Basic education was not something reserved for the elite. Reading, writing and basic arithmetic were necessities of living as Americans and were important when it came to guiding the young nation.

The learning resources of early America were understandably limited. It was too early to have much variety in American-made textbooks or other learning tools. Much of what was used in these schools were texts developed in England and repurposed for American pursuits. The need for purely American educational texts did exist though, and slowly but surely they began to take shape.

In the 1780s, Noah Webster set out to create a textbook that would teach children the realities of spelling in the new land. Until that point, spelling textbooks were mainly imports from England that sought to teach kids the most unusual and difficult, yet least used, words in the English language. Webster saw the impracticality of this, and set out to change it. The American Spelling Book (shrunk down by Webster from a much longer, pompous title suggested by his editor) became a staple for learning in homes and the few organized educational models that existed. In accomplishing this, Webster established the first systematic method for learning in the young country that was practical, easy to navigate and widely used. Even as late as 1866, after many other spelling books had been written and updated, Webster’s original version was still selling 9 million copies annually.

In the early 1800s, several other publishing companies followed suit, piggybacking on the idea of nationalism through learning. Popular titles included The United States Spelling Book and The American Preceptor. When it came to arithmetic, the titles were more complex but the patriotic theme remained. New and Complete Systems of Arithmetic Composed for the Use of the Citizens of the United States and Being a Plain, Practical and Systematic Compendium of Federal Arithmetic were just a few of the more popular textbooks widely circulated in the early 1800s. Using these purely American terms was still a new and exciting way to remind citizens that the country was in its infancy and that everything needed to be reinvented with a purely American spin. The idea that exists today that universal texts need the American touch was born in this era of national construction, when what was taught began to be just as important as how it was presented.

From the start, then, public education in the United States was about moving students collectively in the direction the nation wanted to go. Individualism and customized learning were certainly not common terms and the choices for education were slim. The accepted curricula for one American was good enough for another. This base learning was rooted in the need to not only obtain knowledge, but to use education as a way to build up a nation that was still teetering dangerously on the edge of failure. Parents did not encourage their children to learn spelling or arithmetic so they could have a “better life” but so they could continue to have a free one. Education was a means of survival and banding together with the same education goals, at least when it came to common people, was a way to build the entire nation up. Sure, there was some educational elitism through private schooling and university systems, but when it came to the public institutions of learning, every student deserved and earned the same set of knowledge.

As the country continued to expand, both in sheer numbers and land mass, public education became more segmented. Public schools until the 1840s were under local control, with little input from the state and virtually no federal oversight. Attendance was rising though. The U.S. Census from 1840 shows that 3.68 million children from ages 5 to 15 attended school, and this represented about 55 percent of the population in that age bracket. Around this time the idea of one-room schoolhouses took shape, with the older students acting as helpers to the younger ones. Students learned in common ways from teachers and each other. When it came to teachers, there was no formal credentialing. This is why young, single women often filled the roles. They were available, and able, so they filled the roles of educators until they became married and were needed full-time in homes of their own. As in the post-Revolutionary days, education became the responsibility of everyone in the community.

It’s important to understand how public schools started in order to reach the point where we understand WHY they operate the way they do today. Follow my series on the progress of the U.S. educational system to learn more about where we’ve been, and where we need to go, as collective educators.