A Chronology of School Reform

Abstract

Formal education, and the opportunity to learn how to read, write, and do basic mathematics, since before the founding of America, has long been considered the great equalizer, the best chance for movement up from the bottom of the social and economic class structure. While that assumption remains as true as ever, some have faced greater challenges than others accessing and succeeding in schools. For decades, race, religion, and gender impacted ability to access schools. Today, where one lives can have an equally significant impact on the quality of schools. The focus of this chapter is a broad overview of efforts to improve schools in America. Starting in the American colonies, this process includes efforts to expand access to free schools, first in colonial New England, and, later as the nation grows, efforts to increase access and quality of schools by improving the curriculum and other elements within the existing local educational system primarily through first-order process-driven change.

The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention, to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country. (Quotation from Benjamin Franklin’s Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (1749) a pamphlet outlining a proposal for public education. This led to the founding of the Academy of Philadelphia which in 1791 became the University of Pennsylvania.)