Origin of Public Education in The US?
When did the US begin to offer free compulsory education to the
public's children. I thought it was pretty early on, but it's
not in the Bill of Rights or Constitution; that I can find. I
thought it was right up there with the Right to Bare Arms and
Free Speech as being necessary for a democracy. Did the founders
enact that later? It seems to be in some State C/BoR and some
country's C/BoR from searching google but I can't find it at the
Federal level.
Jefferson tried to get Virginia to open free public schools, but the
legilature didn't want to levy a school tax, so it failed.
The first public schools as we know them today were in Massachussets in
the1850's.
That isn't to say they there wasn't a high level of literacy in some places
in the colonies. Conn had modern levels of literacy before the
Revolutionary war.
It was not until the Education for All Handicapped act in 1975 or so
that the federal government became involved in education and the
setting of educational standards. This is the law that requires public
schools to provide a "free and appropriate education" for handicapped
children. Prior to that, there were no federal standards and very
limited federal involvement (mostly limited to things like the ERIC
clearinghouse for educational research papers). There is still no
federal law requiring that states provide public schools or mandating
the structure of those schools -- public schooling is a state
function. Thus, for example, in Arizona there are now hundreds of
charter schools, which receive public funding but operate like private
schools (and contrary to popular belief amongst the NEA etc., many of
these schools target the "hard to reach" populations that the NEA
claims would not be served by charter schools).
If you are talking about state-wide systems you may be
correct. However, most major cities had public schools well before
that time. I am most familiar with the history of education in my home
state of Louisiana (since that is where I got my teaching
certificate). The New Orleans public schools date back to the 1830's,
and even after the Reconstruction government decided to open
state-wide public schools in the late 1860's, the New Orleans public
schools remained independent within that system and in fact remained
independent until the 20th century.
After statewide public schooling being virtually discontinued in the
late 1870s and 1880's due to an armed revolt by whites who were
incited by former slave owners to blame blacks for all their problems
(thus causing the fall of the Reconstruction government, which
required armed troops to protect polling places from being seized by
the armed rebels and after the troops were withdrawn as part of the
Tilden Compromise the government could no longer protect the polling
places and thus suddenly all the polling places started voting for
Democrats), public schools in Louisiana were mostly re-instated in
their current form in the 1890's. The current Louisiana constitution
was written in the early 1970's and includes a guarantee of a free and
appropriate K-12 education to all Louisiana citizens. That has been
the cause of many lawsuits since then, as school districts with less
local tax base sue the state saying that they cannot provide an
appropriate education due to lack of state funding. As part of
settling those lawsuits, the current state funding formula (as of 1997
or so, I have no more recent information since I no longer work in
school administration services) provides for approximately 70% of the
cost of schooling, with the rest provided by local taxes, but gives
more per-pupil money to school districts with less tax base in an
effort to equalize funding.