History of US Education

1848

Mingling Goals

Massachusetts Reform School (at Westboro) opened. This was a school where children who had refused to attend public schools were sent. This began a long tradition of combining education and the juvenile justice systems

1848

1851

A Civilizing Force

The state of Massachusetts passed its first compulsory education law. The goal was to make sure that the children of poor immigrants got “civilized” and learned obedience and restraint. This, lawmakers believed, would eventually translate into a more law-abiding workforce

1851

1865-1877

1865-1877

African Americans Mobilize

After the Civil War, and with the legal end of slavery, African Americans in the South built alliances with white Republicans to push for many political changes. Prominent on their agenda was to rewrite the state constitutions to guarantee, for the first time, free public education for all children. In practice, rural/poor white children benefitted more from this than Black children

1921

Excluding Various Groups

California’s school laws (Political Code 1662) were updated such that that school districts, “shall have the power to exclude children of filthy or vicious habits, or children suffering from contagious or infectious diseases. It also allowed for the establishment of separate (and obligatory) schools for Indian children and for children of Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian parentage

1924

Civilizing Schools

Since the late 1800s, the US government had been forcibly removing Native American children from their homes and communities to place them in boarding schools designed to “civilize” and “Christianize” them. In 1924, an act of Congress made Native Americans U.S. citizens for the first time. Not until 1973 were the last of the Indian boarding schools closed

1924

1945

Court Challenges

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) challenged school segregation in California on behalf of Mexican-American parents in Orange County, Ca (Mendez v. Westminster). NAACP lawyers followed this case closely and eventually modeled their 1954 Brown v. Board of Education strategy after the Mendez case

1954

Inherently Unequal

In the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that segregated schools, even if equal in quality, were “inherently unequal” and must be abolished “at most deliberate speed."

1974

De Facto Segregation OK

In Miliken v. Bradley, the US Supreme Court ruled that schools may not be desegregated across school district lines. This ruling effectively allowed de facto segregation as long as it wasn’t an explicit policy of the school district. This decision largely contributed to a dominant pattern of students of color struggling in poorer, inner-city districts while white students thrived in wealthier, suburban districts.

2002

New: Subgroup Data

Signed into law by George W. Bush, the controversial federal law No Child Left Behind required schools to publicly report both school and “subgroup” test scores annually. Subgroup data revealed for the first time the stark inequalities in learning outcomes that existed nationally for students based on race/ethnicity, income level, English learner status and special education status.

New Office

2013

Expansion

Adjusted Dollars

California’s Budget Act greatly simplified the state’s school finance system. Under the new Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), California allocates school funds equally per student, with adjustments based on grade and demographic characteristics (such as income level, English learner status, and foster status). LCFF replaces complexity with equity and increased transparency