The history of education in the United States covers the trends in formal education in America from the 17th century to the early 21st century.
Colonial era
Schooling was a high priority in Puritan New England, which set up strong systems, especially in the colonial-era Province of Massachusetts Bay. It was a lower priority elsewhere, with many short-lived small local private academies and some schools for pauper children.See Cohen (1974); Axtell (1974); Jernegan (1931); Edwards and Richey (1947); Cremin (1970).
By 1775 Americans were among the most literate people in the world. They kept posted on political events and ideas thanks to 35 weekly newspapers in the 13 colonies, with 40,000 subscribers.See "List of Colonial American Newspapers 1775" online
New England
The Puritans in the New England colonies strongly supported education. The aim of Puritan instruction was for children to be able to read and interpret the Bible for themselves without the need for the exegesis and interpretation of clergy.James Axtell, The School upon a Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England (1974)
The first American schools in the Thirteen Colonies opened in the 17th century. The first public schools in America were established by the Puritans in New England during the 17th century. Boston Latin School was founded in 1635. Boston Latin School was not funded by tax dollars in its early days, however. On January 1, 1644, by unanimous vote, Dedham, Massachusetts authorized the first U.S. taxpayer-funded public school; "the seed of American education."
The Puritan colonists tried at first to educate by the traditional English methods of family, church, community, and apprenticeship, with schools later becoming the key agent in socialization. At first, the rudiments of literacy and arithmetic were taught inside the family, assuming the parents had those skills. Literacy rates were much higher in New England because much of the population had been deeply involved in the Protestant Reformation and learned to read in order to read the Scriptures.Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (Harper & Row, 1970), pp.15–16, 237 online
By the mid-19th century, the role of the schools in New England had expanded to such an extent that they took over many of the educational tasks traditionally handled by parents.Maris A. Vinovskis, "Family and Schooling in Colonial and Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of Family History, Jan 1987, Vol. 12 Issue 1-3, pp. 19–37
All the New England colonies required towns to set up schools, and many did so. In 1642 the Massachusetts Bay Colony made "proper" education compulsory; other New England colonies followed this example. Similar statutes were adopted in other colonies in the 1640s and 1650s. In the 18th century, "common schools" were established; students of all ages were under the control of one teacher in one room. Although they were publicly supplied at the local (town) level, they were not free. Students' families were charged tuition or "rate bills." Literacy rates are disputed, but one estimate is that at the end of the Colonial era about 80% of males and 50% of females were "fully literate," i.e., able to both read and sign their names. Historian David McCullough has said that the literacy rate in Massachusetts was higher in colonial times than it is today.Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America, p. 13 (1985).
The larger towns in New England opened grammar schools, the forerunner of the modern high school.Walter H. Small, "The New England Grammar School, 1635–1700," School Review 7 (September 1902): 513–31 The most famous was the Boston Latin School, which is still in operation as a public high school. As its name implies, the purpose of Boston Latin, and similar later schools, was to teach Latin (and Greek), which were required for admission to Harvard College and other Colonial colleges.Lawrence A Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783, p. 185 (1970). Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut, was another. By the 1780s, most had been replaced by private academies. By the early 19th century New England operated a network of private high schools, now called "prep schools," typified by Phillips Andover Academy (1778), Phillips Exeter Academy (1781), Hopkins School 1660, and Deerfield Academy (1797). They became the major feeders for Ivy League colleges in the mid-19th century.Ronald Story, "Harvard Students, The Boston Elite, And The New England Preparatory System, 1800–1870," History of Education Quarterly, Fall 1975, Vol. 15 Issue 3, pp. 281–298 These prep schools became coeducational in the 1970s, and remain highly prestigious in the 21st century—and as expensive as the elite colleges they feed.James McLachlan, American Boarding Schools: A Historical Study (1970)Arthur Powell, Lessons from Privilege: The American Prep School Tradition (Harvard UP, 1998)
Jackson Turner Main finds that teaching in colonial New England was a poorly paid, part-time, temporary job. Young men typically moved on to more secure occupations as soon as possible.Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut (1985) p. 258
Puritanism required a well-educated ministry, and Harvard (founded in 1636) and Yale (founded in 1701) provided the men. Of the 2,466 graduates of the two schools from 1691 to 1760, 987 (40%) became ministers. However the salaries were low, and increasingly ministers were unable to send their own sons to college.James W. Schmotter, "Ministerial Careers in Eighteenth-Century New England: The Social Context, 1700–1760," Journal of Social History 9#2 (1975), pp. 249–267 [250, 261].
South
Residents of the Upper South, centered on the Chesapeake Bay, created some basic schools early in the colonial period. Generally the planter class hired tutors for the education of their children or sent them to private schools. During the colonial years, some sent their sons to England or Scotland for schooling.James J. Walsh, Education of the Founding Fathers of the Republic, p. 38 (1935).
In March 1620, George Thorpe became a deputy in charge of of land to be set aside for a university and Indian school. The plans for the school for Native Americans ended when George Thorpe was killed in the Indian massacre of 1622. In Virginia, rudimentary schooling for the poor and paupers was provided by the local parish. Most elite parents either home schooled their children using peripatetic tutors or sent them to small local private schools.
The Church of England sponsored the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) in 1701. In the colonial era, it was the most active Church missionary organization, with 170 missionary stations oriented toward Native Americans, and white backcountry pioneers. It hired 98 teachers for the children of parishioners, as well as children of poor whites. They focused on the principles of religion and the three Rs. The SPG was expelled from Virginia in 1776. Dissenting Protestants, especially Moravians, Quakers, and Presbyterians operated schools in the south.Wayne J Urban and Jennings L. Wagoner, Jjr, American Education: A history 2004 p. 25.John Calam, Parsons and Pedagogues. The S. P. G. Adventure in American Education (Columbia UP, 1971)
In late 17th-century Maryland, the Jesuits operated some schools for Catholic students.
In the deep south (Georgia and South Carolina), schooling was carried out primarily by private venture teachers,Margaret A. Nash, Women's Education in the United States, 1780–1840, p. 36 (2007) in "old field schools,Old field schools were local, private subscription schools that often were built on exhausted farm fields. They usually operated for three months a year. David A. Norris, Old Field Schools, in Encyclopedia of North Carolina (William S. Powell ed., 2006). and in a hodgepodge of publicly funded projects. In the colony of Georgia, at least ten grammar schools were in operation by 1770, many taught by ministers. Dozens of private tutors and teachers advertised their service in newspapers. A study of women's signatures indicates a high degree of literacy in areas with schools. In South Carolina, scores of school projects were advertised in the South Carolina Gazette beginning in 1732. Although it is difficult to know how many ads yielded successful schools, many of the ventures advertised repeatedly over years, suggesting continuity. Generally, however, literacy rates were lower in the South than in New England.Catherine Kerrison, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, p. 11 (2006).
Women and girls The earliest continually operating school for girls in the United States is the Catholic Ursuline Academy in New Orleans, founded in 1727 by the Sisters of the Order of Saint Ursula, the first convent established in the US. The academy graduated the first female pharmacist. This was the first free school and first retreat center for young women. It was the first school to teach free women of color, Native Americans, and enslaved women. In the region, Ursuline provided the first center of social welfare in the Mississippi Valley; and it was the first boarding school for girls in Louisiana, and the first school of music in New Orleans.Clark, Robenstine. "French Colonial Policy and the Education of Women and Minorities: Louisiana in the Early Eighteenth Century," History of Education Quarterly (1992) 32#2 pp. 193–211
Tax-supported schooling for girls began as early as 1767 in New England. It was optional and some towns proved reluctant to support this innovation. Moreover, statutes creating town schools for "children" often were interpreted in practice as encompassing only boys.E. Jennifer Monaghan, Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New England, in Reading in America: Literacy and Social History, p. 67 (1989) Northampton, Massachusetts, for example, was a late adopter because it had many rich families who dominated the political and social structures. They did not want to pay taxes to aid poor families. Northampton assessed taxes on all households, rather than only on those with children, and used the funds to support a grammar school to prepare boys for college. Not until after 1800 did Northampton educate girls with public money. In contrast, the town of Sutton, Massachusetts, was diverse in terms of social leadership and religion at an early point in its history. Sutton paid for its schools by means of taxes on households with children only, thereby creating an active constituency in favor of universal education for both boys and girls.Kathryn Kish Sklar, "The Schooling of Girls and Changing Community Values in Massachusetts Towns, 1750–1820," History of Education Quarterly 1993 33(4): 511–542
Historians note that reading and writing were different skills in the colonial era. Schools taught both, but in places without schools, writing was taught mainly to boys and a few privileged girls. Men handled worldly affairs and needed to both read and write. It was believed that girls needed only to read (especially religious materials). This educational disparity between reading and writing explains why the colonial women often could read, but could not write and could not sign their names—they used an "X".E. Jennifer Monaghan, "Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New England," American Quarterly 1988 40(1): 18–41 See also, Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the United States, vol. 1, p. 138 (1929)