Education 1900 – 2010: Timeline and Key Events
1900 – In an effort to promote higher standards and compete with the European system, the Association of American Universities is founded.
1901 – Joliet Junior College, in Joliet, Illinois, opens.
1904 – Prominent African-American educator Mary McLeod Bethune founds the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida.
1905- The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is founded. In 1906, the Foundation encouraged adopting a standard system that equated seat time to high school credits.
1911 – The first Montessori school in the United States opens. Maria Montessori visits the United States in 1913, and Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel Bell, his wife, create the Montessori Educational Association in their home at Washington, D.C.
1913 – Edward Lee Thorndike publishes a book, Educational Psychology: The Psychology of Learning, describing his theory that learning involves forming habits and connections. He introduces the belief that connections are strengthened by repeating the action and achieving satisfying results.
1916 – A team of Stanford University graduate students led by Louis M. Terman complete an American version of the Binet-Simon scale. The revision of this scale becomes widely-used in assessing individual intelligence, and the concept of the I.Q. (intelligence quotient) is introduced.
1916 – The American Federation of Teachers is founded as is the American Educational Research Association.
1916 – John Dewey’s Democracy and Education. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education is published.
1916 – Lucy Sprague Mitchell founds the Bureau of Educational Experiments in New York City with the intent to study child development and how children learn.
1917 – Federal funding for agricultural and vocational education is provided in the passing of the Smith-Hughes Act. This is repealed much later in 1997.
1917 – Robert Yerkes, an officer in the United States Army and then President of the American Psychological Association becomes the Chairman on Psychological Examination of Recruits. This fills a previous gap wherein the army had no way to screen intellectual ability of its recruits.
1919 – With the goal of reforming the American educational system, the Progressive Education Association is founded.
1922 – The International Council for Exceptional Children is founded at Columbia University Teachers College.
1925 – John Scopes, a high school biology teacher is charged with the crime of teaching evolution. Tennessee vs. John Scopes rises to national attention, earning the nickname of “the Monkey Trial.”
1926 – The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is administered for the first time.
1929 – Public education suffers as a direct result of the Great Depression. Schools were closed, teachers were laid off, and many others experienced drastic salary reductions.
1931 – The first successful school desegregation case, Alvarez vs. Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District, forbids the school district from placing Mexican-American children into separate “Americanization” schools.
1935 – Congress authorizes the Works Progress Administration.
1939 – David Wechsler develops the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, introducing the concept of the “deviation IQ.” This scale calculates IQ scores based on the difference between the scores of the subjects and the average score from others of the same age, rather than scoring them with the ratio system.
1944 – The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 is signed by president Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22. It is commonly referred to as the G.I. Bill.
1946 – The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles rules, in Mendez vs. Westminster and the California Board of Education, that educating children of Mexican descent in separate facilities is unconstitutional. As a result, segregation is prohibited in California schools, establishing precedent for the later case Brown vs. Board of Education.
1946 – The President’s Commission on Higher Education is tasked with examining the roles of higher education institutions as a result of thousands of veterans returning to school in post-war America.
1947 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules by a 5 – 4 vote (in the case of Everson vs. Board of Education) that a law in New Jersey which allowed reimbursements of transportation costs to parents of children who rode public transportation to school did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, even if the children attended Catholic schools.
1948 – The Supreme Court rules that schools cannot allow students “release time” for participation in religious education in public school classrooms in the case of McCollum v. Board of Education.
1952 – The Veterans Assistance Act of 1952 modifies the G.I. Bill for veterans of the Korean War. This is called Public Law 550.
1953 – Science and Human Behavior by Burrhus Frederic Skinner is published, emphasizing changes in behavior due to reinforcement. It is widely accepted and becomes a highly influential within the American educational system.
1954 – The Supreme Court announces its decision in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka on May 17. The ruling states that “seperate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” overturning the previous ruling in 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson. This was the historic first step toward creating educational equality throughout the United States.
1958 – Science education becomes increasingly important in classrooms throughout the United States, resulting in the passing of the National Defense Education Act. This Act authorizes additional funding for science research and education. Many believe this was brought on because of Sputnik.
1959 – The ACT Test is first administered.
1962 – The United States Supreme Court rules that the state of New York Regents prayer is a violation of the First Amendment in Engel vs. Vitale.
1963 – The term “learning disability” was first used by Samuel A. Kirk at a conference concerning children with perceptual disorders.
1965 – The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is passed on April 9.
1965 – The Higher Education Act (PL 89-329) is signed at Southwest Texas State College on November 8.
1965 – A pre-school education program for children from low-come familes, called Project Head Start, begins as a summer program lasting eight weeks.
1966 – The Equality of Educational Opportunity Study, authored by James S. Coleman (and sometimes referred to as the Coleman Report) is conducted in reponse to certain provisions of the Civil Rights Act.
1968 – The United States Supreme Court hears Epperson et al. v. Arkansas and finds that the Arkansas law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools or universities is unconstitutional.
1968 – McCarver Elementary School in Tacoma, Washington becomes the nation’s first magnet school.
1969 – The Open Classroom, by Herbert R. Kohl, promotes open education, an approach that emphasizes classrooms centered around the student as well as active, holistic learning.
1970 – Because of Diana vs. California State Board, new laws go into effect requiring that children who are being referred for special education placement must be tested in their primary language.
1971 – A Pennsylvania federal court rules that students who are mentally retarded are entitled to a free public education.
1972 – Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 becomes law.
1975 – The Education of All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142) becomes federal law.
1975 – The National Association of Bilingual Education is founded.
1977 – The Apple II, one of the first widely adapted personal computers is introduced by Apple Computer (now Apple, Inc.). The Apple IIe becomes popular with students in schools, and educational computer games such as Oregon Trail are used.
1981 – The Model 5150 personal computer by IBM is introduced to the market using an operating system called MS-DOS.
1982 – The United States Supreme Court invalidates the “Creationism Act” in the state of Louisiana. This Act had required that creationism be taught whenever evolution is taught. It was invalidated because it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
1982 – The United States Supreme Court decides that books cannot be removed from school libraries because administrators of the school deem their content to be offensive in the case of Board of Education vs. Pico.
1985 – The United States Supreme Court finds that the Alabama statutes that authorize silent prayer and teacher-led voluntary prayer within the public school system violate the First Amendment.
1986 – Chosen by NASA from among more than 11,000 applications, Christa McAuliffe becomes the first teacher-astronaut. Her mission is cut short when the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes just 73 seconds after launch.
1990 – The first web client-server protocol is written by British engineer and computer scientist Time Berners-Lee.
1990 – The Milwaukee Parental Choice program is initiated.
1990 – Teach for America is formed, reestablishing the idea of a National Teachers Corps.
1991 – Minnesota passes the first “charter school” law.
1992 – City Academy High School, the nation’s first charter school, opens in St. Paul, Minnesota.
1993 – The Massachusetts Education Reform Act requires a common curriculum and statewide tests.
1993 – Jones International University becomes the first university “to exist completely online.”
1994 – CompuHigh is founded. It claims to be the first online high school.
1998 – The Higher Education Act is amended and reauthorized requiring institutions and states to produce “report cards” about teacher education.
1998 – Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, set up their workplace for their newly incorporated search engine in Menlo Park, California. Though the space is just a garage, Google would later become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world.
1999 – On April 20th, two students at Columbine High School go on a killing spree that leaves 15 dead and 23 wounded at the Littleton, Colorado school, making it the nations’ deadliest school shooting incident.
2000 – The United States Supreme Court rules that student-led prayer prior to football games violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
2002 – George W. Bush signs the controversial No Child Left Behind Act on January 8.
2003 – Acces to higher education for low-to-middle income students is expanded when the Higher Education Act is again amended and reauthorized, providing additional funds for graduate studies and adding more measures of accountability.
2003 – The North American Council for Online Learning, a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing K-12 online education, is “launched as a formal corporate entity.”
2004 – H.R. 1350, The Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act, reauthorizes and modifies IDEA.
2005 – The United States District Court of Pennsylvania rules that teaching “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution is a violation of the First Amendment in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
2007 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5 – 4 vote that race cannot be a factor is assigning students to high schools.
2007 – The House and the Senate pass the Labor-HHS Education appropriation bill which allows for the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.
2009 – More than 90 billion dollars is provided for education through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Almost half of those funds go to local school districts to prevent layoffs, as well as for repairs.
2010 – New Texas social studies curriculum standards, described by some as “ultraconservative,” spark controversy. Many fear they will affect textbooks and classrooms in other states.
Related Resources
More resources about the history of education broken out by time period
Important Dates in Education Timeline of the 1600s
Important Dates in Education Timeline of the 1700s
Important Dates in Education Timeline of the 1800s
I am a teacher in Michigan. I grew up in Florida and have lived here in MI for close to 15 years. I enjoy writing and skiing in my spare time.
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