Kpdanford/Education policy in the U.S.
Education policy in the United States is and has been a hotly debated topic for a very long time: it refers to the plan and underlying principles for teaching students what they need to know to function as productive citizens in our democracy. Nearly everyone agrees on the necessity of gaining certain fundamental knowledge and skills for the pursuit of individual happiness, civic order, and economic prosperity. However, there is much disagreement about what should be learned and how it should be done. The major educational policy issues focus on the following questions: who should be educated and by whom; what constitutes the proper content of education who controls that content; where and when students should be educated; who is responsible for delivery of education; how much should education cost and how should it be financed; what are the standards for measuring success what should and can be done to correct failure. These far reaching questions have preoccupied education advocates and reformers since at least the 17th century. The interested parties or immediate stakeholders today include: students, parents, teachers, school administrators, professors and education schools, elected and non-elected officials, reformers and businesses which rely on an educated work force. The policies surrounding education often pit these stakeholders against each other and most often involve who should decide what is best for children. The main tension is and has always been between individuals, or parents, and government authority. Within the government, the tension is between local, state or federal control of various aspects of education content, funding and delivery. In addition, trade groups such as teachers’ unions and reform organizations often disagree about the most basic issues. History[edit]
Traditionally in the U.S. education has been in the control of local and state governments. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about federal control or even involvement in education, and therefore, according to the 10th Amendment, this is the province of state governments. Education is funded largely by local and state government, with the federal government contributing only about 10 percent of total expenditures. [1] Because education is overseen by so many different state and local entities there is much variation and inequality among school systems. To combat this many advocate for a larger role of the federal government in setting policy and standards. Others argue for greater local and parental control. From the beginning, there has been a tension between parents and the state on the matter of educating children. The Colonial Era[edit] Education in America in the early years was primarily private and religious, and focused mainly on learning to read and write in order to read the Bible and new laws of the settlements. The first education law was enacted by the Massachusetts General Court in 1642 requiring parents and guardians to “make certain their charges could read and understand the principles of religion and the laws of the Commonwealth.” [2] Most children were taught at home, but because not all parents could or would comply, the Massachusetts Law of 1647, the Old Deluder Satan Act, was enacted to require that “towns of fifty families hire a schoolmaster who would teach children to read and write. Towns of a hundred families must have a grammar schoolmaster who could prepare children to attend Harvard College.”[3] The first government-owned and operated public high school, Boston Latin School, was founded in 1685.[4] The prominent minister Cotton Mather, following Martin Luther and the Reformation in Europe, preached in the strongest terms for the establishment of schools to prevent degeneracy and social disorder: “A woeful putrefaction threatens the Rising Generation; Barbarous Ignorance, and the unavoidable consequence of it, Outrageous Wickedness will make the Rising Generation Loathsome, if it have not Schools to preserve it.”[5]The religious component of education to reinforce Protestant understanding of the Bible continued to play a role in schooling well into the 19th century. The Founding[edit]
By the time of the American Revolution, education in the colonies was less influenced by Europe and more geared toward practical matters of commerce and agriculture. In 1749 Benjamin Franklin founded the private Philadelphia Academy offering a practical, more secular curriculum. During the 17th and 18th centuries there were many different types of private or semi-public arrangements for the education of children, with curricula ranging from traditional Latin and Greek curricula to more practical utilitarian studies typical in English Grammar Schools. Academies combined elements of both.[6] There was also great inequality as to who was educated. Generally girls were educated at home or in Dame Schools, and few students from the lower classes, American Indians, or African Americans were educated formally, except by the Quakers who established charity schools to serve these groups. Thomas Jefferson advocated for the education of the common man as a way to promote and preserve the democratic ideal: in order to preserve their liberty, citizens needed not just reading and math in order to manage their affairs, but also an understanding of history to understand their rights and duties. Benjamin Rush called for public schools in Pennsylvania, and even a national system of education. Many were opposed because they did not want to pay for it through taxes. He argued that all would benefit because education of the lower classes would lead to less crime and degeneracy. Nevertheless, there were still few completely publicly funded schools, and nothing approaching a standard curriculum or unified theory of education. [7] Early schooling involved primarily learning to read for religious purposes, and learning some rudimentary math. After the revolution civic literacy became an added component, as seen in Noah Webster’s first “textbook” in 1783. This was a speller that emphasized patriotic and moral values of the newly independent colonies while teaching grammar and spelling.[8] The 19th Century[edit] In the 1820’s Massachusetts and then Connecticut passed laws requiring every town to choose a school committee to organize public schools into unified system. The chief advocate of government schools, or “common schools,” was Horace Mann, who was appointed Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837. In response to the great wave of Roman Catholic immigrants, public schooling became more popular as a way of integrating, and “civilizing” the children of immigrants, whose parents were considered bad influences. This began the “Common School Movement” during which local governments set up “non-sectarian” schools for the general populace paid for by local and state governments. Critics of the movement included Catholics who complained of religious bias, taxpayers who did not want to pay for public schools, and those who saw government control as trampling individual liberty and parental rights .[9] Despite these objections reformers succeeded during the second half of the century in getting all states to set up systems of common schools. Local schools boards, school districts, and teachers’ unions came into existence. The Southern states lagged behind the north, and did not set up legally mandated schools until after the Civil War, and they were racially segregated. By 1900 the majority of children aged 6-13 were enrolled in government elementary schools. As the power of the educational establishment expanded, there was a strong sense among reformers, bureaucrats, politicians and teachers, that children belonged to the state and that parental rights were subordinate to the “public interest.” [10] Although the public schools were officially “non-sectarian” the inherited Protestant bent to the teaching prompted Catholics and Lutherans to set up a parallel system of parochial schools to preserve their religion and culture. Opposition to parochial schools lead to the so-called ‘’Blaine Amendment’’ which prohibited the use of public funds for parochial schools. Although this amendment ultimately did not pass, it was adopted by many states and still affects school choice policy today. The 20th Century[edit]
By 1918, the end of WWI, roughly two-thirds of children were enrolled in government schools, and all states had compulsory attendance laws. Oregon amended its Compulsory Education Act, making it illegal for students to attend non-government run schools, but this was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1925 in the case of ‘’Pierce v. Society of Sisters.’’
