Old school classroom desks h 22707770

Timeline

  • Boston Latin School is founded in Boston, Massachusetts

  • Passage of the Massachusetts Bay School Law

  • 1821 Founding of the first public school in the United States, English High School, in Boston, Massachusetts

    An alternative to Boston Latin, the school is established to prepare boys for success in business and industry. Girls are not admitted until the 1970s
  • Massachusetts launches free public education

    Laws make all public-school grades free to all children and require towns of more than 500 families to have a public high school open to all students. Public schools, however, remain largely segregated until 1855, when the state bans “de jure” segregation in public school
  • Establishment of the first women’s college, Wesleyan College in Georgia

  • Massachusetts creates the first state board of education

  • Massachusetts enacts the first compulsory school attendance law

  • First public kindergarten program opens in St. Louis, Missouri

  • Founding of the American Federation of Teachers

  • Invention of first electronic computer

  • Wisconsin becomes the first state to allow public sector employees to bargain collectively

  • First administration of ACT test

  • Launch of the World Wide Web

  • Georgia becomes first state to offer preschool to every four-year-old

  • Enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)