A

UNITED STATES

BASIC DATA
Official Country Name:	United States of America
Region:	North & Central America
Population:	275,562,673
Language(s):	English, Spanish
Literacy Rate:	97%
Academic Year:	September-June
Compulsory Schooling:	10 years
Public Expenditure on Education:	5.4%
Foreign Students in National Universities:	453,785
Educational Enrollment:	Primary: 24,045,967
	Secondary: 21,473,692
	Higher: 14,261,778
Educational Enrollment Rate:	Primary: 102%
	Secondary: 97%
	Higher: 81%
Teachers:	Primary: 1,499,697
	Secondary: 1,394,080
	Higher: 915,321
Student-Teacher Ratio:	Primary: 17:1
Female Enrollment Rate:	Primary: 101%
	Secondary: 97%
	Higher: 92%

HISTORY & BACKGROUND

Historical Evolution:

Puritan New England: The American system of education has undergone dramatic transformations at various times since its origins in the 1600s, reflecting changes in the social life and culture of the nation. The educational system predates even the word "American," which was introduced in 1684 by Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister in New England whose sermons reflected his concerns over formal ways to rear young people. For that matter, the term "education" itself was coined around 1531, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, referring to a process for the rearing of youth in society. It was not synonymous with institutional learning until the early 1600s, coinciding with the founding of colonies in the New World.

In a sense, the religious turmoil of Europe in the 1500s is the starting point for understanding the history of education in colonial America. Had European exploration of America occurred with far more vigor in the early sixteenth century, the teachings of the Catholic Church would have been the greatest influence on early education. Because Europe's colonization of America came a full century after the Protestant Reformation, however, the most obvious influence on education in the colonies was the presence of numerous religious sects. These sects, or religious denominations, included the Puritans, Huguenots, Anabaptists, and Quakers.

Schools were among the first institutions built by the colonists. They were outranked in importance only by homes and houses of worship, a reflection of their value among a citizenry preoccupied with otherworldly salvation. All religious leaders regarded education of their young people as essential as a means to ensure the replication of their individual sects. "Especially it becomes parents to have their children well taught in the mysteries of a profitable calling," preached Cotton Mather. "We should be studious to have them know something by which they too may live." Mather also praised teachers: "Worthy of honor are the teachers that convey wisdom unto our children; worthy of double honor the happy instruments that convey saving wisdom to them."

In part because of religious doctrine and in part because those were dangerous times, sects such as the Puritans, or "Pilgrims," who began Plymouth Colony in 1620, promoted educational teachings with little sugarcoating for the children. All educational teaching was a type of religious instruction, and the intent clearly was to preserve the Puritan culture and to keep all followers homogenous and disciplined. Early religious leaders strove to influence their followers' supposedly corruptible souls with sacred teachings directed at their minds. The Bible was believed to be the direct word of God, and instruction was given to children and adults alike in thundering sermons from the pulpit.

Likewise, all teachers felt that absolute adherence to fundamental teachings was the best way to pass on values held in common. Any children resisting the teachings of a schoolmaster or displaying a disobedient nature could quickly be yanked from their benches for the liberal application of the master's lash or some other form of corporal punishment thought to drive the devil from the child's body. If children did something particularly egregious that interfered with their salvation, or the schoolmaster was unusually stern, they could sit for a time, in yokes similar to those worn by oxen, as they reflected on their transgressions.

By 1634, Massachusetts Bay had evolved from a wilderness setting into growing political and religious communities of 10,000 settlers. In Massachusetts, children began their educations at around eight years old and continued for six years. Although the English practice was generally to educate only the children of the upper classes, the colony also educated children of less wealthy settlers, as well as the offspring of ministers and merchants. Villages in the colony that became New York varied in their enforcement of education by locale. Only New York City had Latin schools comparable to those in Massachusetts. Eventually, a pro-education group with Church of England roots, called the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, started some 20 schools in New York.

In 1638, the abundant educational opportunities available in Massachusetts next became available in New Haven, Connecticut, which opened a school immediately after the town's founding. In addition to the children of villagers, schooling was available for one year to indentured servants. A schoolmaster from Boston was brought to New Haven to assume his teaching duties. A few years later, Hartford, Connecticut, had its first school and paid teacher, as did Newport, Rhode Island, by 1640.

Education in the English Colonies: The Massachusetts Bay colony continued to open schools in every town. One by one, villages established schools, supporting them with a building, land, offerings of money, and, occasionally, taxes. The colony began in 1647 to require by law secondary schools in the larger cities, as part of an effort to insure the basic literacy and religious inculcation of all citizens. Even so, education in seventeenth-century Massachusetts was hardly ideal. Some schools were placed under the care of tutors nearly as uneducated as their students. Books were limited to whatever volumes were generously lent by ministers or a town's wealthier citizens. But as the colony drew more educated settlers from England or graduated teachers from Harvard (founded in 1636), the quality of education in New England increasingly improved. Nonetheless, as the Puritans became more prosperous, their zeal for education dampened, and enrollments declined during the 1660s and 1670s.

This trend was reversed by an outburst of evangelistic passion often referred to as "The Great Awakening." Fire-and-brimstone preachers such as Jonathan Edwards, who wrote treatises and delivered orations such as "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," spurred a public dialog on educational and spiritual issues. More ministers were needed, and schools were founded to train them, reinvigorating a thirst for learning in the New England colonies.

This certainly was one of the more important educational innovations in early America, for the concept of free schools was largely unknown in civilized Europe in that age. The subjects taught were designed to assist students in practical matters of daily life: arithmetic for business; languages to communicate, debate, and preach; and reading to provide access to the Bible and to understand contracts, government documents, and laws. A few schools under more learned schoolmasters even offered language classes in Hebrew. To prepare students for the rigors of classroom life at Harvard, Latin schools were formed in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Illiterate villagers would come to depend on those with reading knowledge to keep them abreast of news, laws, and miscellaneous information.

Settlers in the other colonies founded schools that reflected both their established religions and ties to the lands from which they had emigrated, and, in most places, a single nationality or religion predominated. In a few places, however, such as New York City, many different peoples came to be assimilated after the Dutch lost control of what had been New Amsterdam.

While under control of the Dutch West India Company, the colony of New Netherlands started several schools, maintaining control as if they were business operations. Much of New York was farmland then, and access to schools was often a hardship, particularly in severe winters. Schoolmasters often were affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church and had general caretaker tasks assigned to them. New Amsterdam, the town that became New York, had its first school started in 1638 by the Dutch Reformed Church. Following the British takeover, an attempt was made, however, to give control of the former parochial school to the Anglican Church, but the diversity of New York made this impossible. It would have been difficult for any one of the 18 represented religious denominations to push its educational philosophy successfully to a city that had swelled from a population of 4,300 people in 1690 to 21,863 in 1771.

In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and surrounding towns made similar gains in population. Except for some well-run Quaker schools, however, education in colonial Pennsylvania had been neglected as merchants concentrated on building personal fortunes. Finally, in 1749, leading Philadelphia statesman Benjamin Franklin fought for the opening of an academy similar to the Latin grammar schools in Maryland, New York, and Massachusetts; he succeeded in 1751. Franklin further perceived that higher educational opportunities in other colonies were flourishing, particularly at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), Harvard College in Massachusetts, and Yale in Connecticut.

Franklin openly—and somewhat unfairly—blamed the colony's failure to keep up with German influences in Philadelphia and surrounding areas. Notably, however, in some other parts of Pennsylvania where the German influence was particularly strong, education for younger children was heavily emphasized. (At this time, there was little thought given to a system of secondary education between the one-room schoolhouses and the colleges.) German communities were not at all pleased when criticized for supposed deficiencies in the education of Pennsylvania's children. From the German point of view, English speakers such as Benjamin Franklin were interlopers bent on destroying their culture and way of life.

The Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania became a particularly desirable location for Germans because of the access to the cities of Reading and Philadelphia. In the area that became the city of Allentown, German settlers showed allegiance to the Zion Reformed Church, and the German Reformed influence dominated the single-room schoolhouses, although the Lutheran and Moravian Churches also created some schools. These schools kept their ties to German culture until nearly the mid-nineteenth century. Eventually, rifts developed between the conservative German-speaking congregation and pastors and their younger opponents advocating the adoption of English in church services and in school teachings.

In time, the German community saw the need for higher education, but the Allentown Seminary it built did not survive. Much of the blame for its failure was the insistence of the Seminary's backers on preserving the school's German culture at a time when many newcomers were English speaking.

The school also failed to see education as of much importance for women. A major exception to this backwardness of colonial leaders in providing education for females was the Moravian seminary for girls, which opened in 1745. Quaker schools in Pennsylvania also strove mightily to provide an education for females; later they helped both male and female children of former Negro slaves.

Virginia settlers, largely members of the Anglican faith and therefore in favor in England, possessed little of the evangelical fervor of the Puritans who had survived years of oppression and opposition from the Crown. Although the Virginia colony founded William and Mary College in 1693 (degrees were not awarded until 1700), it and other Southern colonies did not operate anywhere near as many free grammar or public schools as did Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Drawing inspiration from the operation of English schools, schools in the Southern colonies formed on plantations. In what would become Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, such learning centers tended to be run by tutors or ministers for the education of wealthy children of plantation owners. Many of the owners then sent their children to secondary schools and colleges in England, particularly young men who were groomed to return to the colonies as Anglican ministers. At home, the privileged had access to libraries on the manor that occasionally held thousands of books.

Some children, unable to attend formal schools, nonetheless received an education with heavy emphasis on the Greek and Roman classics from male tutors, Anglican ministers, and learned women who oversaw dame schools. Status-conscious agrarians who became wealthy planters or "country gentlemen" paid the passage for tutor-scholars from England. Some students, aside from the schools, received their education in the form of apprenticeships to skilled tradesmen; this commonly was the case with orphans, for care and education of the poor was a mandate for Church of England (Anglican) congregations. Eventually, laws were enacted that enjoined masters to make certain these apprentices could read, write, and perform elementary arithmetic; enforcement of those laws was sporadic, however. Those who owned hardscrabble farms or made a subsistence living through hunting lacked the same value for the classics that the wealthy land owners possessed, but they too often saw to it that their children received some training in the socalled "three R's." Through the 1670s, Governor William Berkeley of Virginia opposed the establishment of free schools.

As immigrants from Germany, Scotland, and Ireland fled to America in search of economic opportunity in the early 1700s, however, free schools like those in the North were eventually founded. Other schools served the needs of the poor or orphans. Church of England clergy were active in the management of these free schools. Outside Virginia, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was very active in founding schools. The Society also demonstrated a passion for the education and well-being of Negro slaves and Indians. Less prosperous and later-settled colonies, most notably Georgia, were unable to start or support anything more than the most rudimentary education system. Those children who managed to receive an education equal to that in the other colonies were usually taught by a clergyman or educated wife of a settler.

Revolution & Westward Expansion: Right before the outbreak of hostilities between the American colonies and England, the population of America was about 2.5 million people. Allegiance to either side was both fierce and inflexible on the part of loyalists and patriots. During the struggle for independence, a significant number of boys and girls received no education or a deficient one at best. Access to books on the frontier was problematic. Printing presses had been present in the colonies ever since the seventeenth century, but replacement of broken parts sent by ship from England was expensive. In addition, British authorities destroyed the presses of those printers said to be publishing materials subversive to the Crown or colonial governors. Libraries existed in the colonies at the time of the Revolution, but these were not the lending libraries of the modern era.

Undereducated, overworked, short-tempered male schoolmasters often presided over the schools. Corporal punishment was a euphemism for outright brutality against children. Perhaps because books were in short supply, the custom of the day was to ask students to memorize long chapters or even whole books, making learning laborious and irksome. Not until the teacher rang a hand bell were students free to express their individual natures. Discipline and utter quiet were valued, not discussion and examination of ideas.

The educators of the time saw that the colonies had become overly dependent upon English manufactured goods, including pamphlets, textbooks, and Bibles, as well as financial support from the crown and teachers and scholars trained in the great universities of England. A great national fervor following the breaking away from England led to nothing short of jingoism, or patriotism, for a time in the nation's schools as they were gradually rebuilt or established anew. Even grammar books contained passages containing patriotic themes. History classes emphasized the cultural heroes of the revolution, and in every schoolhouse in America the walls contained a portrait of General George Washington.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights put great emphasis on preserving freedom of the press and speech, reflected in American curricula in subjects such as composition and rhetoric. Pro-American sentiment led to some historical inaccuracies and biased interpretations that were to become part of everyday learning the classroom, and it would be many years before the role of women and ethnic minorities received anywhere near the attention they receive in the twenty-first century.

Gradually, after the revolution, the priorities of the fledgling country also encompassed education. As the British departed, they ceded by treaty a grand wilderness known as the Northwest Territory that extended to the west banks of the Mississippi River, eventually becoming the states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Congress wrote forward-thinking legislation, setting aside ample lands in every township for schools. Yet as the 1803 Louisiana Purchase expanded the territory of the United States, and commerce grew in economic importance, national interest in the classical lives of the Romans and Greeks declined. Grammar schools became less dominant, and languages such as French and German were more widely taught outside ethnic communities. Astronomy, logic, and rhetoric were also staples in the curriculum.

Secondary schools were touted in Massachusetts following the final defeat of the British in the War of 1812. Since lawmakers viewed organized common schools for older children to be a splendid democratic way to provide an equal opportunity education, legislators passed a statute in 1827 requiring these "high schools" to be installed in larger townships across the state. One of the chief backers of such legislation was James G. Carter. Carter supported democratic high schools and vigorously opposed the nation's private schools, which he viewed as elitist institutions catering to the wealthy and class conscious. In spite of his passion, full compliance with the law did not occur; opposition from private academies and taxpayers asked to foot the bill for high school construction was vociferous. Practically, these could be maintained only in towns large enough to enroll students in sufficient numbers to justify paying teacher salaries and building schools. Carter's idea of a democratic school system would not fully begin to be realized for another 150 years, as reformers following the civil rights movement pressed for equal-opportunity schools.

James Madison championed a movement to found a great national university, but though money and considerable energies were expended on behalf of such an institution, it failed to overcome opposition from those who thought the founding of schools was a matter for individual states to oversee rather than the federal government. There was more support for national military academies, and the first institution of its kind was established in 1802 at West Point. The U.S. Naval Academy followed in 1845, and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1876. More successful than Madison as an educational visionary was Thomas Jefferson, an advocate for free schools under local supervision. Jefferson was the prime mover behind the founding of a great state college in his own state, the University of Virginia. Its Jefferson-planned library and well-designed classroom buildings served as models for subsequent state schools of higher learning.

Civil War & Progressive Era: The late nineteenth century began to show signs of the progressive school systems that were to evolve in the twentieth century. However, education as a whole was seriously set back during the Civil War. Money that had gone to school districts was diverted to the war effort. Young male teachers were plucked from high schools and sent to war as soldiers. As the war dragged on, many schools in the South shut down entirely, and school districts in rural farming communities and mountain areas with small populations would take many decades to reach educational parity with similar communities in the North. Similarly, the South long would feel the effects of operating with a large population of poorly educated workers.

The so-called Reconstruction of the South was more accurately a dismantling of the South by Northern Republicans in retaliation for the Civil War. As a result, struggling industries and cities and towns barely able to exist could ill afford to spend money on improving school systems or paying teacher salaries. Following the Civil War, numerous schools for the education of freed slaves were established, but these were poorly financed. Impoverished students could not stay in school very long without financial support and ended up dropping out. Finding teachers to meet the demand was another battle. Only about 24 college degrees were awarded to African-Americans prior to the outbreak of the "War Between the States." The most famous teacher-preparation college for blacks, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, failed to prosper until the coming of energetic visionary Booker T. Washington in 1875.

As America's population grew, and modes of transportation grew sophisticated, one-room common schools began closing in favor of the establishment of larger elementary schools for grades one through eight. Secondary schools provided four years of increasingly more sophisticated instruction, although for the most part the curriculum of individual schools remained restrictive, with few, if any, course choices allowed by the school boards to make allowances for individual interests of students. In addition, by the late nineteenth century, a number of regions opted to adopt more uniform curriculums among schools under their geographical boundaries. There were, however, some vocationally oriented schools that offered practical subjects in shop subjects for students who, for financial or other reasons, were not planning to attend college. An industrial education association began in 1884, dedicated to professional standards, the hiring of trained teachers, and standardized instruction. With the Industrial Revolution had come a high demand existed for industrial workers that were literate and possessed practical training.

Women's Education: Increasingly, although female education in the United States was slow to gain hold as an idea, mothers were expected in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to initiate their children in the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Well into the twentieth century, advocates for women's rights fought hard to abolish the notion that women were professionally fit only for nursing or teaching professions, thereby facing exclusion or harassment when attempting to gain entrance into professional schools.

Nonetheless, in earlier years many Americans had paid serious attention to the writings of English author Isaac Watts (1674-1748), who bemoaned the fact that women, untrained and uneducated, often were reduced to the sorriest financial circumstances if unmarried or left alone after the death of a father or spouse. Massachusetts by 1789 was more liberal and allowed females to attend schools; Connecticut and other New England states followed. In the late 1790s, Pennsylvanian Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, advocated the formal instruction of girls since they were the guardians of society's morality. Industrialization was rapidly changing familiar social roles. Women replaced schoolmasters in larger cities in the nineteenth century, and primary schools taught by females were instituted in Boston by 1818.

Nationwide, however, attempts to educate females were sporadic, and many religious denominations, such as the German Reformed Church, opposed school learning for their daughters. Even some who supposedly advocated education for girls in the nineteenth century were referring merely to "finishing schools" where social graces could be picked up, so that as married women the girls would have some preparation to teach their male offspring. Many seminaries were opened for wealthier girls in the nineteenth century as an alternative to male academies, but these primarily were intended to produce educated mothers and few other professional women other than teachers. In spite of these limitations, a small number of women did achieve upward mobility as physicians, taking advantage of their overwhelming talents, intellects, and instincts for seizing opportunities. One of the more significant seminary founders was Emma Willard, who founded her oft-emulated institution in 1821 in Troy, New York. Together with Catherine Beecher and Mary Lyon, Willard became an advocate for quality secondary educational opportunities for girls.

American Educational Leaders: Although early American settlers had been chiefly influenced by European philosophy, by the time of the Revolution, schools were working to break with the past. Nonetheless, American colonists did respect fine English minds. One of the most influential thinkers upon American educational philosophy was the British thinker John Locke, who wrote that all minds at birth were a blank tablet and the mind was imprinted with what it learned through experience. American leaders liked his emphasis on common sense and empirical knowledge, leading to a strong emphasis on the value of practical experience and the worthiness of scientific experimentation that could be replicated by others.

Among the first truly American educational philosophers was the nineteenth-century visionary Horace Mann (1796-1859), an orator and champion for the cause of preserving American democracy by the continuous development of an educated citizenry. Mann was a Massachusetts legislator who used his influence to get the state to set up a Massachusetts board of education. That accomplished, Mann quit his position and assumed the post of Massachusetts Board of Education secretary, 1837-1848. Mann used his public forum to preach with vigor the benefits of state-run schools, and he was just as passionately opposed to Calvinist schools, which he viewed as provincial and lacking in foresight.

A former Calvinist turned Unitarian, Mann was not against religious training per se, advocating scripture readings in the schools and moral lessons. In his role as administrator, he came to argue that common schools were essential for molding of character of the nation's youth and providing the training that would make them self-sufficient throughout life. Mann regarded classrooms as sanctuaries to keep children away from the world's vices. He saw teachers as guides entrusted with leading their charges down the golden paths of virtuous living. Since the U.S. government continued to distance itself from religion in affairs of state, he considered schools essential for the development of godly leaders.

When the ambitious Mann became editor of The Common School Journal and espoused his ideas there, his views on education soon were debated nationally and adopted in some form by many states. Gleefully he said in a 1839 speech that "the universal diffusion and ultimate triumph of all-glorious Christianity itself must await the time when knowledge shall be diffused among men through the instrumentality of good schools." In Mann's era, immigration then was mainly of Europeans with Christian convictions, and he did not anticipate the day when diverse numbers of people of all religions would send their children to public schools. His philosophy is also dated by his promotion of the pseudo-science of phrenology, believing that the most intelligent students could be determined by the shape and bone structure of their skulls.

On the other hand, Mann's desire to use the schools for character building would fall on equally receptive ears in the twenty-first century, and he was a tireless fighter for higher taxes to pay teachers a fair living wage and for curriculum reform. He also was an advocate for better teaching institutions to train teachers; specialized colleges for teachers and elementary and high school administrators, then, fell well below standards for graduation of accredited universities and colleges.

Mann's contemporary, educator Henry Barnard (1811-1900), was another nineteenth-century giant in education. As a member of the Connecticut legislature, he lobbied for the creation of a state school board. During his long career, Barnard was Connecticut Board of Education secretary, Rhode Island superintendent of schools, a college president (St. John's, Annapolis), a University of Wisconsin chancellor, and ultimately, in 1867, the first U.S. Commissioner of Education. In part due to his advocacy work, nearly 30 cities employed school superintendents during his tenure as U.S. Commissioner of Education.

His achievements were varied. He persuaded Rhode Island officials to begin a state system of public schools. He championed his ideas for educational reform at all levels as the publisher and editor of the American Journal of Education (1855-1881) and other trade periodicals, paving the way for educational administration to be recognized as a field in its own right. Perhaps Barnard's greatest contribution was his ability to raise public interest in the schools for the betterment of state school systems nationwide, but he also fought for better textbooks, the creation of cooperative parent-teacher associations, and systematic procedures for inspection of schools. In his lifetime, peers honored him as the foremost authority in school administration.

One of the most important educational philosophers of the early twentieth century was John Dewey (1859-1952), a pragmatist who as a young man tried to reconcile his passion for science with his New England Christian upbringing. He preached the theory of "instrumentalism," that mankind must accept statements presented by scientists that can be verified by repeated observation, instead of looking the other way or rationalizing problems away. Dewey thus introduced a system of ethics to education. His important books, How We Think and Democracy and Education, appeared respectively in 1910 and 1916 and cemented his reputation as one of the century's great thinkers and educators.

His pragmatic approach held that education was meant to help students know the world as it actually is, not in some mythic sense. His theory maintained that there is always hidden information that mankind cannot know and that the acquisition of new knowledge brings with it ever changing ways of looking at the universe. For human beings to remain unchanged in the face of rational explanations, citing unyielding belief in a higher authority was to stifle inquiry, problem-solving, and free expression. Dewey championed democracy as a way of life but left open the possibility that as new knowledge was acquired, human beings might follow a more perfect form of government in the distant future. The Progressive Education Association touted other ideas of Dewey in the 1930s particularly, attacking inflexible curriculums that stifled the personal growth of individual students and their talents and interests.

CONSTITUTIONAL & LEGAL FOUNDATIONS

Colonial Precedents: Massachusetts passed a statute requiring the education of all children in 1647. Towns of 100 or more families were required by law to establish formal secondary or "grammar" schools that taught—in addition to religious values, reading, and writing—the subjects of arithmetic, Latin, and Greek. The colony's governing body required all parents living in a community of at least 50 families to employ the services of a schoolmaster who imparted, not just community and church values, but skills related to reading and writing. There was to be no charge for the children of Native Americans who wanted an education. Compensation to the schoolmaster was 50 pounds a year.

Parents were required to school their children under penalty of having those offspring placed in the custody of another master who would see to it they were educated until males reached 21 and females became 18. Towns could be heavily fined for noncompliance with the education statute.

Three years later, the growing colony of Connecticut did the same, its code drawn from the one passed in Massachusetts. Not only parents, but also masters responsible for children who were indentured servants, were required to send their charges to school. Fines were levied for noncompliance. Laws stayed in effect in both Connecticut and Massachusetts until independent state constitutions for both former colonies were written after the American Revolution. Parents in the colony of Virginia were also required to send their children to school, as education was compulsory. Failing to send one's children was to run afoul of Virginia courts.

Constitution & Federal Law: The United States Constitution makes clear that the founders wanted to place responsibility for the education of its citizens under the control of states and other jurisdictions, such as the District of Columbia. States derive their power and responsibility to their schools from the Tenth Amendment, since the federal Constitution itself makes no provision for federal control of education.

Each state writes its own statutes concerning education and amends or rewrites them as changing circumstances demand. Essentially, every state and jurisdiction must provide, maintain, support, and guide a system of public schools for the well-being and education of the citizens in that state. Each also must license and pay heed to the institutions providing private education. Because the governance of numerous school districts is enormous in scope and complexity, states in turn place primary responsibility for the overall operations into the care of administrators and boards overseeing a large number of administrative districts.

The federal government, however, has not absolutely absolved itself of the responsibility to provide material resources to U.S. schools or to step in should violations occur that appear to violate protections for citizens guaranteed by the constitution. In addition, the government throughout early American history set aside public lands to set benefit schools.

Following the precedent set in 1787, when Congress set aside land in the Northwest Territory, lawmakers passed the Morrill Act of 1862, setting aside federal lands for the purpose of building colleges and emphasizing agriculture and mechanical arts (engineering). The act was amended in 1890, taking into account the changing needs of state universities founded on public lands. Vermont congress member Justin Morrill was the prime instigator of the bill. Others in Congress expressed opposition to it; in fact, five years before its passage, the Morrill Act went down in defeat, vetoed by then-President James Buchanan. Although the pro-agriculture nature of the schools earned it the strong support of Southern lawmakers, it was after the South seceded that the Morrill Act was passed during the administration of President Abraham Lincoln. The law also had strong support from Midwest farming states.

Following the Civil War, many universities were finally constructed on the public lands set aside for that purpose, including several that offered educational opportunities in higher education to blacks. Many sons and daughters of farmers and working class Americans received the benefits of an education thanks to Morrill's bill. In addition, advances in scientific farming, wise agricultural practices, and healthier food standards also can be attributed to the establishment of those colleges. Several major U.S. universities trace their success back to land-grant beginnings, including the University of Florida, the University of Kentucky, Purdue University (Indiana), Clemson University (South Carolina), Pennsylvania State University, Ohio State University, West Virginia University, Oregon State University, and the University of Maryland.

Closely connected to the Morrill Act was the Hatch Act of 1887, allowing federal aid to enable operation of agricultural research operations at state colleges for the benefit of all citizens, since the country was dependent upon agricultural products. The federal government passed the Smith-Lever Act in 1914, establishing Cooperative Extension in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the land-grant universities for educational and informational purposes.

In addition to aid for various educational institutions connected with agriculture, the government has mandated funding for vocational programs at the secondary level. This distribution of federal aid occurred during the Depression Era year of 1937 and was approved under legislation known as the George-Deen Act. The federal government under acts of 1962 approved additional aid for vocational training programs.

The National Science Foundation Act of 1950 established the National Science Foundation (NSF) as an independent agency. NSF funds science and engineering research projects and educational programs, and it actively promotes the dissemination of information in the fields of science and engineering. Congress also attempted to jumpstart research activities in the field of education when it passed the Cooperative Research Act of 1954. The purpose of the bill was to permit the Office of Education to encourage cooperative research by colleges, universities, and state departments of education. One of the primary areas of funding initially was research into mental retardation.

Concerned that the United States was losing power and prestige in the race to conquer space with the Soviets following the launch of Sputnik in 1957, Congress provided further funds for education research in 1958 under terms of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). Among other functions, NDEA authorized student loans and other financial aid to higher education, particularly in science, mathematics, and modern languages. Another area of concern and funding was educational television and other media.

One of the more comprehensive programs of the 1960s was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Among various titles or sections, it offered aid to schools with a high percentage of low-income families to fund programs in special education, to enable school libraries to purchase materials, and to fund educational research, as well as additional purposes. The federal government through the Library Services and Construction Act of 1964 and the Medical Library Assistance Act of 1965 provided additional money for library projects and facilities.

The best known section of this 1965 legislation is Title I, by which Congress extended federal aid to the children of the poor in an attempt to provide them equal educational opportunities. President Lyndon Johnson personally endorsed Title 1 as the most compelling entry in his "Great Society" platform.

In 1981, Congress passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act during the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan. This bill provided block grants to states, taking away some of the direct federal involvement in Title 1 that had been criticized by some politicians. Among other major changes at that time, Congress mandated that students applying for low-interest loans demonstrate financial need for funds. Other money for students proving need was available after passage of legislation approving Pell grants.

Issues of Church & State: In early America the connection between church and state was taken for granted, but the increasing diversity of the nation forced legislators and courts to consider the issue more carefully, particularly in response to immigration. Although the Quakers, Dutch Reformed, and other denominations operated schools during the colonial period, one of the largest explosions of parochial schools occurred between 1880 and 1910 with the influx of Catholic immigrants from Poland, Spain, Italy, Ireland, and other European countries.

The milestone political action by Catholic Church interests in America was a national convention of clerics and theologians convening in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1884. This resulted in the founding of Catholic University in Washington, DC, as well as detailed plans to establish a nationwide network of diocese-based schools as well as seminaries and convents for training priests and nuns. In time, churches came to build both elementary schools and high schools. Anti-Catholic sentiment was widespread, and anti-Catholic advocates claimed victory when in the 1920s Oregon legislators mandated attendance in public schools up to age 16, effectively stopping the spread of parochial schools.

In 1925, however, the right of religious denominations to operate schools was affirmed by a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, the court opined that the state could regulate schools but not decide for parents what school they wanted for their children's education. A ruling in New York State later in the century allowed parents of public school children to send their offspring to religious instruction off public school premises.

One of the more significant issues in early twentieth-century education was creationism. States passed laws in support of a citizen's "right" to take Genesis literally with regard to Creation, thereby renouncing Charles Darwin's theories on the natural evolution of man from less significant species. In 1925 the Scopes Monkey trial brought the issue to a head, in a case against John Scopes, who taught evolutionary theory in violation of Tennessee's anti-evolution act. Although former presidential candidate and fiery attorney William Jennings Bryan won the trial, there was great public and press sympathy for defense attorney Clarence Darrow and for Scopes. Coverage of the Scopes trial by satirist H. L. Mencken caused many Americans to look skeptically at religion in general, and to begin talking heatedly about the need to keep churches out of state affairs.

Nonetheless, as late as 1999, the Kansas Board of Education passed a measure agreeing to prohibit questions on evolution from appearing on state high school standardized exams. The National Association of Biology Teachers supports classroom presentations of evolution, saying that it long has been a theory consistent with science, and it further recommends classroom discussion and study. Leading the religious vanguard against evolution is pro-Creation activist Jonathan Wells, who preaches that there is no scientific basis for evolution.

Other areas of frequent contention include character education, stopping short of religious instruction; attempts to convert children to a particular faith; and remarks that might offend some in the classroom that belong to minority faiths, practice Wicca, or have no faith at all. Some critics attack not only school prayer or celebration of religious holidays but also the mandatory recital of the Pledge of Allegiance due to the phrase "one nation under God." Court cases in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and other states have prohibited state legislatures from mandating the saying of daily Bible verses or a prayer identified as sectarian, which would effectively favor Christianity over other religions.

On the other hand, in the 1990s some parents and children were concerned that the zeal to separate church and state was depriving elementary and secondary students of some practices that interfered with neither the beliefs nor the privacy of others. For example, they perceived that students could wear clothing with slogans of a non-religious nature, but they were not permitted to wear clothing with Biblical slogans. By the late 1990s, the Department of Education published guidelines allowing children of Christian and other faiths to make references to their religious beliefs while addressing normal school subject matter and to bow their heads before meals to say grace. The NEA also became involved, attempting to create a climate where respect for a person's personal beliefs was the norm. In addition to Christianity, many schools have made a point of safeguarding the beliefs of minority religions in a school, such as Islam or Buddhism. By the late 1990s, schools also were asked to protect the rights of individuals who openly professed no faith or alternate faiths such as Wicca.

Civil Rights & Education: As part of the culture of slavery, nineteenth-century legislators passed laws against the education of blacks. Laws that deprived people of a chance to better themselves were a most egregious but effective method to keep a whole people in bondage. While some landowners provided for the rudimentary teaching of writing, reading, and arithmetic for household slaves as a matter of self-interest, others prohibited such learning entirely, and a whipping or other physical punishment could be administered for violations. The only southern states permitting landowners to educate slaves before the Civil War were Kentucky, Maryland, and Tennessee. Because southern blacks outnumbered landowners in many southern states, there was near mass hysteria behind the legislation to keep blacks uneducated and to prevent rebellion.

Rebellions nonetheless ensued. A rebellion in South Carolina in 1739 resulted in murder of 75 slaves, and a later rebellion at Charleston in 1822 was also put down with a loss of life. Both the abolitionist movement in the South and activist efforts to educate southern begroes were dealt a serious setback in 1831 when a bloody rebellion known as the Southampton Insurrection convinced landowners that the education of slaves had to be controlled or outlawed. Nat Turner, a slave in Southampton County, Virginia, organized a revolt with dozens of runaway slaves bent on gaining freedom at all costs. In the end, the rebellion was quashed, and Turner was executed.

Not even the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolishing slavery and the Fifteenth Amendment (1869) guaranteeing civil rights stopped serious educational inequities from being practiced in many parts of the South. So-called "black codes" and later "Jim Crow" legislation enforcing school and public-place segregation were enforced from about 1865 until long into the twentieth century. White families humiliated Caucasian teachers who came from the North to educate Negro children, and a few teachers were murdered or falsely accused of the "crime" of miscegenation (the marriage or cohabitation between white and nonwhite persons).

Not that the education of blacks in the North was any more progressive in many areas. In New England, abolitionists gradually agitated for desegregation, but both white and black townspeople, and even educators, blocked what was legally permissible, many arguing for the social benefits of separate schools. In Philadelphia, a public school administrator who opened a school for blacks in 1822 actually offered white citizens an apology for doing what in other parts of the world would become known in full arrogance as "picking up the white man's burden." As an exception, Quaker schools in Pennsylvania and New England offered equal educational opportunities to all students.

In Indiana in 1850, many lawmakers not only wanted to ban any new settlers with a "drop" of black blood from settling in the state, but many wanted to pass a colonization attempt to banish existing blacks to Africa. Even legislators opposing such legislation as unconstitutional sometimes commented on what they perceived to be the "inferiority" of blacks. Laws of Indiana and Illinois allowed the establishment of non-integrated schools for Caucasian students.

Not until 1855 did a state—Massachusetts—aggressively mandate integration of the races in public schools, and that state succeeded because of a relatively low population of blacks and a strong presence of influential abolitionists. New York, with its record of putting to death blacks suspected of arson in the nineteenth century and a very large black population, failed to pass statutes to end segregation until 1900.

Many black parents supported segregation, realizing that their children could be injured, or even killed, by forcing the issue and integrating public schools. Booker T. Washington, a revered black educator, advised blacks to be passive and to turn the other cheek. The Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as permitting segregation, if facilities were "separate but equal." What blacks received in reality were worthless, dated textbooks; substandard and antiquated school buildings; and teachers whose credentials usually failed to match those of teachers in schools populated mainly by white children. Historian John D. Pulliam reports that the costs of educating white and black children at the time were $102 and $67 respectively, effectively showing that separate facilities were, in fact, unequal.

Because schooling of blacks in many colonies and later in states was either repressed or outright forbidden, it took some time for a black educator to emerge as a national champion for the education of African Americans. During the late nineteenth century, a competent teacher with ambition and rhetorical genius named W.E.B. Du-Bois became this leader. Both boys and girls found equal welcome in his classroom, although facilities in black schools were risky by safety standards and furniture often was borrowed and rickety. DuBois became a nationally known writer, educator, and social critic, fiercely opposed to social and educational inequities because of race.

Years later, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the issue of "separate but equal" was revisited. In 1954, the Supreme Court utterly reversed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, stressing that separate facilities for education cannot be defined as equal. Immediately after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, a number of southern states tried to bypass the law but were thwarted when they tried to pass legislation that was blatantly racist. One county in Virginia tried to declare its public school system at an end, financing instead private schools that were segregated, until the U.S. Supreme Court intervened. Other states continued segregation as usual, flaunting their disregard for the Supreme Court ruling and erecting billboards all over the South that called, unsuccessfully, for Chief Justice Warren's impeachment.

Some 2,300 school districts defied the Supreme Court ruling, and agitated Caucasians in Little Rock, Arkansas, picketed a school undergoing integration and defied federal troops. These actions inspired the black and white supporters of the Reverend Martin Luther King to express powerful opposition through boycotts, marches, and sit-ins at drugstore counters and department store cafeterias. As part of their political action, marchers demanded integration and better educational opportunities for blacks, including full admission to colleges and professional schools in institutions where this had been prohibited. No longer voiceless or uneducated, the civil rights movement was manned by many African-American professional people. There were twice as many blacks in the various professions in 1957 as there had been in 1940, according to historian Samuel Eliot Morison.

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM—OVERVIEW

Free & Compulsory Education: After the American Revolution, pro-education spokespersons presented strong views on the best way to form and preserve the character of its citizenry through education. Already there was awareness that a quality education had a price, just as did any other quality services. Pennsylvania's state constitution made provisions for teachers in public schools to be paid by the state, a practice emulated by other states as it became apparent that children who could not afford to pay for schooling clearly needed the state to provide free schools. Eventually states passed provisions to compel children to attend schools. But just as in colonial days, when children were apprenticed to tradesman at young ages, during the nineteenth century textile manufacturers, packing plants, and mining outfits hired children to perform menial jobs. It would be the twentieth century before enforcement standards were sufficient to ensure full compliance.

However, during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, opponents of compulsory education grew more numerous and more vocal, inspired in part by successes of parents that have home-schooled their children through elementary school and secondary school. School bullying, school shootings, arrests of teachers on various charges, and poor marks received by U.S. youngsters on standardized tests have led critics to say that compulsory education should not be defended without serious thought and conscience searching. By 2001, although compulsory attendance continued in all states, legislators in Washington and other states were seriously pondering legislation that if passed would nullify or amend the law in those states.

Age Limits: All states have a minimum age for allowing a child to begin formal education, but there is no single national standard as to what the birth-month cutoff should be. The majority of states and the District of Columbia have statewide birth dates for entering five-yearolds that all districts must conform to as a kindergarten entrance policy requirement. In 2001 the state law in North Dakota set seven as the entrance age, but that law may be lowered by state legislation. Other exceptions are Colorado, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; individual school districts set the policy in those five states. All states have set a minimum dropout age somewhere between 14 and 18, with the most common age requirement being 16 (in 36 states).

Academic Year: Plans by several school districts to lengthen the academic year by four or five days have met with angry protests by students. The combination of increasingly more complex subject matter, state testing requirements, and public perceptions regarding school quality has led critics and supporters of education alike to advocate more school days in the annual calendar. Most commonly, school boards propose the increases in an attempt to raise student performance marks on standardized tests. One such protest in March 2001 occurred at Kellam High School in Virginia Beach, Virginia, after the school board extended the calendar from 180 to 185 days.

Every now and then a school board comes into the news when it considers the notion of extending the school year through the summer. During the twenty-first century, the debate over whether the school year for elementary and secondary students should be extended to 11 or 12 months will be waged even more vigorously. Few schools have actually adopted such a schedule: parents argue that the change would disrupt their family lives, teachers argue that their workload is already burdensome, and students complain that their opportunity to earn money for college would be jeopardized without the chance to work summer jobs. Employers that depend on students also object to the proposal.

Enrollment: Record enrollments most definitely will be recorded during the twenty-first century. During the 1990s, the U.S. population grew by nearly 25 million people, surpassing every decade but one and guaranteeing maximum use of schools for years to come.

During the 1950s, 28 million babies were born, the largest number of births in a single 10-year period recorded up to the year 2000. Beginning in 1951, school children began enrolling in kindergartens and first grade in numbers that were unprecedented. The dramatic rise would, in 1960, begin to have an effect on secondary schools, followed by an explosion in college enrollments starting in 1964. The number of students coming into these schools at every level was due to the popularly named Baby Boom, which refers to the skyrocketing increase in births after World War II from 1946 to 1964. Enrollment in elementary and secondary schools peaked in 1971, according to the Digest of Education Statistics. As increasing numbers of U.S. parents divorced, enrollments of elementary and high school students also declined from 1971 to 1984.

The second half of 1985 once again saw a return to the trend of increasing enrollments. This coincided with an overall increase in the population. Enrollment in elementary and secondary schools reached high levels in the mid-1990s, and that trend continued to the end of the decade. U.S. public elementary school enrollment increased from 29.2 million in 1989 to 33.7 million in 1999, the last date for which estimates were available. Likewise, public high schools reported 11.4 million enrollees in 1989 and an estimated 13.5 million in 1999. These stunning increases in public K-12 schools are not reflective of the trends in private elementary and secondary schools, however. Over the same 10-year period, the private schools actually reported a 1 percent decrease. Altogether in 1999, about 6 million students enrolled in private K-12 schools.

The combined enrollment of public and private school students in U.S. elementary and secondary schools at the start of the fall 2000 semester was an estimated 53 million people, according to the federal government. The 1990 enrollment of 46.5 million students in these schools translates to a jump in enrollment of 14 percent in a single decade. Government analysts project further growth through 2005, although at a less dramatic percentage of increase than was observed during the 1990s.

By 2005, the Department of Education anticipates a leveling off of enrollment in the total number of elementary and secondary students, with decreases seen between 2005 and 2010, although projections for enrollment through 2006 suggest that numbers of secondary school students will reach an all-time high before dropping. Enrollments in elementary school are expected to stay high but somewhat more constant until 2009. The decrease in growth reflects a lower annual birth rate between 1991 and 1997.

Educator Diane Ravitch noted in 1984 that while total enrollment ballooned in the United States from 23 million to 40 million students between l945 and l980, schools declined from l85,000 institutions to fewer than 86,000 during the same time period, a reflection of the increasing popularity of consolidated elementary and secondary schools. What is difficult to predict in 2001 is whether the trend to build a few larger, consolidated schools or numerous, smaller, community-based schools will emerge victorious. Supporters and critics of each system are numerous and vocal. The consolidated schools tend to have larger classes, fewer teachers and administrators, and strong emphasis on extracurricular sports competition with rival schools.

Private School Tuition: According to the latest figures posted by the federal government, private schools charged an average tuition of $3,116 in 1993-1994. Parochial school tuition was significantly lower than that of nonsectarian schools. Catholic schools charged $2,178 on average; schools with other religious affiliations charged $2,915 on average. Nonsectarian private schools charged an average tuition of $6,631.

Immigration & Bilingual Education: U.S. residents aged five years and older who either speak no English or have a small grasp of the language are increasing in number, presenting additional challenges to teachers in the classroom. Many immigrants came to the United States from countries where English was not the official language, and they have moved into communities where proximity to family or friends has offered a compelling reason for learning a new language.

Preliminary reports from Census 2000 indicate that figures will even be higher for the number of language minorities than is available in the 1990 data, the latest information posted by the government on a state-by-state basis. Since the 1970 Census, numbers of Asian and Hispanic immigrants have increased. Large cities show significant additions of Hispanic populations, particularly Texas cities such as San Antonio, where Hispanic residents have been the dominant culture numerically since 1990. The Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative and Urban and Regional Research reports that Hispanic residents doubled in Austin, Dallas, and Forth Worth, while Houston reported an 80 percent increase since 1990. On the East Coast, Asians grew in similar large populations by 70 percent in Newark and Jersey City, New Jersey. Asians and Hispanics reported increases of at least 50 percent in large cities such as Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.

Based on 1990 Census information, when the population was 230,445,777 people, the number of speakers who spoke a primary language other than English was 31,844,979. Of that total, 4,826,958 people spoke very little English, and 1,845,243 said they spoke it not at all. In particular, of people who reported Spanish as their primary language, some 3,804,792 reported that they spoke English poorly, while 3,040,828 reported that they did not speak English at all. Even more significant numbers for education show that 761,778 people between the ages of 5 and 17 spoke English only a little and 145,785 spoke it not at all, a significant increase since 1980. In terms of state representation, California reports 681,504 households where English is spoken not at all and 1,621,098 households where English and another primary language are spoken. Overall population in the United States in March 2001 was 283,859,806 people, according to government figures.

The Bilingual Education Act of 1967 was an attempt by the federal government to assist, in particular, school districts that found themselves with a growing influx of youngsters who were primarily speakers of Spanish or another language such as Chinese. The Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs intends to develop linguistically and culturally diverse students under the auspices of the federal Department of Education. Bilingual education most commonly has both native Spanish and native English speakers taking part in an education program wherein part of a day's school instruction is given in English and part in Spanish or another language.

English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction enables the student whose primary language is Spanish to receive concentrated assistance to learn English grammar and composition. Other classes may be taught in any combination of English and the additional language. Instruction in the native language and English, rather than English alone, has been determined to be of great assistance to students needing to master material in other classes, such as math and science. One of the drawbacks to the federal bilingual education program is a pronounced dearth of bilingual education and ESL teachers. Consequently, since 1980, federal funding has been directed to numerous teacher-training institutions to produce more than 80,000 teachers with bilingual skills.

Technology in Education: While computers are found in an increasing number of schools, and students themselves report increasing familiarity with the Internet, the majority of teachers in a 2001 survey report low levels of Internet usage. Nearly 87 percent of teachers surveyed said they were acquainted with the Internet, but only 40 percent used the Internet 30 minutes or more daily for educational purposes, according to NetDay, a nonprofit education group that assists teachers with technology.

Although elementary and secondary educators continue to put the main classroom emphasis on textbooks for student reading, technology experts see an upsurge in school Internet use since 1993. Many schools maintain a Web site; according to Web66, an international registry of schools at the University of Minnesota, nearly 9,000 elementary and secondary schools had Web sites in April 2001.

Outside the schools, thanks to home and library computers, 45 percent of America's 30 million children have access to the Internet, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project study released in February 2001. Almost three-quarters of teens aged 12 to 17 can access the Internet, while fewer than 1 in 3 beneath the age of 12 can do so.

Mathematics & Science Teaching: The National Science Foundation takes a visible role in stressing reforms and accomplishments in U.S. schools from kindergarten through graduate education. NSF's Division of Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education provides one of the best sources for K-12 grant opportunities and general information on science education for teachers.

Science and math education have been priorities of numerous presidential administrations, but while there has been slow progress over time, in the late twentieth century the issue acquired more urgency. In spite of administration concerns, U.S. student performances overall continued at disappointing levels on national tests, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, although the NCES stresses that some U.S. youngsters do post scores equal to those of any other nation.

The NSF released scores comparing eighth graders from 38 nations and comparing their scores to similar testing conducted when they were in the fourth grade. American eighth graders had dropped measurably in scores in that four-year period, a tendency that a NSF spokesperson said might be attributed to more middle school math and science classes being staffed by teachers who were non-majors in those subjects. Overall, U.S. youngsters scored only about average on the tests, which is significantly behind the scores in Japan and Korea. They also did not keep up with gains in test scores over a four-year period exhibited by students from Canada.

In 2000, the Science and Math Teaching for the Twenty-First Century Report, also called the Sen. John Glenn Commission Report, offered strategies for improving educational performance of math and science students. In addition, as had his predecessor Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush announced in 2001 that accomplishing gains in science and math testing would be a priority of his administration. His administration recommended annual testing in state-approved math and science exams every year for students in the fourth through eighth grades.

Students with Disabilities: In 1968, the Handicapped Children's Early Education Program started as a pilot program to provide quality special education and other services to disabled children from birth through the third grade. Congress saw a need for providing families with these early intervention programs to assist children with disabilities and to provide their caregivers with information specific to their educational needs. The program began with 24 demonstration projects in 1968. Over the years, the program was greatly expanded to include model outreach projects, early intervention research disbursement, experimental projects, and in-service training projects, among other innovations. In 1990 the organization changed its name to the Early Education Program for Children with Disabilities (EEPCD).

Since 1997 and the passage of a number of federal amendments, including the Amendments to Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1997, EEPCD has not been a freestanding program. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997 meant a significant expansion in educational opportunities and services for disabled children. With its strong emphasis on learning, the program expressed the expectation that disabled children could receive an education with results that would become apparent in a meaningful way after schooling ended.

Since 1980, the number of students enrolled in programs for disabled children has slowly grown. About 10 percent of the school population fell under the category of disabled during the 1980-1981 school year, according to government figures. That number increased to 13 percent during the 1997-1998 school year. The fastest growing area is that segment of the population termed learning disabled. The population of learning disabled children was only four percent in 1980-1981, but it had risen two points to six percent in 1997-1998.

Curriculum & Educational Reform: The incorporation in 1906 of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (founded in 1905 by magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie) is the starting point for curriculum development in the twentieth century. This foundation became integral in the formation of standards and a standardized curriculum for all U.S. schools, as well as eventually providing a structured, unbiased means to assess the quality of educational institutions. The foundation set the standard of a single credit for courses taken in secondary schools, a recommendation met with opposition by critics who believed that certain science, mathematics, and humanities courses have more educational value than some courses perceived to be easier to pass. The NEA further fine-tuned reform when it defined core subjects required for graduation, as well as the minimum number of credits required by a student seeking a diploma (including requirements in mathematics and English).

Among numerous other changes in education over the last 110 years, the curriculum has altered considerably. Subjects generally recommended by leading educators included classical and modern languages; mathematics courses such as algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; miscellaneous science courses; and humanities courses in history, geography, and English. Even though relatively few students advanced from high school to college in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, the U.S. curriculum has been traditionally based on college-entrance.

In 1995, however, the U.S. Department of Education advocated that the secondary school curriculum be strengthened and enriched to include a focus on life beyond the classroom, issuing an online report entitled "Raising the Educational Achievement of Secondary School Students." While early American education stressed rote learning and discipline, schools in the twenty-first century must stress challenging, rigorous studies that show students a correlation between classroom studies and the occupations and endeavors they may undertake after graduation. Teachers ideally should involve students in an active way to produce knowledge, rather than merely to sit passively and receive lectures. While schools are responsible for material mandated by the state or other governing boards, they should also find innovative ways to teach that fully engage students in community, service, and work situations, enabling students to perceive the value of what they learn.

College preparedness is not to be wholly dismissed, however. The trend of placing students in vocational or general education tracks, with subjects taught that are well beneath the breadth and depth of college-preparatory tracks, faced criticism at the close of the twentieth century. Students in the lower tracks receive repetitive training in specific skills and received little opportunity to exercise problem solving and critical thinking. In addition, students coming from certain socioeconomic classes and those facing language barriers find themselves, in effect, segregated because of tracking and a concern for how students in a particular school may perform overall on standardized tests.

After studying secondary schools considered among the best in the United States, researchers Fred Newmann, director of The Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, and G. G. Wehlage identified five characteristics connected to optimal instruction:

• Schools emphasize higher-order thinking to combine facts and ideas and then to come up with conclusions and interpretations of the material.
• Students are encouraged to be problem solvers with a broad depth of knowledge and to understand the core ideas of various disciplines, as well as to see the ways various disciplines connect.
• Students apply their knowledge in ways that would prove useful in business, the military, personal investments, or recreation choices outside the classroom's walls.
• Students are encouraged to develop rhetorical skills, demonstrating that they can communicate knowledge of a subject and engage listeners in a meaningful way. In effect, they learn from their peers and vice versa.
• The classroom should provide a supportive, respectful environment where students can take intellectual risks and learn in an environment highly conducive to meeting the educational needs of all. Rather than deposit slower learners in remedial programs, the educators suggest that students may achieve better if placed in challenging environments.

The researchers also found that the main exceptions to including students of varying abilities in one classroom may be made in subjects such as mathematics or reading, where students may be grouped with others capable of roughly similar performance levels.

Another recent development in educational reform has been the interest in mandatory testing. The impetus for statewide testing as a mechanism to work for schools of higher quality was a 1983 study called "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform," produced following a mandate from Reagan-era Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell. Some of that report's recommendations were to improve character, maintain better discipline, and reduce risks and addictive behaviors. Other recommendations were designed to bring about more effective teaching, more input from parents and local governments, and improved performance in all basics such as mathematics, science, and English.

"A Nation at Risk" coincided with poor performances by American youth on test scores in mathematics, science, and other skill areas when compared to youths in some other countries, as well as complaints from the military and business over the academic ineptitude of recruits and new workers. Presidents from Reagan through George W. Bush have made education reform the focus of campaign rhetoric, and have, during their respective administrations, pushed hard for high achievement rankings equal to or superior to results produced in the classrooms of other nations. The fact that schools blessed with resources for their relatively privileged students tend to achieve far better test results than do schools whose resources are marginal or deficient promises to contribute to a long and sometimes acrimonious debate over standards and testing.

Textbooks: Not until nearly 1690 did any sort of a uniform schoolbook appear that targeted knowledge specifically for maturing minds. The illustrated New England Primer appeared around or before 1690, offering religious instruction and the way to virtue in rhyming verse with couplets and epigrams, along the lines of "Time cuts down all, Both great and small."

The New England Primer's sale of some 2 million copies during the colonial period cannot be overlooked as an important unifying influence in the education of children of various sects. Schools of the Northeast were similar in their piety and sober atmosphere, mattering little if the congregations were Calvinist, Congregational, Puritan, or Unitarian. Students went on from the Primer to learn psalms and passages from the Bible.

During the twenty-first century, by contrast, educators are faced with organized protests to textbook selections. Protests since 1990 have been directed against textbooks said to contain materials that are perceived to be any of the following: anti-Christian, anti-American, or representative of so-called "New Age" secular humanism. From Virginia to California, parents occasionally inform schools that they want teachers to send home parental permission slips if an assigned novel or collection of stories has one or more scenes containing sexual situations. Other textbook conflicts have arisen over matters of science, particularly how scientific theories of evolution are presented, and miscellaneous stories or plays included in literature anthologies. In one extreme case, a Florida principal authorized cutting out a play about AIDS from a textbook.

The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) advises that students in elementary and secondary school will read some 32,000 pages in textbooks before graduation. ERIC recommends that state authorities involved in the selection process of adopting textbooks should be aware that textbooks in the past have excluded the achievements of women and minorities, as well as sometimes satisfying various political agendas. Women, for example, were depicted in these textbooks in dependent, domestic roles. The representation of women and minorities too often was limited to the first in particular fields such as aviation or law, rather than putting emphasis on contributions made cooperatively by women and men of all races in every aspect of American life, such as the settling of the frontier.

Teachers have begun to resist the limited choices in textbooks offered by the committees appointed by the state department of education. For example, the National Council of Teachers of English in May 1990 considered member objections to state-adopted texts that tended to control the curriculum and to limit professional choices of the teachers entrusted with the responsibility of teaching the material in the classroom. The teachers wanted the freedom not to adopt textbooks recommended by the committees or to use those textbooks in the curriculum in ways they felt most professionally comfortable. Other hard-fought discussions concern the degree of perceived difficulty of textbooks, as teachers attempt to help students pass challenging state tests required for graduation. Such was the case in California in 2001, as teachers, superintendents, and publisher representatives disagreed over the inclusion of a challenging mathematics textbook on a state-approved list.

Each year the state and local authorities selecting textbooks are making choices worth millions of dollars; the cost in California alone was estimated to be $415 million in 2001, according to the Los Angeles Times. Given that amount of money and the possibility of conflict over subject matter in textbooks representing a variety of disciplines, it is instructive to note how relatively smoothly the selection of textbooks goes each year in nearly all states. When a conflict does occur, however, the incident is likely to draw wide press coverage, suggesting that such conflicts are more common than they really are.

Less controversial is the selection process for textbooks purchased by students for college classes. In many cases, academic freedom allows instructors to choose the texts they believe will best prepare their students to understand course objectives. In a few cases, particularly where frequently offered courses are taught by adjunct or part-time instructors, a department head or appointed committee may choose the books.

Foreign Influences on Educational System: From primary to tertiary education, the strongest foreign influence on the American educational system has come from Germany. The concept of a kindergarten is a German educational innovation that has been even more successful in the United States than in its country of origin. Kindergartens were popularized in America by educators Elizabeth Peabody; William T. Harris, a St. Louis educator who became U.S. Commissioner of Education (1889-1906); and Margarethe Schurz, wife of Carl Schurz, a German èmigrè who was U.S. Secretary of the Interior and a Civil War general. Eventually, all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia adopted kindergarten programs. Mrs. Schurz learned about the operation of kindergartens and their theory directly from Friedrich Froebel, the German educator credited with the establishments of kindergarten programs in Germany. However, kindergartens met with opposition both here and in Germany, and it was not until after 1920 that the United States saw a great leap in nationwide acceptance of kindergartens as ordinary additions to school districts.

In higher education, two German innovations adopted here were the conferring of Ph.D. degrees and the German concept of scholarly research. Until the late nineteenth century, American scholars wishing to obtain additional knowledge, conduct research, and acquire the status of a doctoral degree traveled to German institutions of higher learning to do the necessary work needed to attain the highest level of scholarly attainment. In time, rightly or wrongly, American institutions began to equate the number of doctorates earned by its faculty with academic excellence. Various systems of rating universities invariably publish a ranking of faculty with the percentage of those with Ph.Ds.

American institutions in time tended to replicate German models for conducting research by raising research money from private industry and soliciting large gifts from benefactors—creating endowments to regulate these funds—and obtaining government funding. Individual professors and graduate departments soon found how expensive it was to conduct research without well-planned sources of financing from government or private sources. In time sophisticated guidelines were written to develop ethical policies dealing with extremely complex issues that arose from accepting large sums of money from sources outside the universities.

PREPRIMARY & PRIMARY EDUCATION

Preprimary Schools: The growing number of households headed by one spouse, and the fact that intact families nonetheless often have both spouses working, has driven a boom in the enrollment of young children in various preprimary schools. Department of Education figures report that the enrollment of three-, four-, and five-year-olds in daycare institutes and other preprimary facilities was 30 percent higher in 1998 than it had been in 1988.

In addition, young children are spending more time away from their parents in such schools. Government data shows that while about one-third (34 percent) of all children in daycare facilities spent a full day away from home in 1988, by 1998 more than half (51 percent) of three- to five-year-olds enrolled in daycare were left the full day.

Primary Schools: Massachusetts is responsible for the introduction of primary schools for children four years and older. These were a modification of the British infant schools—an idea that soon found its way into most of the progressive, larger American cities such as New York and Providence as a means of teaching and overseeing the children of working-class men and women. Eventually these primary schools were assimilated into elementary schools. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, American schools also began the formation of kindergartens.

In the United States, educators have attached great importance to the position of kindergarten teacher, the person that determines whether a youngster's first impression of schooling will be favorable or unfavorable. These learning experiences lead to increased self-esteem or contribute to the gradual unmaking of the child. Academically, kindergartens are as highly structured as any other classroom. While games are important, the teacher is conscious of the need to present work on the alphabet, phonics, arithmetic numbers, elementary grammar, and history that is free of stereotypes.

One of the major changes in the twentieth century was the national movement toward the consolidation of elementary schools following World War I, when the costs of owning an automobile had dropped low enough that teachers could drive to work from their homes. In addition, lacking in total education budgets and staffed with teachers often teaching subjects in which they had little or no preparation, rural and small schools faced the public perception after World War I that they were inferior to larger schools. As of 1930, some 7 out of 10 elementary schools—some 149,282 schools according to the Digest of Educational Statistics—were conducted in multigrade, one-room schoolhouses. In 2001 the one-room schools were almost completely part of a nostalgic past, except for a few remaining holdovers in the most rural parts of America.

Elementary School Projections: Between 2000 and 2010, federal projections anticipate a continuation of high enrollments of elementary school children. This then continues the trend of exploding elementary school population experienced in the United States from 1990 to 1999. The number of children in kindergarten through eighth grade in 1990 totaled 34 million. The increase to approximately 38.1 million K-8 students in 2000 was equal to an increase of 12 percent.

The increase will reverse itself by 2001 but only by a small reduction. By 2008, total elementary school enrollment is projected to be 37.3 million students. After that, enrollment will begin to climb once more, and total K-8 figures for 2010 are projected to be 37.5 million students.

Teachers: Elementary teachers in the twenty-first century are expected to be generalists capable of teaching several subjects, with the exception of specialized teachers in subjects such as music, art, or physical education, who work with larger numbers of students than just a single class. Increasingly, team-management skills are expected, as teachers work in tandem with one or more additional teachers to cover subject materials. Coaching of students is expected, since students in any one classroom may and do present varying levels of accomplishment, maturity, and skill levels.

SECONDARY EDUCATION

Origins: The concept of a "high school" can be traced back to Massachusetts in the 1820s. In Boston, the English Classical School took on the name of the English High School in 1824 and embarked on a mission to educate the majority of males that likely would not attend college. A female high school opened in Boston in 1826. In the three decades following passage of a bill in Massachusetts to make these mandatory, high schools were very slow to catch on outside that state. By means of comparison, while by 1860 Massachusetts boasted about 100 high schools, only 200 existed in the rest of the Union, whose population then was 30 million. One state similar to Massachusetts was Ohio; in 1830 after Calvin E. Stowe, a professor and husband of author Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote a report on education in Ohio after having also looked into European school systems, a number of townships in the state formed elementary and high schools.

Between 1900 and 1915, Americans searching for upward mobility became concerned that there should be high schools operating to provide an equal opportunity for all. It would take several more decades, however, for families in need of income from all sources to allow their children to take advantage of such opportunities. Also in the beginning of the twentieth century, the eight- and four-year elementary/high school programs began giving way to junior high schools and middle schools. One of the major reasons for the change was to isolate youngsters just before and after the start of adolescence.

Secondary School Projections: U.S. secondary schools will see increasing enrollments in secondary schools through 2007. However, based on U.S. birth rate figures, the population of adolescents aged 14 through 17 will experience a reduction in numbers from 2007 through 2010. Nonetheless, the higher enrollments through 2007 will produce a higher total number of secondary students during the first decade of the twenty-first century than was counted during the 1990s.

To be more specific, enrollment in grades 9 through 12 rose from 12.5 million in 1990 to about 14.9 million in 2000—a leap of about 19 percent. Expectations are that enrollment in secondary school (grades 9 through 12) will show an increase in 2006 as the number of enrollees reaches 16 million.

According to government records, the highest total for secondary school enrollment to date was 15.7 million in the fall of 1976. If estimates hold, the number of students attending grades 9 through 12 will eclipse that number, with a total registration of 15.9 million in 2005 and 16.0 million in 2006. The following year through 2010, the number of students should decline, leveling out to 15.5 million in 2010.

Teachers: Increases in student enrollments have emphasized the need for qualified secondary education teachers. Critics of education complained in 2001 about the number of secondary teachers responsible for courses outside their major, and that criticism likely will increase unless the teaching shortage can be addressed.

As subject matter in the twenty-first century becomes even more complex, secondary teachers are being expected not just to demonstrate a general knowledge of their subject matter, but actually to display mastery. Unlike elementary school teachers, who tend to teach a number of subjects, secondary teachers are assigned one or more subjects, such as history, English, physics, and or a foreign language, that require their students in turn to display wide knowledge on state-mandated tests. One of the problems frequently cited by accreditation teams is that too often secondary school teachers get asked to teach subjects outside their specialty areas due to teacher and budget shortages. In addition to the specialty, teachers likely will teach electives to students with even more specialized interests. A secondary school English teacher, for example, may teach a class in journalism or drama, as well as participate in after-class activities, such as advising student publications or directing a school musical.

Dropouts: According to the National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students, there are many disagreements among educators, critics of education, politicians, and parents as to what constitutes a dropout and what the actual percentage of dropouts is nationally and state by state. Many students who for marriage, a job, or other reasons voluntarily leave school (or are expelled by the system) end up obtaining a high school diploma nonetheless, such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate or state-issued certificate of completion with requirements generally less rigorous than traditional diploma requirements. Adding to the confusion, there is no single Department of Education definition of a dropout that all school districts follow, leading to media exposés that tend to show more students leaving school than statistics imply.

Nonetheless, the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) does offer some specifics regarding dropout rates. These include rates in a single year and rates for the national population in a particular age range. Perhaps a truer picture of the dropout rate can be seen from the second category, where NCES reported that the 1993 national dropout rate for people aged 16 to 24 was 11 percent (roughly 3.4 million people). In spite of low student scores on state tests and continued concern over dropouts among minority populations, that figure marks an improvement compared to the 1970s, when the dropout rate for that age category was 14.6 percent.

Critics of education point out that the loss of more than 1 out of every 10 students in American schools remains a troubling figure. In 1993, some 381,000 students dropped out of school from grades 10, 11, and 12. Rates for males and females are about the same. Rates for Hispanics and African-Americans continue to exceed rates for Caucasian students, in part because the number of minority teachers continues to be lower than optimum. In 1993, only 7.9 percent of dropouts were Caucasian, compared to 13.6 percent for African-American students and 27.5 percent for Hispanic students, according to NCES. In addition, rates for Native Americans were high. Breaking the trend, students from Asian-American families tended to have low dropout rates, according to NCES figures of 1993.

Socioeconomic statistics regarding dropouts show convincing evidence that most dropouts, overwhelmingly, are poor. NCES recorded about a 3 percent dropout rate for students whose families had an above-poverty line income level, compared to about a 24 percent dropout rate for students from poor households.

HIGHER EDUCATION

General Survey: In 1636, in the Massachusetts Bay town of Cambridge (then known as Newtowne), the first college in the New World opened. The college acquired the name of Harvard two years later, after minister John Harvard bequeathed some of his modest wealth to the college. Many Harvard College students planned to enter the ministry following graduation, but in time the wealthy sons of planters and merchants also opted for educations. Those who were admitted first had to demonstrate proficiency in Latin, Greek, and scripture. The school attempted to gain a reputation for excellence similar to the great English schools of Cambridge and Oxford.

Early educators at Harvard revered the ancient civilizations, and it was the ancient languages of Latin and Greek and the ancient intellectual subjects of logic, geometry, rhetoric, and so on that were the focus of minister training at early Harvard. For the ministers-to-be, Aristotle's teachings and Christian teachings both belonged in their classrooms. In other words, what had been revered in the classrooms of the medieval schools of Europe was quite similar to what was taught in the first colonial college at Harvard.

Unfortunately, the worst feudal practices of Europe also crossed the ocean into Massachusetts, likely brought there by the first scholars or by students that had studies in England first. Older students demanded acts of servitude similar to what was termed "fagging" in English universities. In time, even worse student practices such as paddling, corporal beatings, verbal abuse, humiliation, and degrading acts were part of college life in America, and these became known under the general name of "hazing." Such practices were readily accepted in a wilderness college where pranks and other rough jokes at the expense of greenhorns were an accepted part of life on the frontiers.

Authorities failed to share the student enthusiasm for hazing, imposing fines for hazing newcomers in 1657 and expelling a student for the practice in 1684. In the nineteenth century, the practice grew so out of hand that colleges such as Amherst, Yale, and Cornell suffered the ignominy of student-initiation deaths, and a speaker at Harvard denounced hazing as "a weed in the garden of academe." The "weed" continues to be a problem in the twenty-first century, as hazing deaths continue to occur among newcomers to college, many of them seeking membership into college fraternities.

On the other hand, many administrators, professors, and student scholars viewed learning as a sacred responsibility at Harvard College, and they regarded the acquisition of learning with the same serious outlook that the Puritans possessed toward religion. In time, Harvard became the model for much of what educators were trying to accomplish in the American colonies in terms of scholarship and the graduation of young men with character. At the time, no girl was admitted to Harvard. As was the case in the common schools, most learning was accomplished in the form of recitations, and students with a mind for reading and retaining long blocks of Latin text were assured success as scholars. Learning took patience, endurance, and rhetorical skills. The curriculum was fixed, and changing any part of that curriculum was sure to involve faculty members in debate for months or years.

In part because of the status of early scholars at Harvard with Oxford connections, and in part because the other colonies were so slow to establish a competing college, New England established a dominance in the field of higher education that has persisted into the twenty-first century. It took many years for other Eastern cities to establish their own centers of learning. As Benjamin Franklin's aforementioned Academy grew, the institution became known as the College of Pennsylvania, receiving its formal charter in 1755. The College of Pennsylvania, after the American Revolution, changed its name by charter in 1779 to the University of the State of Pennsylvania (shortening it to the University of Pennsylvania in 1791). The first college in New York, King's College (later Columbia University), had British ties and was started only a few years prior to the Revolutionary War.

One measure of the relatively small degree of emphasis on a college education at this time is the fact that combined enrollment at the nine American colleges in the early 1770s was a mere 750 students. That number would not grow greatly in the next three decades. While a few early leaders of the United States, most notably Thomas Jefferson, possessed strong ideals and beliefs regarding education, much of the country's energies were focused on the formation of political alliances, industry building, and preparations for defense pending another inevitable war with England.

In the first decade of the nineteenth century, exploration gave way to the founding of settlements and commerce was spreading. The need for educated citizens and ministers created a great need for colleges, not only in an ever-growing number of American cities, but even in then-western, wilderness communities such as Miami, Ohio, where plans for a college were made mere days after statehood was granted in 1803.

After a brief period of stagnation, the years after the Civil War saw efforts to increase not only the number of colleges but also the number of students afforded the opportunity of higher education. Such expansion was not surprising in a country possessing equal regard for commerce, democratic ideals, the celebration of community creation, and the unreachable quest for perfection in the nature of mankind.

Overall, collegiate enrollment continued to increase steadily by 1918 to about a half million students, as the U.S. population numbered more than 100 million people. Many colleges, particularly small schools with small endowments, entered into a crisis period during the Great Depression as enrollments in college fell drastically. Colleges began to recover in the late 1930s, but World War II once again interfered with the growth of schools, although some institutions were spared disaster when the government selected many campuses for miscellaneous course preparation of enlisted persons.

Following the war, liberal arts colleges often found themselves broadening their curriculum to reflect the national interest in majors related to mathematics and science, or they continued their curriculums and found new ways to compete for enrollment with schools that emphasized the math and science courses that industry and business demanded of new hires. Veterans returning to the classroom after hostilities ended in the mid-1940s tended to gravitate toward college programs that guaranteed them more security in the job market.

As universities themselves acquired more prestige, it became impossible for capable men and women to become dentists, lawyers, and so on without university degrees, as had been the case during much of the nineteenth century. Students seeking status themselves began to compete for entry into the schools perceived to be the best in the land. Where for many years essentially anyone with a diploma from a recognized high school could enter most institutions of higher learning, during the twentieth century increasingly tightened admission standards developed as the best and brightest students competed for a place in Ivy League and prestigious state universities.

As universities themselves set out to hire the best available faculty and to build state-of-the-art facilities, the costs of operating a university spiraled upward, as did the cost of tuition to partially pay for the skyrocketing expenses. In time, where colleges once searched for presidents with the best academic credentials and publication records, many schools began to look for candidates with slightly less stunning vitas who showed they possessed fundraising and management skills comparable to the best chief operating officers in private corporations.

Racial Minorities & Women: Segregation was a painful reality in many Southern institutions during the nineteenth century, in some cases even into the second half of the twentieth century. Not until 1826 did a college award a degree to a black in the United States. One of the few colleges to pursue opportunities for black students was Unitarian-sponsored Antioch College in Ohio, where Horace Mann served as president from 1853 until his death in 1859. The first college to establish a permanent institution for the higher education of black Americans was Hampton Institute in 1870, and it also encouraged Native Americans to attend.

Individuals such as W.E.B. DuBois and organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took up the battle against the hypocrisy of separate but equal facilities. In time, there were quiet victories, including the 1950 admission of an African-American into the University of Texas law school following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Sweatt v. Painter. At Indiana University's School of Dentistry, African-Americans worked quietly behind the scenes to persuade faculty members and the dean to allow them to treat Caucasian patients in dental clinics, eliminating an unwritten policy that saw African-American dental students working only on the teeth of dental students. Overall, however, ignorance and resistance on the part of many universities blocked the path of African-Americans who desired professional and advanced degrees.

In 1973, a minuscule 2,500 Ph.D. and Ed.D degrees were awarded to African-Americans in every discipline combined. By 1998, according to the federally directed Survey of Earned Doctorates Report released by the University of Chicago, the number of doctorates earned by U.S. citizens of racial or ethnic minority groups was 14.7 percent of the total doctorates awarded, the highest percentage overall in history. Among the 97 percent of U.S. respondents who identified race/ethnicity, African-Americans earned 1,467 doctorates; Hispanics, 1,190; Asians (including Pacific Islanders), 1,168; and American Indians (including Alaskan Natives), 189. In disciplines, African-Americans received the highest number of doctorates in education, according to the report.

Other than the training school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (a target of frequent criticism by Indian leaders), between 1879 and 1918 the U.S. government, states, and religious organizations alike failed to provide an collegiate for the higher education of Native Americans. According to Morison, the United States failed to take any significant steps toward the preservation of Native American culture and the higher educational needs of Indian youth until the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934.

As of 2001, a number of higher education facilities existed to serve the needs of Native American students. These include Bay Mills Community College in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Cankdeska Cikana Community College (Little Hoop Community College) in North Dakota, Little Priest Tribal College in Nebraska, and 32 other schools of higher learning on Indian lands. In addition to the curriculum that is found at non-Indian colleges, these schools for Native Americans focus on languages that might otherwise be lost, tribal customs, and Native American history. The federal government's Executive Order No. 13021 on Tribal Colleges and Universities ensures educational opportunities through the federal government and contributes to the status as accredited higher education institutions. In 2001, the tribal colleges were asking the federal government to renew and strengthen its programs for tribal colleges and universities.

Women's higher education in America began with the founding of Mount Holyoke Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1837. The school's founder and visionary, Mary Lyon, immeasurably advanced the cause of equal opportunities for women with the college's founding, and opened the doors for other women's colleges to follow. Chief among these schools were Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, Sarah Lawrence, and Bennington.

Without question, the national movement for women's rights, particularly beginning in the 1960s, brought a tremendous number of women into graduate schools as students. The