It's Time for a History Lesson On Public Education in America
Knowing how far we’ve come will help us know what we’re fighting for.
America, it’s time for a history lesson.
Prior to the American Revolution, school varied greatly by community as churches, schoolmasters, and private tutors educated primarily white children, excluding many on the basis of income, race or ethnicity, gender, geographic location, and disability.
The Founding Fathers “believed strongly that preserving democracy would require an educated population that could understand political and social issues and would participate in civic life, vote wisely, protect their rights and freedoms, and resist tyrants and demagogues.”1
Soon after the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others advocated for publicly funded schools, and federal ordinances were passed in the 1780s to provide federal land for local communities to build schools.
In 1830, Horace Mann, Secretary of the State Board of Education in Massachusetts, led the movement for “common schools,” which provided reading, writing, and arithmetic to children. Proponents argued that educating children from poor and middle-class families would prepare them to obtain better jobs and eventually strengthen the economy. Advocates also envisioned universal education as a way to eliminate poverty and crime.
In response to prepare children for school, the first kindergarten was established in 1856 in Watertown, Wisconsin by Margarethe Schurz, a German immigrant who had been a student of Friedrich Froebel, a German education reformer. Elizabeth Peabody, learning from Froebel and Schurz, opened the first American English kindergarten in Boston in 1860. At the time, kindergarten was offered privately to wealthy families and was largely experimental.
By 1883, the Board of Public Schools in St. Louis was providing “training to over four thousand little children, preparatory to sending them into the public schools.” From there, free kindergarten was opened in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia through charitable organizations.2
After the Civil War, southern states restructured their constitutions to provide free education but instituted “Jim Crow” laws to enforce segregation in public schools and prohibit African Americans to read.
In general, public schools were designed out of a need to educate the masses for a specific purpose: to become well-trained laborers requiring certain standardized skills. By 1918, all states in the Union had passed school attendance legislation, although compulsory schooling laws were difficult to enforce, and disabled and non-white children were not allowed to attend.
Finally, in 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education, public schools began racial integration, which started the conversation about a child’s right to access an education.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed in 1965 which gave federal funding to public schools and in 1966 the same act was amended to include funding for students with disabilities.3
According to the U.S. Department of Education, “in 1970, U.S. schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws excluding certain students, including children who were deaf, blind, emotionally disturbed, or had an intellectual disability.” An estimated eight million children with disabilities were being excluded or inappropriately educated around this time.
In 1973, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act determined that “a person with a disability cannot be excluded or denied benefit from any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, either public or private.”4
And in 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), was passed to ensure a “free, appropriate education” to all children regardless of ability level.
Today, IDEA continues to guarantee that all children with disabilities have an individualized education program (IEP), a free and appropriate public education, and are served in the least restrictive environment.
In 2024, the federal budget for IDEA was just over $15 billion.5
My Ph.D. is in School Psychology. I have worked in public schools from pre-K through 12th grade solving problems of access and engagement for students and educators. I have counseled families who have decided to leave public school because the funding failed to support the staffing, class sizes, and training of educators that their child deserved. I have held space for educators who love our children and their jobs but are burned out because they don’t have enough support.
So, in 2025, what do we need our public education system to provide?
Critical Thinkers.
We do not need to tear down the system to do this. We need to strength the system from within based on the knowledge of the people on the ground. What do teachers need to do their job? Whatever they ask for. Listen to them. Speak out in support of them. Vote to support them. Teachers are the glue to our entire economy.
We need to be very careful about pulling the rug out from under public education. It could crumble the rest of the nation.
Let’s stay connected,
~Dr. Emily
I’m Dr. Emily, child psychologist and former school psychologist, and I’m on a mission to help parents and teachers be the best adults we can be for the neurodivergent kids and teens in our lives. This isn’t about changing the kids, it’s about changing us. Learn more with my resources for parents, teachers, and schools at www.learnwithdremily.com.
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I agree. Education has come a long way, and has a long way yet to go.
One thing that strikes me in this article is that education has become whatever it needed to be for the times. In the past, it has served the clergy, industry, and systems of power. I contend that, in an era of crisis and rapid global change, we need to understand the potential of humans to meet these challenges. What worked in the past no longer works because the world has changed.
I am not certain what qualifies as rug-pulling in education, but we do need reform. In an emerging reality of super-intelligent robots (literally 'workers'), which qualities in humans should we educate and nurture?
My kids' public education provided one of the critical roads to righting paths that had gone astray from newly diagnosed anxiety and ADHD. Two kindhearted counselors helped us navigate the systems and offered solutions. It wasn't always easy, with some of the fiercest battles by administrators and teachers within. In the end, both girls are thriving because of the help from their public education experience.