Public education in the United States of America evolved from religious affiliated schools in the 17th and 18thcenturies to free, government funded and compulsory educational programs in the 19th century. The history of how public education evolved during the course of American history is very complex.
In 1647 the Massachusetts Bay Colony decreed that every town and city in the colony should have an elementary or Latin school, depending on the size of the population. This decree represented the first such public education mandate in America. Verly little progress towards free public education would occur during the next hundred plus years.
United States: c. 1890. A woodworking class in a school. (credit: Underwood Archives/Universal Images Group) 
A photograph of a yellow school bus in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. (credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group) 
Schoolchildren in classroom at FSA (Farm Security Administration) farm workers’ community, Eleven Mile Corner, Arizona. (credit: Circa/Glasshouse Images/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group) 
United States: c. 1948. Four young children of mixed ethnicity display their drawing talents on the blackboard in a classroom. (credit: Underwood Archives/Universal Images Group) 
U.S. High School students taking college board exams. (credit: Circa Images/GHI/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group) 
Little Rock, Arkansas, Dunbar High School, Little Rock’s school for black students before the city’s schools were integrated. (credit: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group) 
US Educational Reformer Horace Mann. (credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group)
Following the American Revolution and during the first decade of the 1800’s, programs in Pennsylvania and New York offered free education to poor students, but mandated more affluent citizens paid for the education of their children. The first public high school, Boston English, opened in 1820. Massachusetts would continue to lead the nation in public education progress, enacting a law in 1827 that mandated free education for all pupils, and in all grades, at public schools.
As the industrial revolution gained strength in America, hundreds of thousands of rural citizens and millions of immigrants began migrating to America’s growing cities. The urban industries of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other cities looked to their public education systems to provide eager and educated workers.
Horace Mann, the first secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education was perhaps the greatest advocate for public education during the 1800’s. A leader of the Common Schools Movement, Mann pushed for free, universal and non-sectarian education.
In 1852, Massachusetts enacted the first compulsory education legislation in the nation. The act required that children ages 8 through 14 attend school for a minimum of three months out of the year, and of those three months, six weeks were required to be consecutive. Other states soon followed suit, and by 1885, sixteen states had passed compulsory attendance legislation. It would not be until 1918, however, that all states would have such educational requirements as part of their state law.
William Frantz Elementary School, New Orleans, 1960. After a Federal court ordered the desegregation of schools in the South, U.S. Marshals escorted a young Black girl, Ruby Bridges, to school. (credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group) 
Little Rock, Arkansas, Little Rock Central High School, site of an historic school desegregation crisis in 1957. (credit: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group) 
Attempting to block integration at the University of Alabama, Governor George Wallace stands defiantly at the door while being confronted by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. (credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group) 
Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus speaking to Crowd, one holding Confederate flag, gathered at Arkansas State Capitol to protest Integration of Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas. (credit: Circa Images/GHI/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group) 
Elementary students in an integrated school read storybooks, Washington, DC, 1961. (credit: GG Vintage Images/Universal Images Group) 
Integrated classroom at Anacostia High School, Washington, D.C. (credit: Buyenlarge/Universal Images Group) 
Civil rights memorial sculpture at Arkansas state capitol. (credit: Don and Melinda Crawford/Universal Images Group) 
African American and white school girls standing in a classroom while boys sit behind them. (credit: Buyenlarge/Universal Images Group)
The US public education system’s expansion fell far short of offering equal access to a quality education for all. Many laws in the south prohibited enslaved people from being taught to read or write. Laws were passed prohibiting Native American populations from learning in their own language. Following the 1896 US Supreme Court decision in support of Louisiana’s segregationist policy of “separate but equal”, states and education authorities would use the Court’s decision to segregate their schools by race.
In its landmark 1954 “Brown vs Board Of Education of Topeka” decision, the Supreme Court reversed course, unanimously agreeing that segregated schools were “inherently unequal”. Change would not automatically come after this ruling, as governors in Arkansas and Alabama would use their state national guards to prohibit African-American students from integrating previously all-white schools in the late 1950’s.
Today, approximately 50 million students attend public education elementary and secondary schools in the United States. An additional 14 million attend public colleges and universities.
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Sources:
EBSCO “History of Public Education in the U.S.” by Gina L. Diorio, 2023
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/history-public-education-us
Race Forward “Historical Timeline of Public Education in the US”
https://www.raceforward.org/reports/education/historical-timeline-public-education-us