Education in the United States

Education in the United States is provided by public schools and private schools.

Public education is universally required from kindergarten through 12th grade (often abbreviated K-12), and is available at state colleges and universities for all students. Public school curricula, budgets, and policies for K-12 schooling are set through locally elected school boards, who have jurisdiction over individual school districts. State governments set overall educational standards, often mandate standardized tests for K–12 public school systems, and supervise, usually through a board of regents, state colleges and universities. Funding comes from the state, local, and federal government.^[4]

Private schools are generally free to determine their own curriculum and staffing policies, with voluntary accreditation available through independent regional accreditation authorities. About 87% of school-age children attend public schools, about 10% attend private schools,^[5] and roughly 3% are home-schooled.^[6]

Education is compulsory over an age range starting between five and eight and ending somewhere between ages sixteen and eighteen, depending on the state.^[7] This requirement can be satisfied in public schools, state-certifiedprivate schools, or an approved home school program. In most schools, education is divided into three levels: elementary school, middle or junior high school, and high school. Children are usually divided by age groups intogrades, ranging from kindergarten and first grade for the youngest children, up to twelfth grade as the final year of high school.

There are also a large number and wide variety of publicly and privately administered institutions of higher education throughout the country. Post-secondary education, divided into college, as the first tertiary degree, andgraduate school, is described in a separate section below.

The United States spends more per student on education than any other country.^[8] In 2014, the Pearson/Economist Intelligence Unit rated US education as 14th best in the world, just behind Russia.^[9] According to a reportpublished by the U.S. News & World Report, of the top ten colleges and universities in the world, eight are American.^[10] (The other two are Oxford andCambridge, in the United Kingdom.)

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History[edit]

Main article: History of education in the United States

Government-supported and free public schools for all began to be established after the American Revolution. Between 1750 and 1870 parochial schools appeared as "ad hoc" efforts by parishes. Historically, many parochial elementary schoolswere developed which were open to all children in the parish, mainly Catholics, but also Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox Jews. Nonsectarian Common schools designed by Horace Mann were opened, which taught the three Rs (of reading, writing, and arithmetic) and also history and geography.

In 1823, Reverend Samuel Read Hall founded the first normal school, the Columbian School in Concord, Vermont,^[11][12] to improve the quality of the burgeoning common school system by producing more qualified teachers.

States passed laws to make schooling compulsory between 1852 (Massachusetts) and 1917 (Mississippi). They also used federal funding designated by the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890 to set up land grant collegesspecializing in agriculture and engineering. By 1870, every state had free elementary schools,^[13] albeit only in urban centers.

Starting from about 1876, thirty-nine states passed a constitutional amendment to their state constitutions, called Blaine Amendments after James G. Blaine, one of their chief promoters, forbidding the use of public tax money to fund local parochial schools.

Following the American Civil War, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute was founded in 1881, in Tuskegee,Alabama, to train "Colored Teachers," led by Booker T. Washington, (1856–1915), who was himself a freed slave. His movement spread to many other Southern states to establish small colleges for "Colored or Negro" students entitled "A. & M.," ("Agricultural and Mechanical") or "A. & T.," ("Agricultural and Technical"), some of which later developed into state universities.