1916 - Louis M. Terman and his team of Stanford University graduate students complete an American version of the Binet-Simon Scale. The Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale becomes a widely-used individual intelligence test, and along with it, the concept of the intelligence quotient (or IQ) is born.
1916 - The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is founded.
1916 - John Dewey's Democracy and Education. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education is published. Dewey's views help advance the ideas of the "progressive education movement." An outgrowth of the progressive political movement, progressive education seeks to make schools more effective agents of democracy.
1917 - The Smith-Hughes Act passes, providing federal funding for agricultural and vocational education. It is repealed in 1997.Ê Ê
1919 - The Progressive Education Association is founded with the goal of reforming America education.
1919 - All states have laws providing funds for transporting children to school.
1922 - The International Council for Exceptional Children is founded at Columbia University Teachers College.
1925 - Tennessee vs. John Scopes ("the Monkey Trial") captures national attention as John Scopes, a high school biology teacher, is charged with the heinous crime of teaching evolution. Though the trial ends in Scopes' conviction, the evolution versus creationism controversy persists to this day.
1926 - The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is first administered. It is based on the Army Alpha test.Ê
1929 - Jean Piaget's The Child's Conception of the World is published. His stage theory of cognitive development (Genetic Epistemology) becomes an important influence in American developmental psychology and education.
1929 - The Great Depression begins with the stock market crash in October. The U.S. economy is devastated. Public education funding suffers greatly, resulting in school closings, teacher layoffs, and lower salaries.
1935 - Congress authorizes the Works Progress Administration. Its purpose is to put the unemployed to work on public projects, including the construction of hundreds of school buildings
1939 - Frank W. Cyr, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, organizes a national conference on student transportation. It results in the adoption of standards for the nation's school buses, including the shade of yellow.
1944 - The G.I. Bill officially known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, is signed by FDR on June 22, 1944. Some 7.8 million World War II veterans take advantage of the GI Bill during the seven years benefits are offered.
More than two-million GIs attend colleges or universities, nearly doubling the college population. About 238,000 become teachers. Because the law provides the same opportunity to every veteran, regardless of background, the long-standing tradition that a college education was only for the wealthy is broken.
1946 - At one minute after midnight on January 1st, Kathleen Casey Wilkens is born, the first of nearly 78 million baby boomers, beginning a generation that results in unprecedented school population growth and massive social change.
1952 - Public Law 550, the Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1952, modifies the G.I. Bill for veterans of the Korean War.
1953 - Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner's Science and Human Behavior is published. His form of behaviorism (operant conditioning), which emphasizes changes in behavior due to reinforcement, becomes widely accepted and influences many aspects of American education
1954 - On May 17th, the U.S. Supreme Court announces its decision in the case of Brown v. Board. of Education of Topeka, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," thus overturning its previous ruling in the 1896 case of ÊPlessy v. Ferguson. Ê Brown v. Board of Education is actually a combination of five cases from different parts of the country. It is a historic first step in the long and still unfinished journey toward equality in U.S. education.
1957 - Federal troops enforce integration in Little Rock, Arkansas as the Little Rock 9 enroll at Central High School.ÊÊÊ
1957 - The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth. Occurring in the midst of the Cold War, it represents both a potential threat to American national security as well as a blow to national pride.
1958 - At least partially because of Sputnik, science and science education become important concerns in the U.S., resulting in the passage of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) which authorizes increased funding for scientific research and science education.
1960 -First grader Ruby Bridges is the first African American to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. She becomes a class of one as parents remove all Caucasian students from the school.
1963 - Samuel A. Kirk uses the term "learning disability" at a Chicago conference on children with perceptual disorders. The term sticks, and in 1964, the Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, now the Learning Disabilities Association of America, is formed. Today, more than one-half of all students in the U.S. who receive special education have been diagnosed as having learning disabilities.
1963 - President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Schools close as the nation mourns its loss. Lyndon Johnson becomes president.
1964 - The Civil Rights Act becomes law. It prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion or national origin.
1965 - The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is passed on April 9. Part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, it provides federal funds to help low-income students, which results in the initiation of educational programs such as Title I, Head Start, and bilingual education.
1966 - The Equality of Educational Opportunity Study, often called the Coleman Report because of its primary author James S. Coleman, is conducted in response to provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Its conclusion that African American children benefit from attending integrated schools sets the stage for school "busing" to achieve desegregation.
1966 - Jerome Bruner's Toward a Theory of Instruction is published. His views regarding teaching and learning help to popularize the cognitive learning theory as an alternative to behaviorism.