1607 – The first permanent settlement in North America is established by the Virginia Company at Jamestown in what is now the state of Virginia.

1620 - The Mayflower arrives at Cape Cod, bringing the  "Pilgrims" who establish the Plymouth Colony. Many of the Pilgrims are Puritans who had fled religious persecution in England. Their religious views come to dominate education in the New England colonies.           

1635 - The first Latin Grammar School (Boston Latin School) is established. Latin Grammar Schools are designed for sons of certain social classes who are destined for leadership positions in church, state, or the courts.

1635 - The first "free school" in Virginia opens. However, education in the southern colonies is more typically provided at home by parents or tutors.

1636 - Harvard College, the first higher education institution in the New World, is established in Newton (now Cambridge), Massachusetts.

1640 - Henry Dunster becomes President of Harvard College. Dunster teaches all the courses himself!

1642 - The Massachusetts Bay School Law is passed. It requires that parents assure their children know the principles of religion and the capital laws of the commonwealth.

1647 - The Massachusetts Law of 1647, also known as the Old Deluder Satan Act, is passed. It decrees that every town of at least 50 families hire a schoolmaster who would teach the town's children to read and write and that all towns of at least 100 families should have a Latin grammar school master who will prepare students to attend Harvard College.

1690 - John Locke publishes his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which conveys his belief that the human mind is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, at birth and knowledge is derived through experience, rather than innate ideas as was believed by many at that time. Locke's views concerning the mind and learning greatly influence American education.

1690 - The first New England Primer is printed in Boston. It becomes the most widely-used schoolbook in New England.

1692 - The Plymouth Colony merges with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1693 - John Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education is published, describing his views on educating upper class boys to be moral, rationally-thinking, and reflective "young gentlemen." His ideas regarding educating the masses are conveyed in On Working Schools, published in 1697, which focused on the importance of developing a work ethic.

1693 - The College of William and Mary is established in Virginia. It is the second college to open in colonial America and has the distinction of being Thomas Jefferson's college.

1710 - Christopher Dock, a Mennonite and one of Pennsylvania's most famous educators, arrives from Germany and later opens a school in Montgomery County, PA. Dock's book, Schul-Ordnung (meaning school management), published in 1770, is the first book about teaching printed in colonial America. Typical of those in the middle colonies, schools in Pennsylvania are established not only by the Mennonites, but by the Quakers and other religious groups as well.

1734 – Christian von Wolff describes the human mind as consisting of powers or faculties. Called Faculty Psychology, this doctrine holds that the mind can best be developed through "mental discipline" or tedious drill and repetition of basic skills and the eventual study of abstract subjects such as classical  philosophy, literature, and languages. This viewpoint greatly influences American education throughout the 19th Century and beyond.

1743 - Benjamin Franklin forms the American Philosophical Society, which helps bring ideas of the European Enlightenment, including those of John Locke, to colonial America. Emphasizing secularism, science, and human reason, these ideas clash with the religious dogma of the day, but greatly influence the thinking of prominent colonists, including Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

1751 - Benjamin Franklin helps to establish the first "English Academy" in Philadelphia with a curriculum that is both classical and modern, including such courses as history, geography, navigation, surveying, and modern as well as classical languages. The academy ultimately becomes the University of Pennsylvania.

1754 - The French and Indian War begins in colonial America as the French and their Indian allies fight the English for territorial control.

1763 - The French are defeated, and the French and Indian War ends with the Treaty of Paris. It gives most French territory in North America to England.
   
1775  - The Revolutionary War begins.

1779 – Thomas Jefferson proposes a two-track educational system, with different tracks for "the laboring and the learned."

1783 - The Revolutionary War officially ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which recognizes U.S. independence and possession of all land east of the Mississippi except the Spanish colony of  Florida

1783 to 1785 - Because of his dissatisfaction with English textbooks of the day, Noah Webster writes A Grammatical Institute of the English Language , consisting of three volumes: a spelling book, a grammar book, and a reader. They become very widely used throughout the United States. In fact, the spelling volume, later renamed the American Spelling Book and often called the Blue-Backed Speller, has never been out of print!

1784 - The Ordinance of 1784 divides the western territories (north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi) into ten separate territories that would eventually become states and have the same rights as the thirteen original states.

1785 - The Land Ordinance of 1785 specifies that the western territories are to be divided into townships made up of 640-acre sections, one of which was to be set aside "for the maintenance of public schools."

1787 - The Constitutional Convention assembles in Philadelphia. Later that year, the constitution is endorsed by the Confederation Congress (the body that governed from 1781 until the ratification of the U.S. Constitution) and sent to state legislatures for ratification. The document does not include the words education or school.

1787 - The Northwest Ordinance is enacted by the Confederation Congress. It provides a plan for western expansion and bans slavery in new states. Specifically recognizing the importance of education, Act 3 of the document begins, "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Perhaps of more practical importance, it stipulates that a section of land in every township of each new state be reserved for the support of education.

1788 - The U.S Constitution is ratified by the required number of states.

1791 - The Bill of Rights is passed by the first Congress of the new United  States. No mention is made of education in any of the amendments. However, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution states that powers not delegated to the federal government "are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people." Thus, education becomes a function of the state rather than the federal government.    

1812-1815 - The War of 1812, sometimes called the "Second War of Independence," occurs for multiple reasons, including U.S. desires for territorial expansion and British harassment of U.S. merchant ships. The war begins with an  unsuccessful invasion of Canada by U.S. forces. Though the Treaty of Ghent, signed on December 24, 1814, supposedly ends the war, the final battle actually takes place January 9, 1815 with U.S. forces defeating the British at New Orleans.  

1817 - The Connecticut Asylum at Hartford for the Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons opens. It is the first permanent school for the deaf in the U.S. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc are the school's co-founders. In 1864, Thomas Gaullaudet's son, Edward Miner Gallaudet, helps to start Gallaudet University, the first college specifically for deaf students. 

1821 - The first public high school, Boston English High School, opens .

1827 - The state of Massachusetts passes a law requiring towns of more than 500 families to have a public high school open to all students.

1829 - The New England Asylum for the Blind, now the Perkins School for the Blind, opens in Massachusetts, becoming the first school in the U.S. for children with visual disabilities.

1836 - The first of William Holmes McGuffey's readers is published. Their secular tone sets them apart from the Puritan texts of the day. The McGuffey Readers, as they came to be known, are among the most influential textbooks of the 19th Century.

1837 - Horace Mann becomes Secretary of the newly formed Massachusetts State Board of Education. A visionary educator and proponent of public (or "free") schools, Mann works tirelessly for increased funding of public schools and better training for teachers. As Editor of the Common School Journal, his belief in the importance of free, universal public education gains a national audience. He resigns his position as Secretary in 1848 to take the Congressional seat vacated by the death of John Quincy Adams and later becomes the first president of Antioch College.

1837 - Eighty students arrive at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, the first college for women in the U.S. Its founder/president is Mary Lyon.

1839 - The first state funded school specifically for teacher education (then known as "normal" schools) opens in Lexington, Massachusetts.

1848 - Hervey Wilbur helps establish the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feebleminded Youth, the first school of its kind in the U.S.

1851 - The New York State Asylum for Idiots opens.

1852 - Massachusetts enacts the first mandatory attendance law. By 1885, 16 states have compulsory-attendance laws, but most of those laws are sporadically enforced at best. All states have them by 1918.

1854 - Ashmun Institute, now Lincoln University, is founded on October 12, and as Horace Mann Bond, the university's eighth president states in his book, Education for Freedom: A History of Lincoln University , it becomes the "first institution anywhere in the world to provide higher education in the arts and sciences for male youth of African descent." The university's many distinguished alumni include Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall.

1856 - The first kindergarten in the U.S. is started in Watertown, Wisconsin, founded by Margarethe Schurz. Four years later, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody opens the first "formal" kindergarten in Boston, MA.

1857 - The National Teachers Association (now the National Education Association) is founded by forty-three educators in Philadelphia

1860 - Abraham Lincoln, an anti-slavery Republican, is elected president.

1861 - The U.S. Civil War begins when South Carolina secedes from the union and along with 10 other states forms the Confederate States of American. The shooting begins when Fort Sumter is attacked on April 12. With the exception of the First Morrill act of 1862, educational progress is essentially put on hold until the war's end. 

1862 - The First Morrill Act, also known as the "Land Grant Act" becomes law. It donates public lands to states, the sale of which will be used for the "endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life." Many prominent state universities can trace their roots to this forward-thinking legislation.

1863 - President Lincoln signs the "Emancipation Proclamation" on January 1.

1865 - The 13th Amendment is passed, abolishing slavery.

1865 - The Civil War ends with Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. Much of the south, including its educational institutions, is left in disarray. Many schools are closed. Even before the war, public education in the south was far behind that in the north. The physical devastation left by the war as well as the social upheaval and poverty that follow exacerbate this situation.

1865 - Abraham Lincoln is assassinated, and Andrew Johnson, a southern Democrat and advocate of state's rights, becomes President.

1866 - The 14th Amendment is passed entitling all persons born or naturalized in the United States to citizenship and equal protection under the law. This gives freed male slaves the right to vote. Most southern states refuse to ratify it.

1867 - After hearing of the desperate situation faced schools in the south, George Peabody funds the two-million-dollar Peabody Education Fund to aid public education in southern states.

1867 & 1868 - The four Reconstruction Acts are passed over President Andrew Johnson's veto. They divide the south into military districts and require elections to be held with freed male slaves being allowed to vote.

1869 - Congress passes the 15th Amendment. It prohibits states from denying male citizens over 21 (including freed slaves) the right to vote.

1873 - The Panic of 1873 causes bank foreclosures, business failures, and job loss. The economic depression that follows results in reduced revenues for education. Southern schools are hit particularly hard, making a bad situation even worse. 

1874 - The Michigan State Supreme Court rules that Kalamazoo may levi taxes to support a public high school setting an important precedent for similar rulings in other states.

1875 - The Civil Rights Act is passed, banning segregation in all public accommodations. The Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional in 1883.

1876 - Edouard Seguin becomes the first President of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons, which evolves into the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

1877 - Reconstruction formally ends as President Rutherford B. Hayes removes the last federal troops from the south. The foundation for a system of legal  segregation and discrimination is quickly established. Many African Americans flee the south.

1881 - Booker T. Washington becomes the first principal of the newly-opened normal school in Tuskegee, Alabama, now Tuskegee University.

1890 - The Second Morrill Act is enacted. It provides for the "more complete endowment and support of the colleges" through the sale of public lands, Part of this funding leads to the creation of 16 historically black land-grant colleges.

1892 - The Committee on Secondary Social Studies, often called the Committee of Ten, recommends a college-oriented high school curriculum.

1896 - Homer Plessy, a 30-year-old African American, challenges the state of Louisiana's "Separate Car Act," arguing that requiring Blacks to ride in separate railroad cars  violates the 13th and 14th Amendments. The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Louisiana law stating in the majority opinion that the intent of the 14th Amendment "had not been intended to abolish distinctions based on color." Thus, the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson makes "separate but equal" policies legal. It becomes a legal precedent used to justify many other segregation laws, including "separate but equal" education.

1898 - The Spanish American War makes Theodore Roosevelt a hero, and the United States becomes an international power.

1905 - Alfred Binet's article, "New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals," is published in France. It describes his work with Theodore Simon in the development of a measurement instrument that would identify students with mental retardation. The Binet-Simon Scale, as it is called, is an effective means of measuring intelligence.

1911 - The first Montessori school in the U.S. opens in Tarrytown, New York. Two years later (1913), Maria Montessori visits the U.S., and Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel found the Montessori Educational Association at their Washington, DC, home

1913 - Edward Lee Thorndike's book, Educational Psychology: The Psychology of Learning, is published. It describes his theory that human learning involves habit formation, or connections between stimuli (or situations as Thorndike preferred to call them) and responses (Connectionism). He believes that such connections are strengthened by repetition ("Law of Exercise") and achieving satisfying consequences ("Law of Effect"). These ideas, which contradict traditional faculty psychology and mental discipline, come to dominate American educational psychology for much of the Twentieth Century and greatly influence American educational practice.

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. The Fifth Edition of the Stanford-Binet Scales is among the most popular individual intelligence tests today. For additional information on the history of intelligence testing, see A.C.E. Long History of the I.Q. Test.

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