5. Public School

Public schools, elementary or secondary schools under control of elected or appointed civil authority, supported entirely by public tax monies, and, with few exceptions, are open to all students in a designated district free of any tuition charges. Public schools include elementary, junior and senior high schools and vocational schools. Public schools are controlled by a publicly elected school board, which hires a superintendent of schools as chief executive officer for the school district. The superintendent, in turn, delegates administrative powers in each school to a principal, who is responsible for supervising faculty, staff and students and implementing the state and district educational requirements. A study by the National Association of School Principals found the degree of autonomy given the school by its district to be one of four factors critical to school success. The other three factors were the amount of authority vested in the principal; the degree of community support; and the competency, diversity and stability of the school staff.

The more than 94 000 public schools in the United States constitute only slightly more than 77% of the schools but house more than 88% of America’s more than 47.5 million students. In contrast, the 27 000 private schools in the United States represent only about 22.5% of all schools and house only 6.3 million students, or 11% of the nation’s school population. There are more than 65 000 public elementary schools that accommodate 87% of kindergarten through eighth grade students and 22 000 public secondary schools, with more than 91% of the ninth grade through twelfth grade population. About 5 300 additional public schools are combined elementary-secondary schools, usually in sparsely settled areas that do not warrant separate facilities for different age groups. Another 1 500 public schools are devoted to special education.

Public schools have been under constant attack since World War II for their failure to provide adequate education, especially to racial minorities and the poor. As late as 1996, National Assessment of Educational Progress （NAEP） testing found only 29% of public school fourth graders and 31% of eighth graders proficient in reading, and only 24% of eighth graders proficient in writing. （The fourth graders were not tested in writing.） Only 20% of fourth graders and 23% of eighth graders were proficient in math, and only 27% of eighth graderswere proficient in science. （The fourth graders were not tested in science.） The test results fell well below the standards set in the early 1990s by the Education Commission of the States, a cooperative association of state governments organized to improve American public school education. Since then, one by one, each of the states has established standards in core academic subjects and improved teacher training as part of a long-range effort to fulfill the national academic goals of the federal Goals 2000 program to raise levels of academic achievement in American public schools. But NAEP tests at the end of the school year in 1999 showed absolutely no improvements in reading, math or science proficiency in either the nine-year-old, the 13-year-old or 17-year-old groups. Astoundingly, average scores remained unchanged by even a fraction of a decimal point in each discipline for each age group. In 2001, Congress responded with far-reaching federal intrusions into American public school education. A year later, President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 （NCLB）³, imposing testing requirements on all states and public school districts and requiring every school to demonstrate year-to-year improvements in academic performance or face loss of federal subsidies to education.

Public schools date back almost to the arrival of the first English settlers in the American colonies. The English Crown （Henry VI） had established the first “public school” in the English world in 1440, although Eton College was public only in the sense that the Crown provided scholarships for gifted children of nobility. England’s “public schools” are decidedly private today, while what Americans call public schools are called “state schools”. The first American public schools, or common schools, were established in Massachusetts with the building of the first churches, where local churchmen could catechize children and ensure their ability to read the Scriptures and remain true adherents of the Christian faith. Although all were public in the sense that they were open to all children, they generally charged fees, although five towns—Dorchester, Charlestown, Boston, Dedham and Ipswich—maintained town-run grammar schools and Salem maintained a town-run petty school. Roxbury had a quasi-public grammar school supported by a system of self-taxation by a large group of homeowners. In 1647, Massachusetts passed a School Act that required all towns with 50 or more householders to hire a teacher to teach their children to read and write and to pay the teacher with funds provided by parents, where possible, or the general community. Towns with 100 or more householders were required to establish a grammar school under the same terms.

The majority of common schools that emerged during the colonial era and first decades of independence, though public and theoretically open to all, were religiously oriented andusually charged fees. Moreover, they remained open only six to 12 weeks during the idle winter months between the last fall harvest and first spring planting. Some states, such as New York, established public school systems that provided some state funds and required each community to make up any deficits by taxing the parents of schoolchildren. Although they exempted poor and indigent families, few of the latter sent their children to school because they depended on them to contribute to family income. These early systems, however, were hardly public in the modern sense in that they charged parents who could afford to pay for their children’s education. Moreover, the lack of compulsory education and the need of most families for the earnings of their children limited enrollment to the most economically advantaged children. In addition, the school year was abbreviated and, given the lack of any mandated educational standards, the quality of education was barely enough to provide most children with literacy training.

Public schools as they exist today emerged in the 1830s with the founding of the first state public school system in Massachusetts by Horace Mann⁴. Within a decade, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and Pennsylvania had established similar systems, and by the end of the Civil War all former non-slave-holding states had established extensive secular, tax-supported public elementary school systems. By the end of the century, even the South had established narrowly based public school systems, and most of the North had extended public school education to include high schools. The vast majority of public schools, however, were for children aged five through 13—that is, the least efficient members of the huge child-labor force on which American industry and farmers depended for cheap labor during the 19th century. As a result, few public high schools were incorporated in the first public school systems. Although the first public high school opened in Boston in 1821, by 1860, there were only about 300 high schools in the entire country.

By 1900, the number had increased substantially, to 6 000, but only about 10% of American adolescents attended high school because the courts had ruled child labor a constitutional right of children. By 1930, with the passage of state child-labor and compulsory education laws, the number of high schools had increased to nearly 24 000.