Education in Connecticut covers the public and private schools of all levels from colonial era to the present. Originally an offshoot of Massachusetts, colonial Connecticut was committed to Puritanism's high regard for education.[1] Yale College became a national model for higher education.[2] Immigration in the 19th century brought a large working class Catholic element that supported vocational training,[3] as well as a distinctive parochial educational system.[4] The southwestern districts include wealthy suburbs of New York City that use strong public schools to compete for residents.[5]
Jackson Turner Main finds that teaching in colonial days was a poorly paid, part-time, temporary job. Young men typically moved on to more secure occupations as soon as possible. There was one great exception: Reverend Thomas Clap (1703-1767), president of Yale college, 1740-1766. At his death he left an estate worth £6,656, including 600 acres of land. His wealth came from marriage and his attention to lucrative investments. [6]
Puritanism required a well educated ministry, and Harvard (founded 1636) and Yale (founded 1701) provided the men, Of the 2,466 graduates of the two schools from 1691 to 1760, 987 (40%) became ministers. However the salaries were low and increasingly ministers were unable to send their own sons to college.[7]
19th century
Henry Barnard (1811-1900) was a leading proponent of educational reform. In 1838 he led the state legislature with the passage of his bill. It provided for "the better supervision of the common schools", and established a board of "commissioners of common schools" in the state. He was the secretary of the board from 1838 until its abolition in 1842. He worked indefatigably to reorganize and reform the common school system of the state, thus earning a national reputation as an educational reformer.[8][9] After taking a leading role in education in Rhode Island in the 1840s he returned to Connecticut. From 1851 to 1855, he was "superintendent of common schools", and principal of the Connecticut State Normal School at New Britain.[10]
In 1832, Quaker schoolteacher Prudence Crandall created the first integrated schoolhouse in the United States by admitting Sarah Harris, the daughter of a free African-American farmer in the local community, to her Canterbury Female Boarding School in Canterbury. Many prominent townspeople objected and pressured to have Harris dismissed from the school, but Crandall refused. Families of the current students removed their daughters. Consequently, Crandall ceased teaching white girls altogether and opened up her school strictly to African American girls.[11] In 1995, the Connecticut General Assembly designated Prudence Crandall as the state's official heroine.[12]
Connecticut ranked third in the nation for educational performance, according to Education Week's Quality Counts 2018 report. It earned an overall score of 83.5 out of 100 points. On average, the country received a score of 75.2.[14] Connecticut posted a B-plus in the Chance-for-Success category, ranking fourth on factors that contribute to a person's success both within and outside the K-12 education system. Connecticut received a mark of B-plus and finished fourth for School Finance. It ranked 12th with a grade of C on the K-12 Achievement Index.[14]
Connecticut has a number of private schools. Private schools may file for approval by the state Department of Education, but are not required to. Per state law, private schools must file yearly attendance reports with the state.[15]
↑ Bruce C. Daniels, The Connecticut town: Growth and development, 1635-1790 (1979) pp 108-111.
↑ O. Burton Adams, "Yale Influence on the Formation of the University of Georgia." Georgia Historical Quarterly 51.2 (1967): 175-185.
↑ Ivan Greenberg, "Vocational education, work culture, and the children of immigrants in 1930s Bridgeport" Journal of Social History (2007) 41#1 pp.149-160.
↑ Delores Ann Liptak, "European Immigrants and the Catholic Church in Connecticut. 1870-1920"
↑ Jack Dougherty, "Shopping for schools: How public education and private housing shaped suburban Connecticut." Journal of Urban History 38.2 (2012): 205-224.
↑ Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut (1985) p 258
↑ James W. Schmotter, "Ministerial Careers in Eighteenth-Century New England: The Social Context, 1700-1760," Journal of Social History 9#2 (1975), pp. 249-267, at pp 250, 261. online
↑ Will S. Monroe, The educational labors of Henry Barnard: a study in the history of American pedagogy (1893) pp 12-15.
↑ Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators (1935) pp. 139–168.
↑ "Private Schools". CT.gov – Connecticut's Official State Website. Archived from the original on April 14, 2021. Retrieved October 15, 2021.
Further reading
Ames, Charles L. History of Education in Connecticut From 1818 to 1925 (Edited by N. G. Osborn. History of Connecticut in Monographic Form. New York: State Historical Society, 1925• Vol. 5» Part I. 558 p.
Axtell, James. The school upon a hill: Education and society in colonial New England (Yale UP, 1974). online, a major scholarly survey
Bomhoff, Carl Bowker. “The development of state support of teacher education in Connecticut's school-reform movement, 1825-1850" (PhD dissertation, New York University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1952. 7308440).
Bushman, Richard L. 'From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (1967)
Collier, Christopher. Connecticuts Public Schools: A History (2009). 850pp massive history of all aspects of the topic, by a scholar.
Cornwell, Eleanor Kazmercyk. "The history of education in Milford, Connecticut" (MS thesis, Southern Connecticut State University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1959. EP27037).
Daniels, Bruce C. The Connecticut town: Growth and development, 1635-1790 (Wesleyan University Press, 1979)
DeFrank, Megan. "School Segregation in New Haven County." Connecticut Law Review Online 53 (2020): 1+ online .
Dougherty, Jack. "Shopping for schools: How public education and private housing shaped suburban Connecticut." Journal of Urban History 38.2 (2012): 205-224. online
"EDUCATION IN CONNECTICUT" Journal of Education 100#12 (Oct 1924), pp. 313-321 online summarizes education department of state governments and its many divisions and activities in 1920s.
Fowler, Herbert E. A Century of Teacher Education in Connecticut: The Story of the New Britain State Normal School and the Teachers College of Connecticut, 1849-1949 (1949)
Greenberg, Ivan. "Vocational education, work culture, and the children of immigrants in 1930s Bridgeport" Journal of Social History (2007) 41#1 pp.149-160.
Griffin Orwin B. Evolution of the Connecticut School System (Columbia Univ.: 1928). Scholarly overview of education up to 1910 online
Hodgkinson, Harold L. Connecticut: The State and Its Educational System. 1988online
Kelley, Brooks Mather. Yale: A History (Yale University Press, 1999), a major scholarly histoty of the entire university, not just the undergraduate college.
Lassonde, Stephen. Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven's Working Class, 1870-1940 (Yale UP 2005) a major scholarly study
ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1994. 9523192; PhD version online, 1994)
Liptak, Delores Ann. "European Immigrants and the Catholic Church in Connecticut. 1870-1920" (Ph.D. dissertation, U. of Connecticut; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1979. 7914170.).
McDermott, Kathryn A. Controlling Public Education: Localism versus Equity (1999), focus on New Haven and 3 suburbs; summary
Macomber, Donna, et al. "Education in juvenile detention facilities in the state of Connecticut: A glance at the system." Journal of correctional education 61.3 (2010): 223+ online.
Moss, Hilary J. “Education’s Inequity: Opposition to Black Higher Education in Antebellum Connecticut.” History of Education Quarterly 46#1 (2006), pp. 16–35. online
Monroe, Will S. The educational labors of Henry Barnard; a study in the history of American pedagogy (1893) online
Perlmann, Joel, Silvana R. Siddali, and Keith Whitescarver. "Literacy, Schooling and Teaching Among New England Women" History of Education Quarterly (1997), 37:117–139. online
Pierson, George Wilson. History of Yale College (2 vol 1952) scholarly history of the undergraduate college to 1937
Pratte, Richard Norman. "A History of Teacher Education in Connecticut from 1639 to 1939" (PhD dissertation, . University of Connecticut, 1967; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1967. 6801396).
Preston, Jo Anne. " 'He lives as a Master': Seventeenth-Century Masculinity, Gendered Teaching, and Careers of New England Schoolmasters." History of Education Quarterly 43.3 (2003): 350-371. online.
Scopino, Aldorigo Joseph, Jr. "The Social Gospel in Connecticut: Protestants, Catholics, Jews and social reform, 1893-1929" (PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1993. 9406063).
Smith, Wilson. , “The Teacher in Puritan Culture,” Harvard Educational Review 36 (Fall 1966): 394-411.
Steiner, Bernard Christian. The history of education in Connecticut (1893). online
Stewart, George. A History of Religious Education in Connecticut to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century (Yale University Press, 1924) a prize-winning history online
Vreeland, Herbert Harold, Jr. "Public secondary education in Connecticut in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with special reference to its support by private bequests and gifts" (PhD dissertation, Yale University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1941. 9128424).
Primary sources
Reviewed Works: Reports of the Board of Commissioners of Common Schools in Connecticut, together with the Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Board; The Connecticut Common School Journal...Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Education, [of Massachusetts] together with the Fifth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board. in The North American Review , Vol. 54, No. 115 (Apr., 1842), pp. 458-476 online; detailed summaries of reports on Connecticut and Massachusetts for 1839-1841; useful primary sources.
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