Leicester Academy second academic building circa 1806
Leicester Academy was founded on March 23, 1784, when the Act of Incorporation for Leicester Academy was passed by the Massachusetts General Court as a private, state chartered institution. The charter issued to the Academy bears the bold signature of John Hancock, Governor of Massachusetts; and Samuel Adams, President of the Senate. The Academy opened on June 7, 1784 on land donated by Jewish merchant Aaron Lopez in Leicester, Massachusetts. Early trustees of the academy included Rufus Putnam (who was also one of its principal benefactors), Moses Gill, Levi Lincoln Sr., Joseph Allen, Seth Washburn, Samuel Baker, and several clergymen of the area. The purpose of Leicester Academy was to promote piety and virtue; and for the education of youth in the English, Latin, Greek, and French languages, together with writing, arithmetic and the art of speaking.
The first faculty consisted of two teachers—a principal and an English preceptor. When the school opened, there were three students, two from Sturbridge and one from Leicester. By the end of the school year, the number increased to twenty, and within two years, there were seventy-five students. Shortly after it was founded, Leicester Academy became coeducational, a very unusual situation during those times. Prior to his entering law school and election to Congress, William Whitney Rice served as an English preceptor at the Academy. Because of its excellent academics, Leicester Academy attracted students from all over Massachusetts and from several other states as well. Many of its early graduates became nationally known. Among them were Samuel Crafts, who was a Congressman and Governor of Vermont; Eli Whitney, the famous inventor; Navy SecretaryDavid Henshaw, and others representing every walk of life.[1]
In 1856, a compulsory education law was passed in Massachusetts, which caused Leicester and other surrounding towns to establish a public high school. This caused such a decrease in the academy's enrollment such that, in 1867, the town's high school was combined with Leicester Academy and town funds were used to support the institution.
At the fourth Constitutional Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1917, an anti-aid amendment prohibited public funding of any privately owned school or college. After this amendment was ratified by vote of the people, the trustees of Leicester Academy gave up the academy and leased a building to the Town of Leicester for the high school. In 1921, the Leicester Academy became the Leicester High School because of increased costs requiring financial assistance from the town of Leicester, thus making it a full public secondary school.[2]
Leicester is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts. The population was 11,087 at the 2020 United States Census.
Lawrence Academy at Groton is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational college preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts, in the United States. Founded in 1792 by a group of fifty residents of Groton and Pepperell, Massachusetts as Groton Academy, and chartered in 1793 by Governor John Hancock, Lawrence is the tenth oldest boarding school in the United States, and the third in Massachusetts, following Governor Dummer Academy (1763) and Phillips Academy at Andover (1778). The phrase on Lawrence Academy's seal is "Omnibus Lucet": in Latin, "Let light shine upon all."
Framingham High School, or FHS, is an urban/suburban public high school in the city of Framingham, Massachusetts, United States, located approximately 20 mi (32 km) west of Boston. Founded in 1792, as Framingham Academy, the high school is the result of the merger of Framingham North and Framingham South High Schools in 1991.
The Tufts University School of Medicine is the medical school of Tufts University, a private research university in Massachusetts. It was established in 1893 and is located on the university's health sciences campus in downtown Boston. It has clinical affiliations with numerous doctors and researchers in the United States and around the world, as well as with its affiliated hospitals in both Massachusetts, and Maine.
Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT) is a private university in Boston, Massachusetts. Wentworth was founded in 1904 and offers career-focused education through 22 bachelor's degree programs as well as 11 master's degrees.
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Dover-Sherborn High School, or DSHS, is a regional public high school in the town of Dover, Massachusetts, United States. It serves students from the towns of Dover and Sherborn, and is the senior school of the Dover-Sherborn Public School District, housing grades 9 through 12. It also hosts some METCO students. It is rated by Boston Magazine as the top High School in Massachusetts
Massachusetts shares with the five other New England states a governmental structure known as the New England town. Only the southeastern third of the state has functioning county governments; in western, central, and northeastern Massachusetts, traditional county-level government was eliminated in the late 1990s. Generally speaking, there are four kinds of public school districts in Massachusetts: local schools, regional schools, vocational/technical schools, and charter schools.
Becker College was a private college in Worcester and Leicester, Massachusetts. Becker College traced its history from the union of two Massachusetts educational institutions—one founded in 1784 and the other in 1887. The college closed at the end of the 2020–21 academic year.
William Penn Charter School is an independent school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1689 at the urging of William Penn as the "Public Grammar School" and chartered in 1689 to be operated by the "Overseers of the public School, founded by Charter in the town and county of Philadelphia" in Pennsylvania. It is the oldest Quaker school in the world, the oldest elementary school in Pennsylvania, and the fifth oldest elementary school in the United States following The Collegiate School, Boston Latin School (1635), Hartford Public High School (1638), and Roxbury Latin (1645).
The Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School is a public charter school in Devens, Massachusetts, United States that serves students in grades 7 to 12. It was established in 1995 under the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, and serves about 400 students from 40 surrounding towns in north central Massachusetts, including Ayer, Shirley, Littleton, Leominster, Lunenburg, and Worcester. As a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools, a leading organization for education reform, Parker is known for its nontraditional educational philosophy. The school takes its name from Francis Wayland Parker, a 19th-century pioneer of the progressive school movement.
The Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers is one of several Horace Mann Charter Schools in the Boston Public Schools system. On April 25, 2010, the school was renamed to honor the late senator, Edward M. Kennedy.
Hopkins Academy is the public middle and senior high school for the town of Hadley, Massachusetts, United States.
The Rocklin Unified School District is a California education district serving the Rocklin area. It consists of twelve elementary schools, two middle schools, two high schools, and the Rocklin Alternative Education Center.
Community Charter School of Cambridge is a charter school located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Located in the Kendall Square area near MIT, the school serves 360 students in grades 6-12. CCSC opened in September 2005.
The East Tennessee Female Institute was an all-female institution of higher learning that operated in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, from 1827 until 1911. Originally chartered as the Knoxville Female Academy, the school offered high school and college-level courses to the women of Knoxville and surrounding counties in the years before the University of Tennessee became coeducational. With the rise of free public education in Knoxville in the early 1900s, the institute, which was tuition-based, gradually declined.
Innovation Academy Charter School (IACS) is a small charter school in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, United States. The school was founded in 1996, under the name Chelmsford Public Charter School by a small group of parents from Chelmsford, Massachusetts. While initially a middle school serving only the town of Chelmsford, IACS has since expanded, establishing a high school and serving multiple towns within Massachusetts.
Charter schools operate with considerably more independence than traditional public schools. However, Massachusetts has two kinds of charter schools - Commonwealth Charters and Horace Mann Charters. Horace Mann charter schools differ from Commonwealth charter schools as they must be located within a school district. Both kinds of charter schools are free to structure their curriculum and school environment; for instance, many charter schools fit more instructional hours into a year by running longer school days and providing instruction on weekends and during the summer. Because few charter schools are unionized, they can hire and fire teachers and administrative staff without regard to the collectively bargained seniority and tenure provisions that constrain such decisions in most public schools. Although charter students made up only 2.9 percent of U.S. public school enrollment in 2008–2009, charter enrollment has grown rapidly and seems likely to accelerate in the near future. The growth of charter schools is an important component of the contemporary education reform movement's pursuit of accountability and flexibility in public education. Proponents see charter schools' freedom from regulation as a source of educational innovation, with the added benefit of providing a source of competition that may prompt innovation and improvement in the rest of the public system. At the same time, charter schools are controversial because, after a transition period in which the state provides subsidies, they receive a tuition payment for each enrolled student paid by students' home districts. In Massachusetts, tuition payments are determined largely by the average per-pupil expenditure in sending districts. Not surprisingly, therefore, public school districts are concerned about the revenue lost when their students enroll in charter schools.
The McCollom Institute, in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, until 1871 called the Appleton Academy, was a high school between 1850 and 1906, when it closed due to low numbers. It was owned and operated by the local trustees of a trust which continued for many years after the end of its school.
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