Significant Events in the Movement Toward Educational Equality
| 1693 | William and Mary College established with mission to educate Native Americans. |
| 1855 | Massachusetts outlawed the segregation of schools. |
| 1896 | Supreme Court finds “separate but equal” laws constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson. |
| 1905 | San Francisco schools are desegregated, allowing Chinese youth to attend regular high schools. |
| 1915 | Student strike in Puerto Rico supports instruction in Spanish. |
| 1918 | Texas makes it a criminal offense to use any language other than English for instruction. |
| 1928 | Meriam Report attacks government’s policies of removing American Indian students from their homes. |
| 1934 | Padin Reform restricts English instruction to high schools. |
| 1940 | Federal court requires equal salaries for African American and white teachers in Alston v. School Board of City of Norfolk. |
| 1947 | Federal appeals court strikes down segregated schooling for Mexican Americans in Méndez v. Westminster School Dist. |
| 1951 | Puerto Rico gains greater control of their school systems after being granted commonwealth status. |
| 1954 | Supreme Court makes school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, overturning Plessy. |
| 1956 | Virginia legislature calls for “massive resistance” to school desegregation. |
| 1958 | In Cooper v. Aaron the Supreme Court rules that fear of social unrest or violence does not excuse state governments from complying with Brown. |
| 1959 | Officials close public schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia, rather than integrate them. |
| 1964 | Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in school programs and activities that receive federal assistance. |
| Supreme Court orders Prince Edward Country, Virginia, to reopen its schools on a desegregated basis. | |
| 1965 | In Green v. County School Board of New Kent County the Supreme Court orders states to dismantle segregated facilities, staff, faculty, extracurricular activities, and transportation. |
| Congress passes the Handicapped Children’s Early Education Assistance Act. | |
| 1968 | Title VII of ESEA supports bilingual programs in Indian languages and English. |
| 1971 | In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education the court approves busing, magnet schools, compensatory education, and other tools as appropriate remedies to overcome the role of residential segregation in perpetuating racially segregated schools. |
| 1972 | Congress passes Title IX Education Amendment outlawing discrimination based on sex. |
| 1973 | Court rules that education is not a “fundamental right” and that the Constitution does not require equal education expenditures within a state in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. |
| 1974 | Supreme Court blocks metropolitan-wide desegregation plans to desegregate urban schools with high minority populations in Milliken v. Bradley. |
| In Lau v. Nichols the Supreme Court stipulates that special language programs are necessary to provide equal educational opportunity to students who do not understand English. | |
| 1975 | Congress passes Education for All Handicapped Children, Public Law 94-142. |
| Congress passes Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. | |
| 1978 | Supreme Court rules that race can be a factor in university admissions, but it cannot be the deciding factor in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. |
| 1982 | Supreme Court rejects tax exemptions for private religious schools that discriminate in Bob Jones University v. U.S. and Goldboro Christian Schools v. U.S. |
| 1986 | Federal court finds that a school district can be released from its desegregation plan and returned to local control after it meets the Green factors in Riddick v. School Board of the City of Norfolk, Virginia. |
| 1988 | Tribally Controlled Schools Act gives grants for tribal schools. |
| 1990 | Native American Languages Act promotes preservation of Native American languages. |
| 1996 | Federal appeals court prohibits the use of race in college and university admissions, ending affirmative action in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi in Hopwood v. Texas. |
| 2003 | Supreme Court upholds diversity as a rationale for affirmative action programs in higher education admissions but declares point systems inappropriate in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger. Federal district court case affirms the value of racial diversity and race-conscious student assignment plans in K–12 education in Lynn v. Comfort. |
| 2007 | Supreme Court strikes down the use of race in determining schools for students in Parents Involved in Community Schools Inc. v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County (Ky.) Board of Education. |
Boarding Schools
Still trying to convert American Indians, the 1867 Indian Peace Commission said that American Indians could become citizens if they gave up their native religions and ways of life. Again, education was to play an important role in this process. The charge to schools was to replace native languages with English, destroy tribal customs, and develop allegiance to the federal government. The new strategy called for boarding schools, requiring the removal of children from their families at an early age to isolate them from the language and customs of their parents and tribes. Between 1879 and 1905 a number of boarding schools were located far from the reservation. Thousands of young Native Americans from the Dakotas were boarded at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania (Glenn, 2011). Parents and tribes continually complained about the boarding schools, how their children were being treated, and how their native cultures were being denigrated.
Federal policies removed many American Indian children from their homes to attend boarding schools into the 20th century.
Children continued to be removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools at the time citizenship was granted to Native Americans in 1924. Not until then did concerned citizens seriously investigate the horrible conditions in these schools. Red Cross investigators found that children at the Rice Boarding School in Arizona were fed “bread, black coffee, and syrup for breakfast; bread and boiled potatoes for dinner; more bread and boiled potatoes for supper” (Szasz, 1974). The poor diet and overcrowded conditions contributed to the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and trachoma (Spring, 2011). Investigators found that boarding schools were supported by the work of students who attended classes half the day and worked the other half. The 1928 Meriam Report by Johns Hopkins University attacked the government’s policies of removing Native American children from their homes. Following the release of this report, the government began to support community day schools and native cultures (Spring, 2011).