• 1821: Boston opens the nation's first public high school.

• 1825: Illinois enacts the first public school tax.

• 1827: Massachusetts passes a law that requires towns of 500 families or more to establish high schools. Other states soon followed. By mid-century, public high schools absorb their Latin grammar school predecessors.

  Towns begin to establish separate secondary schools for girls.

• 1828: Noah Webster publishes An American Dictionary of the English Language. Congress adopts it as the national standard in 1831.

• 1829: The typewriter and the fountain pen are patented.

• 1833: Oberlin Collegiate Institute (now Oberlin College) in Ohio becomes the first coeducational college in the United States.

• 1837: The first state board of education is established in Massachusetts, and Horace Mann is its first secretary.

  Friedrich Froebel founds the first kindergarten in Blakenburg, Germany. It uses stories, play, crafts, and songs to stimulate children's imaginations and help develop motor skills.

• 1839: Horace Mann begins the nation's first teacher-training school in Massachusetts.

• 1850: The Industrial Revolution is in full swing. One-room schools in urban areas are on the decline as new schools begin to follow the assembly-line model - students move from class to class, teacher to teacher.

• 1852: Massachusetts passes the first compulsory school-attendance law in the U.S. By 1918, every state has a similar law.

• 1854: Ashmun Institute in Pennsylvania becomes the world's first liberal arts college for black males. In 1866, its name changes to Lincoln University, in honor of Abraham Lincoln.

• 1856: Wilberforce University is founded as the first black coeducational college.

• 1862: Congress passes the Morrill Act, or "Land Grant" Act, which gives vast areas of federal land to states. It requires them to sell the land and use the money to establish agricultural and technical colleges.

• 1873: The nation's first public kindergarten opens in St. Louis.

• 1874: A Michigan Supreme Court decision rules that local governments can use tax money to support elementary and secondary schools.

• 1881: Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute.

  Atlanta's Spelman College becomes the first liberal arts institution for black women in the U.S.

• 1887: The first public agricultural high school is established as an offshoot of the University of Minnesota, paving the way for other vocational schools.

• 1890: Congress passes the second Morrill Act, which withholds grants from states that deny admission to land grant schools based on race. A state can still receive money if it establishes a separate school for blacks, as many Southern states do.

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