Compulsory education in America: Its history and determinants

Compulsory education laws are a fact of American life. Laws requiring compulsory attendance date to the middle of the seventeenth century. After the Revolutionary War, compulsory legislation waned, and private education abounded in America. The movement for public education began in the 1830s, and eventually turned into a renewed interest in compulsory attendance laws in the middle of the nineteenth century.; The movement advocating public education was not precipitated by a lack of education in America. Private schools catered to the needs of the populace, and numerous schools featuring differing methods, curricula, and time schedules existed. Therefore, the compulsory education movement was not predicated on a lack of attendance in schools. Attendance in schools was growing before the movement started.; In this dissertation, the methods of economic history and regression analysis are used to analyze the determinants of compulsory laws. In the ideological sphere, advocates of compulsory education sought to establish standards of American culture for the large number of immigrants that came to America during the nineteenth century. Many immigrants to America did not speak English, and brought the culture of their homelands and disparate religious beliefs with them. In the economic realm, the cost of educating a growing populace is higher in rural areas, and the cost is highly burdensome in areas where the number of children relative to the number of taxpaying adults is high.; A second determining factor is found in the Public Choice literature. Special interest groups seek legislation from government to benefit them at the general expense of society. In the case of education, the special interest group consists of educators and administrators, who gain by solidifying and increasing the demand for their services, as well as their power in constructing the nascent public education system.; History shows that organizations of teachers and administrators used their concentrated interests to persuade the public that compulsory education was necessary, and to persuade legislators that compulsory attendance would also benefit government. Regression analysis of the passage of compulsory attendance laws, State by State, identifies the formation of teacher associations as the strongest determining factor of these laws. Economic history and regression analysis both justify the thesis that the suppliers of education, not the demanders, led to the passage of compulsory education laws in the various American States.