ABSTRACT
Public education in the United States remained primarily unchanged throughout the First and Second World Wars. Each new evolution of the public-school systems in the United States—from the one-room schoolhouse to compulsory education to opening the doors of education for all citizens—has built upon the lessons of the ones before (both good and bad). Just after the start of the twentieth century, a new public-education ideology began to emerge that hinted that schools should be utilized as more than places to memorize facts. A new ideology began to take shape in the form of charter schools—publicly funded non-religious schools that were given the freedom to innovate outside the constraints of public-school regulations. Schools for black children throughout the country lacked resources and overcrowding flourished despite there being many less black children in school than white ones. However, the sense of unity in public education was all but destroyed in the 1950s and 1960s as issues of desegregation plagued the nation.
