ABSTRACT
In the 1840s, Massachusetts Secretary of Education Horace Mann championed the Prussian model of common schools which divided students according to age, taught those students basically the same content irrespective of their various aptitudes. University and college teacher education programs grew rapidly as states developed specific licensure requirements often based on college-level coursework. The county's board refused to appropriate any money to operate the schools, which chose to close rather than comply with the federal desegregation order. It was the only school district in the country to resort to such extreme measures. White students took advantage of state tuition vouchers to attend segregation academies, but black students had no education alternatives within the county. The civil rights movement and ensuing political activism of the 1960s and 1970s advanced freedom and ultimately changed America for the better. Those decades, however, did not advance education and learning for American schoolchildren.
