Benjamin Franklin proposed the concept of the English grammar school as a replacement for the Latin grammar school (Gutek 156). The ideas of these Pennsylvania leaders did not come to fruition until after the Revolutionary period. Nevertheless, they helped to lay the "ground upon which our public school [system] was based" (Merryman 3).
The Revolutionary War caused an economic, political and social drain on the American colonies. During the war, most schools were closed and there was a "rapid decline in educational advantages and increasing illiteracy among the people" (Cubberly 83). After the war, a new nation was forged with the United States Constitution. The Constitution did not include any provisions for a national education policy at the time. However, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution indicated that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" (86). Thus, it was implied that the power to create educational policies was a matter to be left to the individual states (Gutek 154). Another important element in the Constitutional Bill of Rights was the provision of religious freedom to all American citizens. This broke the control of the churches over education as had been the case during the colonial period, and "laid the foundations upon which our systems of free, common, public, tax-supported, non-sectarian schools have since been built up" (Cubberly 87).
From the end of the Revolutionary War until about 1820, four different attitudes toward education developed in the individual states. Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Ohio were considered to be the "good school" states because they all established laws which provided for both elementary and higher education (Cubberly 97). These states were influenced by the strong support of education which had been characte...