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- In 1805, some of the City's leaders formed the Free School Society, to conduct schools for "all children who are the proper objects of a gratuitous education." This society, later known as the Public School Society, gradually expanded its system of schools and served as the major provider of public education in New York City through the 1840s.
considerthesourceny.org/using-primary-sources/researching-history-your-school/development-elementary-and-secondary-education-new-yorkThe Development of Elementary and Secondary Education in New York
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Oct 12, 2023 · Today, New York City’s education system is a bustling metropolis of learning, with millions of students attending public and private schools. We will examine the current structure,...
Oct 2, 2024 · The future of public education in New York has been a hot topic recently. How much funding should city schools get? Is there a role for charter schools? How should teachers be evaluated?
- Overview
- Growth of the metropolis
- Greater New York
Despite the loss of the national government, New York’s population skyrocketed in 1781–1800, and it became America’s largest city. Once again trade grew rapidly, and not even the War of 1812 hindered development; an auction system for surplus British merchandise dumped in New York solidified the city’s economic position after 1816. Even before the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New York enjoyed commercial primacy, but, as trade from the interior of the continent flowed onto its piers, the city also attained legal, insurance, and manufacturing primacy. Steamships, cheap transportation by rail and canal, abundant labour, and professional expertise made New York increasingly dominant. By the mid-1800s it handled more goods and people than all the other American ports combined. So secure was its position that in 1861 Mayor Fernando Wood suggested it become a “free city” rather than fight against the South. New York instead provided more soldiers to the Union than any other city and survived the turbulent, violent Draft Riot of 1863. Despite the financial panics between 1837 and 1893, the city remained an economic juggernaut, and by 1900 it was the busiest port and one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
Prosperity in Manhattan was not shared by everyone. Two centuries of domination by the merchant elite ended in the city as the Democratic Party gradually assumed control of political power. Tammany Hall, a fraternal organization that formed in 1789, had been transformed into a party vehicle by Aaron Burr before the early 19th century; the group supported such popular reforms as universal male suffrage, the end of imprisonment for indebtedness, and lien laws. Most important, Tammany opposed the anti-Catholic attitudes of the elite and ministered to the needs of impoverished immigrants entering the city. By the 1850s it was able to count on their votes, and the resulting power base lasted for more than a century.
During the American Civil War, the city was shaken by its worst riots. For four days in July 1863 many thousands of rioters, mostly impoverished Irish immigrants who were infuriated by the new draft law that permitted a draftee to buy his way out of service, swept the city, looting, burning, and killing. African Americans were hanged from the streetlights and trees. Warships trained guns on the city, as rioters clashed repeatedly with the police, national guardsmen, and the army. At least 2,000 people were killed and thousands more wounded, and all business halted in the face of the armed conflict.
After the war there was a steady clamour in the city for a merger with Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. The strongest resistance came from Brooklyn, a city in its own right; with good reason it feared that the enormous corruption so evident in Tammany Hall under the first recognized political “boss,” William Magear Tweed—who never rose higher in the city hierarchy than supervisor but who controlled mayors, governors, and legislatures—and later Richard Croker, would be extended to Brooklyn through any consolidation. “Tweed ring” corruption siphoned tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars into private hands until, in 1871, a coalition of reformers overthrew the boss. Tweed’s successor as county leader, John Kelly, was a more astute politician, who transformed the undisciplined hordes of Tammany into an army. Regimentation down to the block level replaced greed as a ruling party principle, although the organization always remained a source of food, legal help, and jobs for its faithful supporters. So long as corruption was held in check, the Tammany Tiger could happily chant, “To hell with reform.”
Despite the loss of the national government, New York’s population skyrocketed in 1781–1800, and it became America’s largest city. Once again trade grew rapidly, and not even the War of 1812 hindered development; an auction system for surplus British merchandise dumped in New York solidified the city’s economic position after 1816. Even before the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New York enjoyed commercial primacy, but, as trade from the interior of the continent flowed onto its piers, the city also attained legal, insurance, and manufacturing primacy. Steamships, cheap transportation by rail and canal, abundant labour, and professional expertise made New York increasingly dominant. By the mid-1800s it handled more goods and people than all the other American ports combined. So secure was its position that in 1861 Mayor Fernando Wood suggested it become a “free city” rather than fight against the South. New York instead provided more soldiers to the Union than any other city and survived the turbulent, violent Draft Riot of 1863. Despite the financial panics between 1837 and 1893, the city remained an economic juggernaut, and by 1900 it was the busiest port and one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
Prosperity in Manhattan was not shared by everyone. Two centuries of domination by the merchant elite ended in the city as the Democratic Party gradually assumed control of political power. Tammany Hall, a fraternal organization that formed in 1789, had been transformed into a party vehicle by Aaron Burr before the early 19th century; the group supported such popular reforms as universal male suffrage, the end of imprisonment for indebtedness, and lien laws. Most important, Tammany opposed the anti-Catholic attitudes of the elite and ministered to the needs of impoverished immigrants entering the city. By the 1850s it was able to count on their votes, and the resulting power base lasted for more than a century.
During the American Civil War, the city was shaken by its worst riots. For four days in July 1863 many thousands of rioters, mostly impoverished Irish immigrants who were infuriated by the new draft law that permitted a draftee to buy his way out of service, swept the city, looting, burning, and killing. African Americans were hanged from the streetlights and trees. Warships trained guns on the city, as rioters clashed repeatedly with the police, national guardsmen, and the army. At least 2,000 people were killed and thousands more wounded, and all business halted in the face of the armed conflict.
After the war there was a steady clamour in the city for a merger with Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. The strongest resistance came from Brooklyn, a city in its own right; with good reason it feared that the enormous corruption so evident in Tammany Hall under the first recognized political “boss,” William Magear Tweed—who never rose higher in the city hierarchy than supervisor but who controlled mayors, governors, and legislatures—and later Richard Croker, would be extended to Brooklyn through any consolidation. “Tweed ring” corruption siphoned tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars into private hands until, in 1871, a coalition of reformers overthrew the boss. Tweed’s successor as county leader, John Kelly, was a more astute politician, who transformed the undisciplined hordes of Tammany into an army. Regimentation down to the block level replaced greed as a ruling party principle, although the organization always remained a source of food, legal help, and jobs for its faithful supporters. So long as corruption was held in check, the Tammany Tiger could happily chant, “To hell with reform.”
The Democratic machine reigned, its excesses became apparent, reformers arose and were temporarily triumphant, and then voters restored a chastened Tammany to power. A generation after Tweed fell, the Croker regime was successfully challenged by reformers who elected Mayor William Strong. Once consolidation won voter support, the addition of nearly 1.5 million people to the city and the opportunity to expand Tammany’s patronage base lured Croker back to Manhattan. After January 1, 1898, the machine ruled Greater New York, its power constantly enhanced by new waves of arriving immigrants. As always, the machine added to urban infrastructure: the subways with their fixed five-cent fare, new bridges, and an expanded park system brought the boroughs together and added to its authority. The booming garment industry, ceaseless construction, and extensive manufacturing provided jobs for the strong, while an excellent educational system trained millions for the white-collar and civil-service jobs that would become increasingly preponderant after the mid-20th century. In the “good years” before World War I and in the “Roaring Twenties” that followed the war, Tammany, under the leadership of Charles Murphy, generally held sway.
In the mid-1920s and early 1930s a series of municipal scandals, which led to another wave of reform, were perhaps the result of Mayor James Walker. A playboy addicted to the wonders of city nightlife, Walker left the mechanics of governing to Tammany. Despite the ravages of the Great Depression and the hardships of World War II, Fiorello La Guardia’s administration represented a high point in the city’s history. Enormous amounts of New Deal funding enabled the city to complete vast construction and other projects; the Tammany Tiger was caged, the government was centralized and modernized, and the subway system was completed and unified. La Guardia dominated the news, cracked down on crime, and even read comic strips to children during a newspaper strike. Only when he chose to retire did Tammany regain control.
Postwar New York experienced an era in which alarming structural problems in urban society became ever more apparent. New York port lost its dominance, manufacturing began its long decline, massive city debt made it increasingly difficult to fund expensive services, and levels of municipal bureaucracy proliferated. In the 1950s Robert Wagner initiated major housing programs and granted collective bargaining rights to city unions but was often accused of ignoring long-term problems. Ultimately, he found it expedient to publicly break with a Tammany Hall that had twice gotten him elected. Wagner destroyed the power of the machine and its last boss, Carmine De Sapio. He was able to install his own Manhattan county leader and undermine Tammany’s influence in the outer boroughs, but he did little to deal with the looming problems. Wagner prepared the electorate for another reform administration, as Republican-Liberal candidate John Lindsay unexpectedly won election in 1965.
During Lindsay’s two terms, New York’s downward spiral accelerated as he attempted to impose administrative order. A massive transit strike coincided with his inauguration and was settled only with the first of several very generous union contracts. Lindsay’s attempt to further undermine the power of the machine by merging departments and creating “superagencies” only added new levels of bureaucratic structure. His efforts to decentralize the school system and broaden minority participation in government led to greater ethnic animosity. Above all, he failed to gain control of a soaring municipal budget, even though he increased taxes. Denied renomination in 1969 by outraged Republicans, Lindsay won reelection as a Liberal-Independent candidate, because the old Democratic machine had been gutted. His subsequent feud with a Republican governor led him to become a Democrat, but he had become a leader without followers. During his last years in office, the metropolis continued to deteriorate financially.
The election of Abraham Beame in 1973 was the last gasp of old-style politics in New York. Beame was a product of the organization, and as the first Jewish mayor he represented the ethnic succession to power that Irish and Italians had previously achieved. Conditions had changed, and Beame’s term was dominated by fiscal disaster. In every way but formally the city went bankrupt, and in 1975 budgetary control was assumed by state agencies. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission later condemned Beame’s fiscal policies. Much of the country, always suspicious of New York’s foreignness and arrogance, cheered as the Big Apple was shown to be full of worms. Many believed it would be years before it could recover from the debacle.
In the late 1970s Edward Koch restored fiscal health to the city in a single term. By working closely with state officials, rigorously controlling expenditures, and instituting a modern accounting system, Koch once again marketed city notes. His extraordinary feat won him nomination by both major parties in 1981, a unique accomplishment but also clear proof that politics in the metropolis had changed. Democratic nominations were soon negotiated by five relatively equal borough organizations that had to be media-friendly. The Republicans were so powerless that they amassed fewer votes than the Liberal Party in the election of 1985. Koch was outspoken, intolerant of opposition, frequently capricious, and prone to see himself as above politics. Fittingly, his third term became a public relations nightmare when some of his important appointees and elected Democrats were involved in municipal scandals. His attempt to become the first four-term mayor ended when he lost the Democratic primary to David Dinkins, the borough president of Manhattan. Some saw Dinkins, an African American, as fulfilling the theme of ethnic succession, but he proved to be a poor administrator and was so dependent on African American votes that he alienated other parts of the coalition that elected him. Both ethnic tensions and crime statistics increased during his term, and he became the first Black mayor of a major U.S. city to be denied reelection.
- George Lankevich
The outcome was the creation, in New York City, of a Board of Education to operate a system of "ward" schools, more nearly comparable to the district schools of the rural towns. In effect, public education had become defined as schooling provided by a governmental agency under public control.
Jan 20, 2015 · The school system in New York City was governed by a government-run monopoly, dominated by unions and political interests. There was little accountability to hold anyone responsible for poor results. There was little information or data with which to manage the system.
- Harry A. Patrinos
New York City's public school system, operated by the New York City Department of Education, is the largest in the world. More than 1.1 million students are taught in more than 1,700 public schools with a budget of nearly $25 billion.
The city’s dramatic population growth and ethnic transformation (especially the huge influx of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe) combined with pressure to increase college enrollments pushed the city’s Board of Higher Education (established in 1926) to expand the municipal system.
