Photos by Shutterstock (money, gavel, ipad); Rtro/Alamy (Dakota mother and child); courtesy of Hennepin co. library (Lake Harriet); College of Saint Benedict (White Earth School); Minnesota Historical Society (Wendell Anderson, school patrol)
timeline-header
Photo by Rtro/Alamy
1800s
1800s
Well before first colonial contact, the Dakota and the Ojibwe establish customs of traditional education. Ignatia Broker, in her book Night Flying Woman, will later explain how Oona, her great-great-grandmother, learned from her elders how to read dreams and listen to nature.
Photo courtesy of Hennepin Co. Library
1835
1835
Rev. J. D. Stevens, with the help of brothers Gideon and Samuel Pond, builds the first schoolhouse in Minneapolis, which teaches Native, mixed-race, and white students on the shore of Lake Harriet, a short distance from Cloud Man’s Dakota village.
1847
Harriet Bishop begins teaching classes in a log cabin near the present-day intersection of Kellogg Boulevard and St. Peter Street in downtown St. Paul.
Photo by Shutterstock
1854
1854
Presbyterian minister Edward D. Neill is appointed the first territorial superintendent of schools with a meager annual salary of $100. He resigns two years later, and an exasperated Territorial Gov. Willis A. Gorman announces he can’t find anyone to take the office at $100 a year.
1861
The Minnesota Education Association, the teachers’ union, holds its first convention in Rochester on a muggy weekend in August. The long “MEA weekend” eventually moves to a much more temperate third weekend in October.
Photo courtesy of College of Saint Benedict
1871
1871
Guided by the federal government’s brutal policy of forced assimilation, White Earth Indian School, the state’s first Native American boarding school, opens. Several more institutions follow, all of them featuring harsh manual labor and cruel punishments.
Photo by Shutterstock
1872
1872
State superintendent Horace B. Wilson outlines the need for a comprehensive common education program. Six years later, the state legislature writes a law that recognizes the need for a “people’s college,” or a high school, with a board that would oversee the curriculum.
1919
With a new state law making elementary school compulsory for all children, Minnesota creates a department of education to manage all schools in the state.
Photo courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society
1921
1921
St. Paul Police’s Sgt. Frank Hetznecker and Cathedral School’s Sister Carmela Hanggi establish one of the first school safety patrols in the country. Hetznecker introduces the patrol’s trademark Sam Browne belts.
1946
Lettisha “Tish” Henderson and Mary McGough lead more than 1,100 of St. Paul’s teachers and principals on a walkout into freezing November temps. The nation’s first teachers’ strike begins.
1967
President Lyndon B. Johnson gives a speech in the White House Rose Garden honoring “a teacher who makes musicians out of football players” while awarding National Teacher of the Year to Owatonna music teacher Roger Tenney.
Photo courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society
1971
1971
Gov. Wendell Anderson hammers out a compromise with the Republican legislative majority to reform the collection of tax revenue and assure more equality between richer and poorer school districts. The plan will become known as the “Minnesota Miracle.”
1972
U.S. District Court Judge Earl Larson rules that Minneapolis Public Schools has “intentionally and deliberately” kept students segregated and orders them to integrate.
1987
Open enrollment is passed, enabling our 740,000 students to enroll in nearly any school in the state. The law is cited as a consumer-oriented approach to reform, but 99 percent of kids stay in their districts.
1992
1992
Minnesota becomes the birthplace of America’s charter school movement when City Academy in St. Paul becomes the first charter school in the country to open its doors.
2003
Federal education officials approve Minnesota’s plan for complying with President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, implementing a regime of testing meant to establish new academic standards.
Photo by Shutterstock
2020
2020
In mid-March, Gov. Tim Walz orders nearly 900,000 public and charter school students to stay home for distance learning due to the pandemic. By the end of the month, there are 576 COVID-19 cases in Minnesota—and growing exponentially.
2023
Gov. Walz signs a bill into law that will provide free breakfast and lunch to students at participating schools. At the cost of $400 million a year, the law makes Minnesota the fourth state in the country to adopt such a plan.
