The Jeffersonian Republican Era: Blazing a Trail

One major cause for institutional change is a “rupture” that destabilizes inherited assumptions, practices, and institutions. A historically significant rupture, William Sewell writes, “touches off a chain of occurrences that durably transform previous structures and practices.”^{Footnote 10} The common schools emerged from the most dramatic kind of political rupture: revolution. In the decades following the American Revolution, leaders around the nation argued that the new country needed an educated citizenry.

Ohio’s leaders echoed their national counterparts. Ohio’s first governor, Edward Tiffin, stated in 1804 that although republican government is “instituted for the benefit of the governed, yet, if they have not the means of acquiring a knowledge of their rights, they will never feel the value, and, consequently, not be careful to guard against their invasion.” In 1810, Governor Return Meigs argued that “culture of the understanding is the preserver of republican principles.”^{Footnote 11}

For early leaders, public schools did not need to be funded by direct taxation and free. Instead, their meaning was closer to English usage: an institution open to all persons. A public school, like a public house, could charge for services. Yet republican principles convinced leaders to offer assistance to poor and orphan children.^{Footnote 12}

Ohio’s 1802 constitution reflected these civic ideals by mandating that any school, academy, college, or university receiving a state or federal subsidy be public: “no law shall be passed to prevent the poor . . . from an equal participation.”^{Footnote 13} At the bidding of Ohio’s new government, Congress in 1803 set aside the sixteenth section of every township in the federally controlled Military District and Virginia Reservation, donated land for residents in Ohio’s Connecticut Reserve, and committed revenue from lands acquired from Native Americans for schools. Some details changed over time, but the parameters were set: revenue from leasing or selling land would subsidize schools, academies, and colleges.^{Footnote 14} Importantly, managing the lands and revenue required constant effort, ensuring that legislators would have education before them constantly.^{Footnote 15}

To promote education for higher-level students, in 1817 Ohio passed a general incorporation law for academies and libraries.^{Footnote 16} This was standard practice. Lacking the capacity to run their own schools (or build their own turnpikes and bridges), states offered the privileges of incorporation in return for carrying out what state leaders considered the common good.^{Footnote 17}

Ohio leaders believed that a republic must provide basic education to all citizens. The question was how. Here other states offered guidance. Massachusetts and New York had also lacked internal capacity. Rather than build a public school system from the top down, they developed capacity at the local level. They used limited state funds as a carrot to encourage communities to organize schools, to develop the administrative capacity to oversee them, and to collect property taxes to fund them.

In 1817, Governor Thomas Worthington recommended establishing an education board of one person from each judicial circuit to “collect such information, relative to the school funds of the State, and who shall lay before the next Legislature such a system for establishing elementary schools throughout the State.”^{Footnote 18} Although nothing came of this proposal, it expressed leaders’ desire to determine the effectiveness of their investments.

The results were not promising. In December 1820, in the midst of the downturn following the Panic of 1819, Governor Ethan Brown noted that school land revenue had produced “no very material advantage in the dissemination of instruction.” Brown proffered two reasons: either land was so cheap that rents were low, or the state had not been charging enough. It was clear that Ohio must do more.^{Footnote 19} Brown’s concerns helped lead to 1821 legislation creating a mechanism for communities to establish elementary schools and receive state funding. The law permitted townships to divide into school districts and to tax property to support schools and to erect schoolhouses. Householders in every district would elect a three-person school committee and a tax collector and levy money to support poor children.^{Footnote 20}

The law established the precedent of combining state and local funds with local control. It moved beyond the constitution’s prohibition of discriminating against poor children by adding a positive obligation to serve the general public. This demonstrates the strength of republican civic ideals. Yet observers may not have recognized the policy’s path-setting nature, since the law seemed to fit existing paradigms of local control. Only in time would the state’s new direction become apparent

The Ohio Canal Era and State Activism

The story of Ohio’s schools might have been different had Ohio not decided to construct the Ohio Canal, setting a precedent for public works and creating a political environment friendly to increased public spending.

The 1824 election cleared the space for renewed state activity. At the national level, Ohioans chose Henry Clay over Andrew Jackson. At the state level, they debated state support for internal improvements, public schools, and tax system revisions. After several years of economic hardship and budget challenges, Ohioans elected legislators committed to an active state.^{Footnote 21} The biggest task was constructing the Ohio Canal between the Ohio River and Lake Erie. With New York building the Erie Canal, Ohio’s leaders recognized that a canal from the Ohio River on the state’s southern border to Lake Erie would allow Ohioans to ship goods from their farms all the way to New York City.^{Footnote 22}

The state’s Jeffersonian heritage shaped legislators’ approach. Although Ohio’s government had had little prior experience with such large projects, legislators decided to build it themselves rather than rely on corporations. Although Jeffersonians tended to resist expanding state power, they feared corporate monopolies even more. Ohio’s leaders wanted their canal run for public benefit rather than private profit. Blaming the Bank of the United States’ fiscal policies and the failure of many state banks for economic distress, Jeffersonian leaders questioned whether the public good was really promoted by profit-minded corporations. Thus, a space was opened for the state to build its own canal system.^{Footnote 23}

When the bill came before the legislature in 1824, legislators did not question whether the state should do the work; instead, opponents, acting from local interests, opposed funding that would not directly benefit their counties.^{Footnote 24} The canal was to be built on borrowed money and run with toll revenue. To build public support, canal funding was linked to tax revisions. First, lands were to be assessed ad volorem, so landowners along the canal, whose property would rise in value, contributed more to the state’s general fund. Second, the legislation authorized a special canal tax and, if necessary, other revenues for a sinking fund to pay principal on the canal debt.^{Footnote 25}

The canal built momentum for the idea that the state could, through its own institutions, promote Ohio’s welfare. These hopes bled into education, but other factors were also at play. When Governor Brown resigned in 1822 to become a U.S. senator, the speaker of the state senate, Allen Trimble, a longtime advocate of public education, became governor.^{Footnote 26} The challenge of increasing revenue from school lands remained pressing, especially during a depression. The House appointed a committee to report on school conditions and school lands in late 1821, leading to the appointment of a seven-member commission, one for each of the land grants that were, in theory, to subsidize education. The commission proposed a system with no taxation but better management of school lands, but the 1823 legislature declined to act.^{Footnote 27}

The existence of school lands generated positive feedback. The state had to manage the lands and distribute the proceeds and legislators were disappointed with the results. A growing consensus emerged that the state would do better by selling the lands and establishing a permanent fund, using its interest to subsidize schools. In February 1824, the Ohio Senate and House wrote a joint memorial to Congress asking for authority to sell school lands and set up a fund. After Congress approved the request, Ohio’s legislature in 1827 gave townships the discretion to sell school lands and create income-generating school funds.^{Footnote 28}

With financial concerns in mind, and the success of the canal legislation, education was bolstered further by legislators’ need to appease voters in areas that would not benefit directly from the canal. Thus legislators approved a statewide school property tax that would redistribute rising wealth from areas near the canal to poorer areas.^{Footnote 29}

A new 1825 public school law established a statewide property tax of 1/20 of 1 percent of county taxes for schools. In theory, townships had to lay out districts within five years to receive state money. As in 1821, householders in each district elected three directors to build and maintain schools. To improve quality, the state required teachers to be certified by examiners appointed by the Court of Common Pleas.^{Footnote 30} The goal was to complete the republican aspiration of an educated citizenry. What was new was the effort, tepid as it was, to mandate local action.

The 1825 law did not reflect political consensus but, over time, helped generate it. In fact, many Ohioans opposed it. Various groups of Ohioans continued to believe that education was primarily a parental responsibility. Thomas Morris, who had been a prominent politician in Clermont County, was defeated for reelection in 1823 for supporting public schools. In rural areas, some politicians ran “to oppose the system of Education” recently passed.^{Footnote 31} It is also not clear how effective the 1825 bill was, since, over the next fifteen years, new laws consistently urged townships to form districts. Yet, in 1837, Ohio’s first state superintendent for common schools concluded that the law was largely followed.^{Footnote 32}

In the late 1820s, however, elections became increasingly partisan. As the Jacksonian opposition to National Republicanism gained strength, parties mobilized over national and state issues. While local legislative districts may have been stable, gubernatorial and presidential elections were often decided by close margins. The governor and legislature shifted between Democratic and National Republican control, and the parties offered divergent visions of political economy.^{Footnote 33} By the 1830s, Jacksonians opposed an active state, banks, and other corporations; the new Whig party favored them. Yet common schools continued to develop through all these twists and turns and, despite some setbacks, proved remarkably durable. The question is why, and the answer relates to path dependence. By the 1830s the school system had developed factors necessary for positive feedback: new institutions and norms, new stakeholders, and sufficient investment to make policy reversal costly.

Path Dependence and the Common Schools in the Jacksonian Era

Early Ohioans considered education a local concern and a parental obligation.^{Footnote 34} Before common schools, Americans established rural district schools that employed a single teacher, often a recent college graduate, for a few months. Parents paid tuition, although poor children were entitled to attend. Ohio’s early schools were roughly built log structures rather than the frame or brick buildings that, by the 1850s, were financed by public dollars. Since education was voluntary, attendance was sporadic; nonetheless, many children received a basic education.^{Footnote 35} Some students pursued a more advanced education, either through the teacher or a local minister or at incorporated academies.^{Footnote 36}

School attendance began to rise well before the emergence of common schools, as republican ideals and parental hopes spurred greater enrollment. Moreover, many migrants moving to Ohio would have attended a district school or academy back east and sought the same for their children.^{Footnote 37}

Although schooling was already on the rise, the development of common schools increased demand for education. New cultural norms stressed children’s malleable nature and the importance of proper moral and intellectual guidance.^{Footnote 38} Schools came to be seen as important institutions for children’s socialization and development.^{Footnote 39} Common school reformers also increased average daily attendance, the length of the school year, and offered different pedagogy and curriculum.^{Footnote 40} Although numbers before the 1830s are scarce, as of 1837 it was estimated that Ohio’s schools enrolled about 150,000 students.^{Footnote 41} As Ohioans experienced a common school education, more came to believe not only that schooling was normative but also that the kind of schooling offered mattered.^{Footnote 42} Now, not attending became an issue for parents and legislators.

By the 1830s, reformers emphasized universal education’s benefits. In addition to preparing citizens, reformers thought public education could liberate individuals. Republicanism merged with new ideas about moral and spiritual improvement.^{Footnote 43} Equally important were new ideas about the state, also inspired by transatlantic currents.^{Footnote 44} A speaker before Cincinnati’s College of Teachers in 1833 noted that in the current century “more has been done by governments and individuals to diffuse the benefits of education among the great mass of the people.”^{Footnote 45} In his famous 1837 Report on Elementary Public Instruction, delivered to the Ohio legislature at its urging, Calvin Stowe put it simply: “If it can be done in Europe, I believe it can be done in the United States: if it can be done in Prussia, I know it can be done in Ohio.”^{Footnote 46}

Concerns about immigration and social disorder also shaped the policy agenda.^{Footnote 47} In his Plea for the West, the Rev. Lyman Beecher worried that unless Protestants invested in educational institutions, the west would become a home for Catholicism,^{Footnote 48} concerns echoed by his daughter Catharine Beecher.^{Footnote 49} An 1834 report by the College of Teachers worried that the “most disastrous consequences would result from the ignorance and misrule of a foreign immigration, if the guardians of education and the teachers of science and morals do not act in concert, and carry through the length and breadth of the land, the most improved and able methods of imparting instruction to the rising generation.”^{Footnote 50} Cincinnati’s Superintendent of Common Schools Nathan Guilford commented in 1852 that given immigrants’ diversity, “there is but one remedy to guard us against the anarchy and mis-government to which such a chaotic mass of ignorance, prejudice, and foreign habits and opinions, must necessarily lead. We must educate them all!”^{Footnote 51}

Policymakers could and did respond in various ways to these concerns, from encouraging voluntary reform associations to funding workhouses and penitentiaries. But when it came to education, the state’s response reinforced the existing path. While reformers reached out to immigrant children—such as German children in Cincinnati—they did not establish immigrant or poor schools but expanded access to common schools. Because the public had come to expect schools for their children, and because reformers believed that all Americans benefited from education, the perceived immigration crisis affirmed the importance of schools.

In addition to new norms and expectations among parents, the common schools were bolstered by new stakeholders. In almost every community, local citizens took responsibility for running schools by joining school boards. As these citizens invested their time and energy, they often became schools’ most vocal advocates. In addition, the very existence of local officials, and the schools that they financed and the schoolhouses that they built, made it difficult to turn back the clock. Instead, local officials promoted gaining better, more consistent funding.^{Footnote 52}

The roots of local stakeholders dates to 1803, when the legislature authorized the governor to appoint agents to lease the state’s public lands for revenue to aid poor students.^{Footnote 53} Changes in 1806 permitted any township with twenty qualified electors to elect three trustees and a treasurer to act as a “body politic” to oversee Section 16 lands. The trustees could create districts. While the act did not accomplish much, it did ensure that at least some citizens in every community were responsible for education.^{Footnote 54} An 1814 law mandated that trustees create districts and, in districts with established schools, procure a certified list of pupils taught and for how long; however, it provided no penalty for noncompliance.^{Footnote 55}

The real path setter was the 1821 law authorizing districts to tax for schools. In each district, householders would elect a three-person school committee and a collector to collect rates (tuition), schoolhouse taxes (if authorized by two-thirds of householders), and money levied for poor students. The committee would appoint a clerk for record keeping. The law authorized voters to build schoolhouses.^{Footnote 56} In 1825, the state mandated towns to form districts and to assess property taxes of one-half mill to support common schools.^{Footnote 57} A supplementary act established the office of school district treasurer and authorized school directors to levy up to $300 to erect schoolhouses with the consent of three-fifths of householders at a meeting.^{Footnote 58} Now that the state had invested in schoolhouses and had mandated the formation of districts, in 1829 it required a minimum school year of three months.^{Footnote 59}

As more and more communities organized districts, erected schoolhouses, received state aid, elected local officials, and sent their children to schools, they became increasingly committed to them—and local officials became both responsible for and advocates of them. In 1838, the legislature designated the county auditor the county superintendent of schools to report to the state superintendent, thus ensuring a local point person.^{Footnote 60} State and local leaders alike learned educational needs from officials committed to developing the school system.

Cincinnati, where public school development began well before the city’s elite became concerned with promoting social stability in a city of “strangers,” is a case in point.^{Footnote 61} The existence of the school board helped further common schools. Although Cincinnati boasted such prominent education boosters as Catharine Beecher, Lyman Beecher, Samuel Galloway, Samuel Lewis, William H. McGuffey, and Calvin Stowe, common schools were not easily embraced. Cincinnati’s larger taxpayers, private schools, and even parents of poor children resisted school taxation. Yet Nathan Guilford’s leadership led, in 1828, to new legislation mandating free schools in the city.^{Footnote 62}

In 1829, Cincinnati’s charter was amended to enable school taxation. The City Council approved two taxes, one for school expenses and another to build schoolhouses. The council established the Board of Trustees and Visitors to administer the system, and a Board of Examiners and Inspectors, which reported to the trustees, to ensure quality teachers and programs. Guilford became the Trustees’ first chairman. The board’s early members included professionals, ministers, and former schoolmasters.^{Footnote 63}

1834 legislation “authorized and required” Cincinnati “to provide for the support of the common schools” by dividing the city into two districts per ward; to purchase or receive as donation land; and to build a schoolhouse in each district. Ward voters would elect a trustee/visitor for the schools, who together would become the “trustees and visitors of common schools in Cincinnati.” They would employ teachers, superintend schools, and ensure that at least one school was open in each ward for six months. Teachers would keep account of whom they taught and report to the trustees. The City Council would appoint a seven-person board of examiners and inspectors to certify teachers and to evaluate student improvement and report to the council. It was also given the “duty” to levy a tax of one mill upon the dollar on all property to pay for the purchase of land and erection of schoolhouses, and to levy a one mill tax additional to state school taxes “to defray the expenses of teachers and fuel for schools.”

In 1837, the number of trustees elected was raised to two per ward.^{Footnote 64} The trustees used their platform to encourage the system’s development, to maintain and to increase tax funding, and to promote the curriculum and teachers that they believed served the public welfare. Their annual reports demonstrate that the trustees, which began as a small, voluntary body, slowly learned that they could, given sufficient resources, run a larger system. This required the Board of Trustees to develop its own capacity, and the trustees consistently returned to council for support. Thus, in their fourth report, the trustees asked the city to increase their membership, change term dates, and prevent complete annual turnover to ensure continuity.^{Footnote 65}

The following year, the trustees noted that the Board of Examiners and Inspectors had not reported on discipline and course of instruction for many years, despite legal obligations. The trustees did not blame the board, but rather saw the problem as one of capacity. Composed of “men of business,” the Examiners and Inspectors simply could not afford to spend a month undertaking work “where no compensation is given for their services.” Even the trustees “have no salaries.” Although they did not yet call for salaried posts, the trustees made clear to the council that a volunteer board could not accomplish all necessary tasks. For the moment, they urged a more effective sharing of the burden among Cincinnati’s “literary gentlemen.”^{Footnote 66}

By 1845, the board had clearly decided that one-year terms were too short—that running complex systems required consistency and experience. They thus asked and received from the legislature permission to shift to staggered two-year terms so that half the board would always be veterans. This demonstrates the increasing recognition that government agencies need to be able to function autonomously.^{Footnote 67}

Official reports themselves became longer, offering more statistics and information and reports from subcommittees, demonstrating the system’s increasing complexity and the trustees’ growing ability to administer it. From a small, cohesive volunteer body, the trustees had developed the administrative skills to collect data, manage budgets, and parcel out work.

The reports also communicated schools’ needs. This created positive feedback, as early investments led the trustees to approach the council with new ideas and needs, further reinforcing the council’s investment in schools. The trustees may well have understood this process; one of their first acts was to build a schoolhouse that, one scholar notes, was designed to be “something tangible, visible to city residents.” A schoolhouse implied “security and permanence.”^{Footnote 68} Once the City authorized the trustees to build and maintain schoolhouses, the City could not simply cut off funding. By 1839, of a total of $25,298 in income, the board received $17,417 from taxes.^{Footnote 69}

The trustees did not just report. They framed their reports to encourage support, balancing accomplishments, which justified past spending, with current needs, to justify more investment. In their 1833 report, they praised the “symptoms of improvement” in citizens’ support for schools, but quickly added that “they have not yet realized all the anticipations of their enlightened and patriotic founders.” Despite challenges, the trustees were confident of progress, that the schools were “by no means in a condition to warrant discouragement or doubt as to their final destiny.”^{Footnote 70} This balance between demonstrating success and proving need was constant. In 1846 the trustees noted, “excellent, however, as is the condition of our Common Schools, we would not be understood as expressing an opinion that they are incapable of further improvement.”^{Footnote 71}

Increased capacity, a funding feedback loop, and boosterism helped develop the system. Thus, when the legislature in its 1833–34 session considered lowering the taxes that the city could raise, the trustees testified about how “destructive” such a measure would be for students. The fact that they were called in suggests that the legislators had to recognize the Board of Trustees’ voice. Moreover, this episode shows the relationship between early investments and subsequent policy. The trustees stated that reducing tuition funding “when the citizens have invested in school lots and houses about $100,000” would waste earlier investments.^{Footnote 72} Similarly, during the 1846–47 school year, the legislature reduced the authorized school taxes, but upon protest from the school board, increased them again.^{Footnote 73}

The trustees served more students, and spent more money, over time. Between 1830 and 1840, their annual income increased from $7,167 to $25,245. Annual expenditures increased from $8,115 to $20,175. The number of enrolled students increased from 2,103 to 6,081.^{Footnote 74} By 1850 the trustees reported tuition income of $92,226, of which $86,251 came from taxation. That year the trustees spent $46,834 on tuition and $16,202 on maintaining and furnishing buildings.^{Footnote 75} Every year, more stakeholders emerged, and more money was invested in maintaining and/or improving existing arrangements.

While City Council did not provide everything the board sought, it increasingly relied on it, furthering the board’s autonomy. The council’s own Committee on Common Schools, which managed relations with the board, often deferred to the board.^{Footnote 76} As school officials became the primary information conduit, they tailored information to reinforce existing policies.

By 1847, the trustees concluded that their work had become too complex for elected volunteers and pushed for a city superintendent.^{Footnote 77} The council was noncommittal; its school committee tersely stated that such a change required “mature deliberation” and that a person must be chosen who would not abuse the power.^{Footnote 78} The trustees did not drop the issue, seeing a need to increase capacity. In 1848, they noted that their “sister states” have superintendents.^{Footnote 79} Their vision reflected a larger administrative revolution in which cities established agencies to carry out new functions.

The council authorized the trustees to appoint a superintendent in April 1850.^{Footnote 80} The decision might reflect the then-Whig council’s fear of losing the elections to Democrats.^{Footnote 81} By 1852, the trustees had come to rely on an appointed superintendent and had standing committees on school funds and taxes, textbooks, German English schools, course of study, statistics and district boundaries, vocal music, buildings and repairs, the school in the Cincinnati orphan asylum, fuel, stoves, library, night schools, blank forms, and discipline.^{Footnote 82}

In Cincinnati, the board of education’s existence shaped how the City Council and the state responded to common schools’ needs. The board provided a voice for schools, and over time increased its own capacity to fund and to manage schools. The council was quite effective, increasing per student spending by 45 percent between 1834 and 1860, even as the number of students increased.^{Footnote 83}

Cincinnati reveals early iterations of what Daniel Carpenter has called “bureaucratic autonomy.” Local and state officials developed their own networks and became, for policymakers, a chief source of information. The school board seems to meet the three conditions that Carpenter associates with bureaucratic autonomy: (1) that agencies be “politically differentiated” from other state agents; (2) that agencies experience “the development of unique organizational capacities”; and (3) “political legitimacy” stemming from reputation. In short, to Carpenter, bureaucratic autonomy exists when a government agency “can change the agendas and preferences of politicians and the organized public.”^{Footnote 84} This characterized Cincinnati, where, one writer complained in the Daily Cincinnati Commercial in 1851, the council “has never taken much interest in the matter [of education], merely vindicating their authority in the premises of nominal action, permitting the Board of Visitors and Trustees to manage in their own way.”^{Footnote 85}

While rural areas did not have the resources of a city like Cincinnati, there, too, local leaders stepped forward to support public education. While many rural citizens opposed particular education reforms, farmers were not united. Especially in areas where farming was more commercial, many farmers enrolled their children at high rates. These same farmers volunteered for service on school boards. Thus, if on a smaller scale, local investments of money, time, and energy helped produce momentum for schools.^{Footnote 86} The laws of 1821, 1825, and 1829 had mandated the division of townships into districts and a minimum school term. Most communities complied. In 1837, Samuel Lewis, first state superintendent, counted 7,748 organized districts, an average of seven per township.^{Footnote 87}

In addition to school officials, teachers served as important stakeholder advocates. As the number of teachers expanded and more reformers and teachers sought to make teaching a respectable, permanent profession, teachers formed associations to promote their interests and to improve education. Teachers were both committed to and the beneficiaries of the spread of common schools. In 1829, several teachers met in Cincinnati to form the Western Literary Institute and Board of Education. In 1831, following several years of monthly meetings, the institution was reorganized as the College of Teachers and called for an October 1832 convention, which led to a permanent society that met annually in Cincinnati until 1845. The College of Teachers brought together education reformers and published their transactions to raise public awareness of the need to improve the teaching profession and to support common schools.^{Footnote 88} The college also lobbied the legislature to establish Ohio’s first state Superintendent of Schools, believing that a superintendent would improve the quality of education and advance the profession. An 1837 report offered to the College, argued that a superintendent would offer “a most salutary guardianship over [Ohio’s] immense pecuniary” investments in education.^{Footnote 89}

Even more important was the Ohio Teachers Association, which first met in Akron in 1847. Teachers had developed stronger professional identities by then, in part by attending teachers’ institutes and reading specialized journals. As teachers met regularly, they reinforced their commitment to one another and to common school education.^{Footnote 90}

Vital to the creation of new stakeholders was the education press, which blossomed in the 1830s and 1840s. The press served two functions. First, it cemented group identity by creating an imagined community of readers.^{Footnote 91} Second, it enabled the public and legislators to read about educational issues. The former function may have mattered more. Reformers’ and teachers’ sense of collective mission helped them lobby local and state officials together. While many articles offered teachers ideas to improve their pedagogy, others emphasized the importance of improving common schools. The education press gave teachers, school officials, and others a shared language with which to speak with policymakers and the public, and ensured that the public sphere would hear voices committed to expanding common school education.^{Footnote 92}

Documenting the stakeholder role of voters, parents, and alumni is much harder. Many studies have suggested that the common schools, once in place, were popular across class and party lines. According to Ira Katznelson and Margaret Weir, as access to schools became widespread, “a radical transformation occurred in the expectations and practices of Americans.”^{Footnote 93} We know that broader suffrage corresponded with increased community support for school taxes, suggesting that voters desired public education.^{Footnote 94} We also know that working-class Americans, many of whom supported the Democratic Party, demanded access to free education for their children, spurring the Democratic Party to support it.^{Footnote 95} If Ohio was typical, the system’s expansion and normalization of common school attendance led legislators to believe that policies undermining schools or restricting access would generate backlash. Thus, the existence of public schools made schooling a desired good and fostered new expectations.

By 1837, the state’s investment in schools had expanded dramatically, making policy reversal difficult. Legislation in 1825 had “established the fundamental principle of taxation for schools.”^{Footnote 96} Local and state money had built schoolhouses, hired teachers, and supported students. More and more parents sent their children to common schools, and local officials and teachers were committed to the system. According to one estimate, in 1837 at least 4,336 schools enrolled 146,440 children. The public had invested half a million dollars in schoolhouses and employed almost 8,000 teachers at an annual cost of $286,757. In 1837, 31 percent of the school-aged population attended public schools, a number that would rise to 52 percent by 1850, even as Ohio’s population expanded.^{Footnote 97}

Changing norms and expectations, the emergence of new stakeholders—boards of education and other officials, teachers, and parents—and infrastructure investments decreased the likelihood that the state would reverse course. Instead, the state deepened its commitment to the common school system and increased local and state capacity to fund and to run them.

The Antebellum Reversal That Never Came

The development of local tax-supported schools in communities across Ohio, growing enrollment in them, and the emergence of new stakeholders and public expectations meant that the common schools continued to expand between 1828 and 1840, even as Ohioans realigned in response to the market revolution, with rapidly expanding commercial areas trending Whig and more isolated agricultural areas trending Jacksonian.^{Footnote 98} In the aftermath of the Panic of 1837, many Ohioans concluded that state activism undercut rather than promoted prosperity. Ohioans blamed banks—and the state that created them and the Whig party that supported them—for their problems.^{Footnote 99} Thus, in 1837, Democrats sought to break with their state’s activist past. They faced two particular challenges—the existing public canal system and the public school system. Their response to the former demonstrates why and how path-dependent forces limited their options with the latter.

Although neither Democrats nor Whigs could abdicate the state’s responsibility for canals, they argued over how to govern them.^{Footnote 100} Whigs sought a commission of professionals insulated from popular pressure. Democrats, in contrast, sought a commission that represented the state’s various locations and held limited terms of office. In 1836, to bring the board “nearer to the people,” the Democratic legislature and governor replaced the canal commission with a board of public works appointed by a district system.^{Footnote 101} This was, according to Harry Scheiber, a “Jacksonian” revision. The legislature appointed six members to the new Board, designating two as commissioners. Board members represented different regions and rotation in office was introduced. Behind the popular rhetoric was a partisan goal: to use the board for patronage.^{Footnote 102} This illustrates why education reformers’ efforts to achieve autonomy was difficult: it meant challenging another path-dependent feature of American political life, political parties.

But if, from one perspective, we see the power of what Joel Silbey has called “the partisan imperative,” we also discover that partisan politics were bounded by earlier policy decisions.^{Footnote 103} Whatever their attitude toward public projects, Democrats could not just shut down the public canal system. While they reformed the canal commission, they did not strip it of its responsibilities. The state had invested too much politically and economically in public canals to reverse policy without significant costs.

In the case of railroads, by contrast, a new policy path could be forged, and Ohio (like other states and the federal government) subsidized and encouraged private capital investment rather than building and running roads itself. Ohio provided railroad companies charters, eminent domain powers, and tax exemptions. The railroads signaled a return to an older policy approach in which the state relied on corporations to carry out desired public goods.^{Footnote 104}

As canals lost money to railroads, Democrats saw the opportunity to implement their agenda. With popular opinion on their side, Democrats blamed state activity for serving the few rather than the many.^{Footnote 105} After a series of floods and declining revenue, Democrats passed legislation to lease the canals to private companies in 1859, under excessively harsh terms. When the new Republican party won the 1859 elections, they were divided whether to lease or to sell the canals or whether to retain them as public works. Finally, in 1861, Republicans leased the canal to private operators, ending an era of publicly run canals.^{Footnote 106}

Ohioans also called a constitutional convention in 1850, dominated by antistatist Democrats. The new constitution limited state engagement in the economy by prohibiting Ohio from taking on significant debt or investing directly in corporations. It also sought to limit banking by subjecting all bank charters to popular referenda.^{Footnote 107} (One result of the debt limitations was that the state and localities would have to tax property to pay for any future public services, and increasingly American states, including Ohio, did just that.)^{Footnote 108}

Education met a different fate at the convention. The 1851 constitution declared that all funds from land sales would be “preserved inviolate” for education. The new constitution mandated the legislature to “make such provisions by taxation, or otherwise, as with the income arising from the common school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the State.” Funding religious or sectarian schools was prohibited.^{Footnote 109} Education reformers had hoped to establish a state superintendent, but that effort failed, perhaps because Democrats did not want to constitutionalize such policies. Despite this failure for reformers, public education was supported by almost all convention delegates regardless of party.^{Footnote 110}

Why did canals and schools have such different fates? Democrats could encourage the privatization of canals for several reasons. First, they opposed state activism. Second, Ohio had experienced two exogenous shocks: the economic crisis following the Panic of 1837, which sent canal revenue tumbling, and the emergence of railroads, which presented a clear alternative to public canals. Absent these factors, changing paths in public works would have been more difficult. Positive feedback, however, enabled schools to continue on the same path. While Democrats’ beliefs may have resisted expanding the education system, schools, unlike canals, faced no exogenous shock or alternative technology.

Democrats could mask their return to an earlier policy model in transportation by embracing a new technology—the railroad. What was in fact a retrogression appeared as innovation. In the case of public education, however, to return to chartered academies would have appeared retrograde since the public schools had themselves superseded the charter school system of the past. While chartered academies continued to offer secondary education (public high schools were just coming on board), the vast part of primary education was being carried out by publicly run tax-supported schools.^{Footnote 111} Voters had come to expect access to these schools, and stakeholders existed to defend them, while Democrats lacked something else to offer.

An early sign that public education would have bipartisan support came in 1837–38, when legislators applied federal surplus funds to education.^{Footnote 112} Democratic governor Robert Lucas had urged the state in 1836 to use Ohio’s share of the surplus for “the support of common schools.”^{Footnote 113} That year, however, the Whigs had been swept into office, which meant that the decision about what to do with the surplus would be in the hands of a party supporting state activism. Democrats and Whigs united in setting up the fund because, by alleviating the need for direct taxation, they could expand access to schools without threatening Democrats’ antistatist goals. Thus Democratic governor Wilson Shannon, after defeating the Whig incumbent in 1838, celebrated the common school fund. Embracing the egalitarian potential of public education, Shannon criticized the system of “academies, colleges, and universities” whose benefits are “limited to a few individuals” compared with a “system of free common schools.”^{Footnote 114}

The permanent school fund ensured that Ohioans would continue to invest in schools and that the state would have an interest in ensuring its money was spent well. In 1837, both parties agreed to increase the state’s capacity to oversee education by creating the Office of State Superintendent with a one-year term. In the House of Representatives, nineteen Whigs and seventeen Democrats voted in favor, while nineteen Democrats and fifteen Whigs were opposed.^{Footnote 115} The following year the state applied surplus federal funds to education, necessitating greater state oversight and, because the funds were to be apportioned according to “the number of white youths (unmarried)” between four and twenty-four, better statistics.^{Footnote 116}

Samuel Lewis was appointed the first superintendent. The following year, two controversial laws were passed by a small Whig majority.^{Footnote 117} The first extended Lewis’s term to five years and laid out his duties: (1) to collect statistics on the common schools and report back to the legislature; (2) to identify the value and location of lands available for school funds; (3) to design and furnish all local school officers’ uniform forms and to report to the state auditor the total number of white children between four and twenty-one years old for apportionment; (4) to account for all school funds; and (5) to publish bi-monthly The Ohio Common School Director. The second law enhanced oversight of local schools and clarified reporting and accountability channels through a system of district, township, county, and state officers, but it lacked the stringent accountability measures Lewis desired. The 1838 law’s voluntary compliance ultimately undermined its effectiveness.

In 1838, Whigs also replaced the Democrats’ Board of Public Works with a new canal commission staffed with four full-time administrators, all engineers.^{Footnote 118} Both the 1838 education law and the revised canal commission reflected Whigs’ desire to expand state capacity and professionalize public agencies. To Whigs, increasingly complex responsibilities necessitated agencies shielded from partisan politics and run by virtuous, independent civil servants. Partisanship, Whigs worried, undermined the state’s ability to carry out its duties.^{Footnote 119}

Jacksonian New England emigrant and historian Caleb Atwater espoused these ideas in urging the creation of a state Board of Education “selected without reference to any party in religion or politics; to be appointed by the governor, and not liable to be removed from office.”^{Footnote 120} But the idea was a Whig one. In 1845, Whig governor Mordecai Bartley urged a state board of education, reestablishing an independent superintendent, and increasing county and local commissioners’ ability to oversee schools. Bartley served one term. In his outgoing annual message, he noted the insufficiency of the common school fund and “a general want of energy, efficiency, and discipline in the system.”^{Footnote 121}

From Democrats’ perspective, Whig policies threatened democracy by eroding the influence of elections and parties.^{Footnote 122} When they reclaimed state government after the 1838 elections, Democrats brought an antiactivist agenda. At the national level, Martin Van Buren and other Democrats praised strict construction of the Constitution and limits on banks and other corporations. In Ohio, they reinstated the Bureau of Public Works, making it more accountable to popular, partisan control, and passed restrictive banking legislation. Upon Lewis’s retirement, Democrats rejected the Whig ideal of a professional, independent office by eliminating his office and transferring its duties to the secretary of state.^{Footnote 123}

Democrats thus sought to limit expanding the state’s role in education when they could. While they could not remove Lewis from office given his reputation, once he retired the office became vulnerable.^{Footnote 124} This was also true in other states, including a failed effort to eliminate Horace Mann’s Board of Education in Massachusetts and more successful efforts in Connecticut and New York.^{Footnote 125}

Whigs continued to promote central oversight. Under Whig governors Bartley and William Bebb, Ohio passed voluntary laws authorizing counties to establish school superintendents in 1847 and 1848, and the “Akron School Law” permitting Akron to form a single school district with taxing authority, which was extended to all cities the following year.^{Footnote 126} In 1848, however, despite Whig control of the governor’s office, sectional tensions over slavery’s extension enabled Free Soilers to hold the balance of power in the legislature. In return for supporting Democrats on apportionment, Free Soilers demanded that Democrats support repeal of Ohio’s “Black Laws” (which limited African Americans’ freedoms) and establish schools for black Ohioans in communities with at least twenty school-age African Americans.^{Footnote 127} In March 1850, a legislature divided between Whigs, Democrats, and Free Soilers passed a weak voluntary school law that established a salaried board of public instruction with five members on staggered five-year terms. Each member, in the final year of his term, would be state superintendent of common schools. The law never went into effect because the General Assembly made no appointments.^{Footnote 128} Yet Whig influence is clear in the administrative design: five-year terms would shield board members from public opinion and partisan politics.

Despite Democrats’ desire to limit state government, in 1851 revenue needs led the state to sustain taxation.^{Footnote 129} During the late 1840s economic crises, the authorized county school tax had been reduced from two mills to two-fifths of a mill but was raised back to one mill.^{Footnote 130}

As sectional tensions increased, the 1852 elections proved the end of the Ohio Whig party. With the Free Soil revolt, nativism, and debates over temperance tearing the party apart and ensuring that immigrant communities and many others would vote Democratic, the Whigs lost big. The Democracy won the gubernatorial election with 52.1 percent of the vote. Whigs received slightly over 30 percent; the Free Soil candidate received a notable 17.5 percent. Democrats had a strong majority in the legislature, while Whigs held twenty seats and Free Soilers thirteen. (Two years later, a coalition of anti–Nebraska Whigs, Free Soilers, nativists, and others, as they coalesced into the new Republican Party, were once again challenging the Democracy.)^{Footnote 131}

Thus it was under Democrats that the state reestablished the state superintendent’s office and took the final steps to establish a school system, reversing the party’s own position in 1840. Democrats, now in charge of implementing the new constitution’s provisions, created, in 1853, what the Whigs had sought for years: a full-fledged state education system funded by taxes and overseen by a state superintendent. Democrats had alternatives. They could have returned to a robust charter system, or combined state-level tax funding with less oversight and greater local autonomy. They might have opted for a means-tested program. They did not. Instead, they developed a comprehensive system capable of funding and running schools while balancing state oversight with local control.^{Footnote 132}

The law was bipartisan. It passed 22–2 in the state senate and, after amendments, in the House 56–20.^{Footnote 133} Had nativism or social order concerns been primary, it is unlikely that Democrats, including the governor, would have supported it so heartily. Instead, the bill resulted largely from positive feedback: decisions made over the past five decades had established a policy direction that Democrats could not resist.

This is not to say that the 1853 law did not reflect Democrats’ values. Democrats believed that voters should exercise popular control over state officers.^{Footnote 134} Thus, while the act reestablished the office of state superintendent, Democrats made it elective rather than appointed. The significance of this shift was immediately clear. Despite Whig and reformers’ wishes to maintain a firewall between partisan politics and the education system, the superintendent’s office became partisan. Two candidates ran in 1853: Lorin Andrews (supported by the State Teachers Association and reformers) and H. H. Barney, principal of Cincinnati’s Hughes High School and a Democrat. Barney won.

The election highlighted the tension between two competing ideas of governance and two path-dependent structures of American politics: the system of political parties and the formation of a civil service. Democrats condemned the Ohio State Teachers Association for trying to elect someone friendly to its special interest “as a class” rather than deferring to popular will and “regular political parties.”^{Footnote 135} This tension would be a constant of American politics, resulting in a hybrid public bureaucracy balancing popular control with professional expertise.^{Footnote 136}

The new superintendent also had no coercive authority. He traveled around the state to visit schools, encouraged and oversaw teachers’ institutes, promoted education, supervised the collection and disbursement of state education funds, set reporting standards and procedures, and, most important, reported annually to the General Assembly. He was not authorized to interfere with schools’ local affairs.

The 1853 law authorized German-language schools, reflecting Democrats’ immigrant constituents’ desires. Finally, the 1853 law replaced a combination of state and county taxes with a single statewide tax, reflecting Democrats’ response to long-standing rural, and Democratic, voters’ complaints that, because of lower property values, they had to pay higher rates than commercial areas. The state would distribute tax money to districts proportionally based on the number of youth, ensuring that wealthier districts subsidized students in poorer, rural, and more Democratic areas.^{Footnote 137}

In addition to reestablishing a state commissioner, the 1853 law limited local autonomy by establishing single “union districts” for every township; incorporated towns and cities would have their own districts. Existing districts became subdistricts of the township district. Voters in every subdistrict elected three school directors serving staggered terms. If the subdistrict did not meet, any three voters could call a special meeting to elect school directors, thus ensuring compliance.

School directors managed local affairs and accounts, including certifying, hiring, and, if necessary, firing teachers; they also enforced district mandates, ensured that schoolhouses were well equipped with fuel and supplies, and took a census of all “unmarried white and colored youth.” The township Board of Education consisted of the township clerk and the school director chosen as clerk in each subdistrict. The township clerk was not granted a vote on the board. All records were to be maintained clearly and openly. The township board was made a “body politic and corporate in law.” It oversaw schools and curriculum, making decisions about primary and graded schools and superintending central or high schools. The board was authorized to undertake the work of local directors if local directors did not do it themselves, to provide German-language schools for immigrants if desired, and to determine general policies.^{Footnote 138}

While the law had Democratic overtones, it was nonetheless a substantive expansion of the public system’s authority, accountability, and capacity. Regardless of what they would have done if starting from scratch, Democrats worked within existing institutions and made decisions reflecting policies already in place, investments already made, new norms about education and childhood, and various stakeholders’ pressures. To reverse policy, or to try something dramatically different, would have resulted in disruption.

What we see here is a commitment to efficient administration to build school capacity, including the legislators’ goal of a seven-month academic year. The act also reflected what Pierson refers to as “learning.” For years, local school officials and reformers had sought to improve school officials’ abilities to carry out their mandate. A single, larger district, overseen by officials with staggered terms, insulated the board from short-term changes in popular opinion and enabled it to develop knowledge and expertise.^{Footnote 139}

Teachers played a role pushing for state oversight. The Ohio State Teachers Association had circulated a petition asking the governor for “suitable supervision for the Public Schools of the State.”^{Footnote 140} If the public lacked confidence in the schools, it was not because the schools had failed but because they lacked appropriate “superintending power.”^{Footnote 141} Thus the development of common schools, which necessitated the hiring of teachers, who then organized to further common schools and their profession, played a vital role in strengthening the system. This is a classic example of how policies create stakeholders who then influence further developments downstream.^{Footnote 142}

Finally, the 1853 law abolished rate bills (or tuition), establishing a free system paid for by taxation and income from land funds, thus transforming the meaning of “public.” After the Revolution, schooling had been considered primarily a parental responsibility. Now all Ohioans were offered a free education in schools paid for and run by public officials and reporting to a state official.

By the mid-1850s, a new path had been forged. Barney counted, by 1856, at least 7,830 schoolhouses worth $2,229,911 according to the 1,198 reporting boards of education, but he believed that up to 10,287 schoolhouses might exist; 740 new schoolhouses were built in 1855 alone.^{Footnote 143} Another 1850 estimate lists 11,661 public schools, 12,886 teachers, and 484,153 students, compared with 206 academies and private schools with 467 teachers and 15,052 students.^{Footnote 144} By the end of 1854, Ohio boasted 1,154 boards of education and 11,365 subdistricts. In 1854, Barney counted at least 10,300 schoolhouses worth $3,704,721, 770 of which had been built in the past year under the new law. The state’s 13,914 common schools employed 9,902 male and 8,502 female teachers. There were 57 high schools with 71 male and 63 female teachers. The state had dispensed $2,266,457 to districts to serve 816,408 children.^{Footnote 145} In 1850, 67 percent of Ohio’s school funding came from public funds.^{Footnote 146}

However imprecise the numbers, the investment is clear. The number of children attending schools had risen dramatically, and the proportion of those students in tax-supported common schools was much larger than those in private schools. Ohioans had expended significant sums and energy to develop infrastructure and administrative capacity. The public school system had come into its own. As Barney noted, the 1853 law established “a reform from which no step backward need be apprehended.”^{Footnote 147}