From Charity to Commonwealth

The act designated the governor, lieutenant governor, president of the senate, speaker of the assembly, mayors of Albany and New York, attorney general, secretary of state, and twenty-four other persons as the Board of Regents. This unwieldy body of ex officio and appointed members proved difficult to manage, leading to reforms in 1787.

Unlike the temporary 1795 appropriation, the Common School Fund creates a permanent endowment. By 1812, the annual income of the Fund approaches $50,000, enabling a comprehensive revival of state support for common schools.

The Society adopts the Lancasterian (monitorial) system of instruction, developed by English educator Joseph Lancaster. Under this method, a single teacher instructs older pupils, or monitors, who in turn instruct squads of younger pupils. One teacher could serve several hundred students—an economical approach appealing to the Society's promoters.

The first school opens on May 19, 1806, in an apartment on what is now Madison Street. By 1815, the Free Schools receive $3,708.14 from the state as their share of the Common School Fund.

A legislative commission points to "the remote and thinly populated parts of the state" as areas where "education stands greatly in need of encouragement," noting that dispersed populations "make it difficult so to establish schools" effectively. This rural emphasis remains a theme well into the twentieth century.

The act introduces the "district system" of local governance: each district elects trustees who hire teachers, maintain schoolhouses, and manage rate bills. This hyper-local control creates enormous variation in quality depending on community wealth and commitment.

The controversy reveals deep tensions in the "common school" ideal. The Public School Society's curriculum features readings from the Protestant King James Bible, Protestant hymns, and textbooks that Catholics consider slanderous to their faith. Yet removing religion entirely threatens Protestant understandings of moral education.

Hughes argues that Catholics pay double—taxes for public schools they cannot use, plus tuition for parochial schools. Seward's State Superintendent John Spencer proposes that the solution is genuinely democratic control: elected local school boards rather than a private philanthropic society.

The Maclay Act creates the first truly public school system in New York City—one governed by elected officials rather than private trustees. However, the Public School Society continues operating alongside the new system for another decade.

Nativist riots follow the bill's passage. A young Walt Whitman, editing the New York Aurora, denounces the Catholic influence: "shall these dregs of foreign filth... be permitted to dictate what Tammany must do?"

Bishop Hughes, having lost the battle for public funding, turns to building an independent Catholic school system—establishing the dual public/private structure that characterizes American education to this day.

Most cities had eliminated tuition in the 1840s and 1850s, but rural districts continued charging rate bills that excluded poorer families. The 1867 law completes the ideological shift from "free school" (charity for the poor) to "public school" (universal entitlement).

Following an 1867 state law requiring free common school education, demand for qualified teachers increases dramatically, leading to establishment of additional normal schools.

Compulsory attendance proves difficult to enforce. City schools are so overcrowded they turn away eligible applicants and have no way to accommodate truants. Children evade the law by claiming "lawful occupations" as bootblacks, newsboys, or street vendors.

A contemporary report notes that "since the enforcement of the Compulsory Education Law, the number following these occupations has increased very greatly." Such occupations "are used as a subterfuge to evade the law."

The 1894 Constitution also continues the Board of Regents as a constitutional body with powers to be defined by the legislature. The constitutional conventions of 1867 and 1894 both consider and reject proposals to unify elementary, secondary, and higher education under one administration.

This fulfills Governor Roosevelt's vision of unified educational administration. The Regents become a policy-making body; the Commissioner serves as chief administrative officer. This structure persists to the present day.

Commissioner Draper raises standards, adjusts curriculum to ensure job-readiness and citizenship, strengthens teacher training, and establishes a statewide teacher retirement system.