Massachusetts Board of Education is established.

[6/27, 6/29-WPA] Originally the Board of School, its first secretary is former Massachusetts Senate president Horace Mann. The first state secretary of education in the U.S., he serves from 1837 to 1848. Mann proceeds to modernize and reform primary and secondary education, establish the first state-wide system of public education as well as “Normal Schools” to train teachers, and establish school district libraries. In 1848, he writes, “Without under-valuing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the common school, improved and energized as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all forces of civilization.”