[Sidenote: State superintendency and further progress.]
[Sidenote: Combination with secretaryship of state.]
[Sidenote: Public secondary and normal schools delayed by academy appropriations.]
In 1812 further organization was enacted whereby a state superintendent of common schools was to be appointed, and the county unit replaced by a more democratic town and district basis. But it had been supposed that the state fund would provide for the entire support of the schools, and there still remained an obstinate opposition to local taxes. The towns, however, were gradually persuaded to raise the amount required to secure their share of the state donation. Much progress was brought about through the first superintendent, Gideon Hawley, and while, after eight years of service, he was removed by political manipulation and the office combined with the secretaryship of state, each of his successors undertook to distinguish the educational side of his administration by some marked advance or improvement in the common schools. But for a generation the academies and colleges remained under supervision of the regents, and, except for state appropriations to academies, no one undertook to extend the public system into secondary and higher education. Moreover, the professional training of teachers in the academies was encouraged by the state, and thereby the organization of normal schools was delayed. Hence, while New York started the first system of public education adjusted to the political and social conditions of the new nation, and probably had the most effective schools of the times, not until the great period of common school development (1835-1860) were its people fully willing to contribute for a general school system, make it entirely free, or develop it consistently in all directions.
[Sidenote: Bethel Baptist Church controversy.]
=New York City.=--Meanwhile, an interesting development of educational facilities was taking place in New York City. In 1805 the opportunities offered in the private, church, and charity schools were seen by certain of the most prominent citizens to be totally inadequate for a city of seventy-five thousand inhabitants, and a ‘Free School Society’ was founded to provide for the boys who were not eligible for these schools. The president was De Witt Clinton, afterward governor, and in 1806 the first school was opened, from motives of economy, upon the monitorial basis (see p. 241). The state fund did not reach a sufficient amount to be available until 1815, but special gifts were made to the school society from time to time by the legislature, the city, and private individuals, and there was a rapid increase in the number of the society’s schools during the first quarter of a century. In 1826 the legislature authorized the organization to charge a small tuition fee and change its name to the ‘Public School Society.’ While the fee system was soon found to injure the efficiency of the work and was abolished within six years, the new title persisted, as it did not suggest pauperism in the way the old name had. In 1828 the society was allowed the benefit of a small local tax. For quite a time the work of the association was unhindered, but in 1820-1825 a vigorous effort was made to obtain a share of the state appropriation for the sectarian schools of the Bethel Baptist Church. This move was finally defeated, but the Roman Catholics made a more successful protest fifteen years later by indicating that the society, while nominally nonsectarian, was really Protestant. To settle this dispute, the legislature in 1842 established a city board of education, and after eleven years the institutions of the Public School Society were merged in this city system. Thus was the way prepared for a public school system in New York City, and this development was typical of the training of educational sentiment through quasi-public societies that took place in Buffalo, Utica, Oswego, and several other cities.