SCHOOL LANDS

SCHOOL LANDS. When Congress created new states out of the public domain, it retained the authority to manage and dispose of the public land within their boundaries. One way in which the government exercised its authority was through land grants to the states for the purpose of funding elementary schools. Beginning with the Ordinance of 1785, Congress granted one out of thirty-six sections in each township to new states. In 1848, Congress increased the grant to two sections in each township, and, in 1896, it increased the grant to four sections. Eventually, Congress handed over more than one hundred million acres to the states under this system.

Public pressure induced state legislatures to dispose of this land, often by leasing parcels at below-market rates. Some states, like Ohio, held the lands and proceeds from them as trustees for the townships, while others, like Indiana, turned them over to the townships. Local management generally led to favoritism, careless administration, and reckless use of the funds, whereas state management often played into the hands of large speculator groups. Despite these problems the lands did fund elementary schools in communities where the tax base could not support education or where residents opposed school taxes.

Management of school lands in the newer states of the Far West was more successful than it was in the old Northwest, partly because of heightened federal regulations and partly because the states have been more prudent in their administration of land grants. Many western states have accumulated large funds from their school lands, the income from which makes up a substantial part of the state contribution to the public schools.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gates, Paul. The Jeffersonian Dream: Studies in the History of American Land Policy and Development. Edited by Allan G. and Margaret Beattie Bogue. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

Kaestle, Carl F. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.

Parkerson, Donald H., and Jo Ann Parkerson. The Emergence of the Common School in the U.S. Countryside. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1998.

Paul W.Gates/s. b.

See alsoLand Grants: Land Grants for Education ; Land Policy ; Northwest Territory ; Ordinances of 1784, 1785, and 1787 .