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Alverno College, a Catholic women’s liberal arts college on Milwaukee’s South Side, is most recognized for its role as an international leader in non-graded, ability-based education. That distinction is closely tied to its founding order, the School Sisters of St. Francis (SSSF), and this order’s dedication to the education of all women across Milwaukee. Alverno… Read More

Between 1937 and 2023, Cardinal Stritch University was dedicated to offering a liberal arts education and providing for the underserved. Stritch’s story began in the depths of the Great Depression when Milwaukee Archbishop Samuel A. Stritch urged the city’s women’s religious communities to establish teacher training schools for the nuns within their orders. The Sisters… Read More

Founded by territorial charter in 1846 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Carroll College grew out of the then five-year-old Prairieville Academy, a preparatory program to fit young men for entry into the state university or eastern colleges. Carroll’s official charter, signed on January 31, 1846 by Territorial Governor Henry Dodge (two days before he signed the Beloit… Read More

The concept of a public charter school emerged as a response to calls for public school reform, with the first charter school law in the United States passed in 1991 and the first school charter awarded in 1992 in Minnesota. Since then, more than forty states and the District of Columbia have established charter school… Read More

Over the past 135 years, Concordia University, a Milwaukee-area institution of higher education affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), has broadened its original mission of preparing young men for seminary in the Lutheran Church to a mission of preparing adults of all ages for meaningful vocations in Wisconsin and across the world. Concordia began… Read More

The Milwaukee metropolitan area is often classified as the most racially segregated metropolitan area in the United States. This segregated residence pattern resulted in racially segregated schools in the Milwaukee area. African Americans began to settle in Milwaukee increasingly after 1900. Most rented homes in a nine-square block area north of downtown. They were employed… Read More

In 1969, three Oneida women—Marj Stevens, Marge Funmaker, and Darlene Funmaker Neconish—took it upon themselves to offer an alternative education for their own children and other disillusioned Native youth in Milwaukee. Born of their frustrations with the public school system, discrimination against Native students, and a lack of cultural direction, these Oneida women began teaching… Read More

Kindergarten is a preschool education approach designed to transition children from home to school. “Kindergarten” is a German word that means “garden for the children.” It traditionally emphasized learning through playing, singing, drawing, and social interaction. The first kindergarten was established in Blankenburg, Germany, in the late 1830s. In America kindergartens usually enroll five-year-old children,… Read More

John Martin Henni, the first Catholic bishop of Milwaukee, came to his adopted city in 1843 with several ambitions. Among them, he wanted to open a college. The biggest difficulty with this part of his plan was the absence of an intellectual culture in Milwaukee conducive to such an enterprise. The village—Milwaukee was not even… Read More

The Medical College of Wisconsin has its origins in private, for-profit Milwaukee medical colleges that opened in the late 1800s. One of these enterprises, the Milwaukee Medical College, became affiliated (educationally, though not financially) with Marquette College in 1907. Five years later, a group of local physicians urged the University to strengthen its oversight and… Read More

As Milwaukee Area Technical College enters its second century as one of the Midwest’s largest two-year technical colleges, constant updates and changes continue to be the hallmark of the school, echoing the words of Robert L. Cooley, the institution’s founder, who proclaimed in 1912 that “the needs of the students shall determine the curriculum.” The… Read More

Founded in 1974, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD), a successor college to the well-respected Layton School of Art, has become an academic anchor in the city’s redevelopment of its Historic Third Ward, once a gritty manufacturing district. MIAD’s academic enterprise offers a career-oriented education in the arts that focuses on the needs… Read More

During most of the twentieth century, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) fashioned a record of accomplishments of which most Milwaukeeans were proud. Over the last third of the century, demographic and economic changes produced daunting problems that weakened public trust and resulted in an educational landscape quite different from that of 1950. Creating a Public… Read More

The Milwaukee School of Engineering began as a technical institute in the fall of 1903. Its founder, Oscar Werwath, had arrived in Milwaukee from Germany only months earlier and immediately found work as an electrical engineer at the newly-merged Allis-Chalmers Company, under the guidance of Louis Allis. Milwaukee’s population was more than a third of… Read More

Milwaukee-Downer College and Seminary represent some of the earliest attempts at women’s education in Wisconsin. Milwaukee Female Seminary, one of Milwaukee-Downer’s predecessor institutions, was founded in 1848 by Lucy Parsons, a progressive advocate for female education from New York. The school’s board of trustees drew representatives from Milwaukee’s prominent families, including Increase Lapham. Parsons’ connections… Read More

The term Montessori refers to the educational method developed by Dr. Maria Montessori (1870-1952). Montessori, an Italian physician, gained world-wide recognition for an academically focused program meeting “the needs of the young child” through multi-aged groupings, constructivist curriculum, and hands-on materials. A Montessori classroom is ideally an exploratory environment with young students developing self-chosen skills… Read More

Mount Mary University is a private women’s university located on the northwest side of the city of Milwaukee, directed by the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND), a Catholic order of nuns dedicated to the principle of transformative education for women. Over its one hundred years, Mount Mary has committed itself to educating young women… Read More

While people have been learning from the natural environment in the Milwaukee area as long as it has been inhabited, the organized movement of advocating nature education and of building facilities in which this learning could take place has its roots in the 1960s. This was part of a larger “nature center” movement across the… Read More

Peace education provides the opportunity to examine values and attitudes, acquire knowledge, and develop skills useful for understanding wars and violence and promoting a culture of peace and global understanding. Anti-war education shaped the Civil War era, and continues today: people protested against slavery and war during the Civil War; German settlers pled for neutrality… Read More

Public education is the system in which states and localities own and operate schools. These schools are paid for at public expense and are open to all children in a school district or community. Each district is governed by an elected school board. The school board sets broad policies, appoints a superintendent and other administrators,… Read More