In Springfield, Massachusetts, one of the first technical high schools was established.

Conferences which provided frameworks for home economics programs in schools where held at Lake Placid and Chautauqua in New York under the direction of Ellen Richards.

Compulsory school laws were passed by most states and provisions for publicly supporting high schools were provided across the nation. The beginning of the vocational education movement and the first comprehensive high school, which combined academic and manual training.The debate over the type of curriculum needed in American high schools and the vocational guidance movement took place as a result of the social efficiency movement.