Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 33, number 1, September 1949

              1949 origins of public education 21 there were in the territory when it was organized in 1836 some twelve or fifteen schools with an enrollment of possibly 500 students in 1849 the first full year under the constitution there were 32,000 pupils in the public schools.28 but there is nowhere to be found in any historical account any information as to the number of schools established during the intervening years or as to the manner of their support the act of 1841 required the secretary of the territory to sub mit annually to the legislature an abstract of the school returns received by him from the county clerks but the secretary con sistently neglected to perform this duty finally in 1846 michael frank presented a resolution calling upon the secretary to submit a report as required by law.29 this brought the desired results the secretary submitted abstracts to the 1847 and 1848 sessions each based on the returns for the preceding year.80 the data contained in these two documents which have hitherto escaped the attention of historians completely disprove the tradi tional view that public education was generally neglected during the territorial period they establish instead the existence of a strong and widespread free school movement we notice first in these reports the large number of students attending public schools there were 14,000 in 1846 this com pares reasonably well with 32,000 during the first year of state hood when we consider that the population had almost doubled during that period but of greater interest is the extent to which schools were supported by taxation or to be more exact by public monies since at least part of the funds classified as tax revenues were derived from leases of school lands in each re port taxation was listed as the source of about three-fourths of the total amount raised more important yet a majority of the towns reporting on this item listed taxation as the sole source of their school funds it may be objected that some of the funds reported as deriving from taxation might have been produced by rate-bill levies the rate bill was a tax levied upon parents only in proportion to the 28 superintendent of public instruction report 1849 p 640 29 territorial council journal 4:4 35 30 ibid 5:1 337 5:2 352