Commissioner of Education

The Commissioner of Education was the title given to the head of the federal Office of Education, which was historically a unit within and originally assigned to the Department of the Interior in the United States. The position was created on March 2, 1867, when an act to establish the Office of Education took effect under the influence of the more radical Republican Party. They were influential mostly in the Northern states and New England, which were much more progressive in the fields of education and had already established many state departments of education. They also had a large number of public schools and systems in cities, towns and counties, both at the elementary (grammar) school and high school levels, in which the South had lagged behind.