Where is the Oldest High School in America?

The oldest high school in the United States is Boston Latin School, founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1635, a year before Harvard. It still enrolls students today, and it is not alone. A small group of American secondary schools trace their roots to the 1600s and 1700s and remain in session, most of them public, with one famous private academy in the mix. They were built to teach Latin, Greek, and scripture to the sons of colonial families, and several have gone on to educate presidents, founders, and writers. Here are the ten oldest still in operation across the United States, in order of founding.

America's Ten Oldest High Schools

Boston Latin School, Boston, Massachusetts (1635)

Boston Latin School, known as BLS, is the oldest public school in the country, founded on April 23, 1635. Its first classes met in the home of headmaster Philemon Pormort before the school acquired its own building with help from Massachusetts Bay Colony tax revenue. For most of its history it taught only boys, and admission once required reading Bible verses. The school enrolled its first female students in 1972 and named Cornelia Kelly its first female head of school in 1998. Its alumni read like a founding-era roll call: Benjamin Franklin attended but never graduated, as did Samuel Adams and John Hancock, and several signers of the Declaration of Independence passed through its doors. Today it operates as a public exam school in Boston's Fenway neighborhood, enrolling roughly 2,400 students in grades 7 through 12.

Hartford Public High School, Hartford, Connecticut (1638)

Hartford Public High School, the second oldest in the country, began in 1638 as a Latin school tied to the Reverend Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. Like Boston Latin, it was meant to prepare young men for the ministry and for college, and for two centuries it taught little beyond Greek and Latin. It took its current name in 1847 and later opened to women. The school sits in a historic Connecticut neighborhood beside the Mark Twain House and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, and Twain's own daughters, Olivia and Clara, attended in the late 1880s. A fire destroyed the school's building in 1882, and it has occupied newer quarters ever since. It still serves the city of Hartford today, teaching grades 9 through 12 through a system of smaller learning communities.

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1648)

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Cambridge Massachusetts By John Phelan CC BY-SA 3.0

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, part of the Cambridge Public Schools, dates to 1648, when it was founded to prepare boys for college. It admitted girls in 1832. In 1886 it split into two institutions, the classics-focused Cambridge Latin School and Cambridge English High School, which later recombined into the school that stands today. Its modern graduates include the actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Now the city's only public high school, it enrolls close to 2,000 students.

Hopkins Academy, Hadley, Massachusetts (1664)

Hopkins Academy in Hadley owes its existence to Edward Hopkins, a merchant and former governor of the Connecticut Colony. His 1657 will set aside money for education in New England, creating one of the earliest school endowments in the colonies and funding several institutions, Hopkins Academy among them, in 1664. It started as a private academy and became Hadley's public school in the 20th century. Today it serves a few hundred students across the town's middle and high school grades.

Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts (1778)

Phillips Academy is the one private school on this list. Founded in 1778 by Samuel Phillips Jr., the independent secondary school in Andover offers both day and boarding programs for grades 9 through 12, plus an optional postgraduate year. It ranks among the oldest and most selective preparatory schools in the country, and its graduates include two US presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Today around 1,150 students attend from across the country and abroad.

Academy of Richmond County, Augusta, Georgia (1783)

Chartered in 1783, the Academy of Richmond County in Augusta is the oldest public high school in the Southern United States. It opened as an all-boys private school and became a coeducational public school after the Civil War. George Washington visited during his 1791 southern tour and spoke at the school's commencement. Known locally as Richmond Academy or ARC, it still runs a Junior ROTC program, a nod to its onetime stint as a military academy in Georgia. Today about 1,200 students attend the public school in the Richmond County system.

Glynn Academy, Brunswick, Georgia (1788)

The Georgia General Assembly chartered Glynn Academy in Brunswick on February 1, 1788, making it the seventh oldest public high school in the country and the second oldest outside New England. Its 1840 Greek Revival schoolhouse still stands and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The campus has grown over the centuries, but the school has run continuously under the Glynn County district, where it now enrolls roughly 1,800 students as one of Brunswick's two high schools.

Canandaigua Academy, Canandaigua, New York (1791)

Canandaigua Academy, in New York's Finger Lakes region, opened in 1791 as a private boys' school and served for a time as a regional boarding school. It is the oldest high school in New York State. It became public in 1900 but kept the word "Academy" in its name, and the current campus is the fourth to carry it. The US Department of Education named it a National Blue Ribbon School in 1996. Today it enrolls about 1,100 students in the Canandaigua City School District.

Westford Academy, Westford, Massachusetts (1792)

Westford Academy opened in 1792 with a charter unusually broad for its time, welcoming children "of any nation, age, or sex" who could read the Bible and pay nine shillings a term, which meant girls attended from the start. The town of Westford bought the school from its trustees in 1928, turning it into the public high school it remains today. The original 1794 academy building now houses the Westford Museum, while the modern school serves more than 1,500 students.

Newburgh Free Academy, Newburgh, New York (1796)

Newburgh Free Academy traces its start to 1796, when the Reverend George Spierin proposed an academy and the trustees of the local glebe, church land set aside generations earlier, began building it near the Hudson River. The first two-story wood-and-brick building doubled as a courtroom and a meeting hall for the young town. New York's second oldest high school after Canandaigua, it is now one of the largest public high schools in the state, spread across more than one campus in the Newburgh district and home of the Goldbacks.

The Oldest High Schools In The United States Still In Use

A Heritage Worth Keeping

All ten of these schools are still teaching, having outlasted a revolution, fires, and centuries of shifting ideas about education. Massachusetts alone accounts for half the list, a legacy of the colony's 1647 law ordering towns to set up and fund schools, one of the earliest education mandates in the colonies. The buildings have been rebuilt many times over; what survived is the institutions themselves and the unbroken line of students moving through them. For the towns that host them, that continuity has become a point of pride and, in several cases, a piece of protected history.