Ella Flagg Young was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 educator.

Biography

She was born in Buffalo, New York

Buffalo, New York

Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

 to Theodore and Jane (Reed) Flagg in 1845. She didn't attend school until the age of ten, after teaching herself how to read and write at age 10. After only a few months she dropped out because she wasn't being intellectually challenged and the lack of support from her parents. At age 15 Ella took the certification examination to become a teacher and passed but was told she was too young to be a teacher. Ella was told she would never make it as a teacher by her mother but persevered on decided to set up her own practicum to test her potential in the classroom. Ella decided the classroom was right for her and she graduated in 1862 from the Chicago Normal School. She later studied at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 under John Dewey

John Dewey

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...

 at age 55 and received her Ph.D. in 1900.

She was married to William Young in 1868. They had no children together, and William died when she was 27 years old. Her parents and brother and sister had already died leaving her with no close relatives. She devoted her life to her teaching career, which spanned 53 years (1862–1915). She became superintendent of schools in Chicago in 1887; professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of education in the University of Chicago in 1899; principal of the Chicago Normal School in 1905; and was superintendent of schools of Chicago from 1909 until her resignation in 1915. She served on the Board of Education for the State of Illinois from 1888 to 1913. She was the first woman in America to head a large city school system.

In 1910-1911, the membership of the National Education Association

National Education Association

The National Education Association is the largest professional organization and largest labor union in the United States, representing public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators, and college students preparing to become...

 elected her its first woman president. Mrs. Young also identified herself strongly with the woman's suffrage movement

Women's suffrage

Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...

. She was the school superintendent who during the 1911 spring break requested all schoolchildren in the Chicago area to organize neighborhood searches for five-year-old Elsie Paroubek

Elsie Paroubek

Elsie Paroubek was a Czech-American girl who was the victim of kidnapping and murder in the spring of 1911. Her disappearance and the subsequent search for her preoccupied Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota law enforcement for six weeks, and her funeral was attended by between 2,000 and 3,000 people...

, who had disappeared April 8 of that year. She died in the 1918 flu pandemic, on October 26, 1918, at age 73 .

Publications

• Isolation in the School (1900)
• Ethics in the School (1902)
• Some Types of Modern Educational Theory (1902)

She also founded and edited The Educational Bi-Monthly, a free journal for teachers.

• John T. McManis, biography (Chicago, 1916)

School Named for Ella Flagg Young

The Chicago Public School system named an elementary school (K-8) in honor of Dr. Young in 1924. The school is located in the north Austin neighborhood

Austin, Chicago

Austin, located on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, is the largest of the city's 77 officially defined community areas, followed by Lake View. Its eastern boundary is the Belt Railway located just east of Cicero Avenue. Its northernmost border is the Milwaukee District/West Line...

and continues to be used as an elementary school.

The school is traditional masonry construction, with a central boiler heating system. In 1998, an addition was built to the school almost doubling the usable floorspace, and the masonry was renovated and the windows were glazed.
You can view other photos of the school as it currently exists on the reunion website of the 1968 class.