In 1870, Utah children attended school at a higher rate than in New York, Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts, the birthplace of public education. Even so, Brigham Young in that year ratcheted up the level of institutional support by establishing a series of academies (tuition-supported high schools) throughout the settlements. Three years after Young’s death, there were some two dozen of these academies from Canada to Mexico. In 1880, according to the census, Utah’s literacy rate (for ages ten and above) was 95 percent, whereas in the country as a whole, it was 87 percent.
