Believing that the Bible was the only true source of God's truths, Connecticut's Puritan founders viewed literacy as a theological necessity. A law code in 1650 required a town of 50 families to hire a schoolmaster to teach reading and writing, and a town of 100 families to operate a school to prepare students for college. Despite such legislation, many communities in colonial Connecticut did not provide sufficient funding to operate first-rate schools. Public education was greatly strengthened in the 19th century by the work of Henry Barnard, who advocated free public schools, state supervision of common schools, and the establishment of schools for teacher training. By the late 1860s and early 1870s, all of Connecticut's public elementary and high schools were tuition free. In 1865, the Board of Education was established.
A characteristic of public-school financing in Connecticut has been high reliance on local support for education. Differences among towns in their wealth bases and taxation were compounded by the mechanism used to distribute a majority of state funds for public education—the flat-grant-per-pupil formula. After the Connecticut supreme court in Horton v. Meskill (1978) declared this funding mechanism to be unconstitutional, the general assembly in 1979 replaced it with an equity-based model in order to reduce the disparity among towns in expenses per pupil.
In 2000, 84% of Connecticut residents age 25 and older were high school graduates. Some 31.4% had obtained a bachelor's degree or higher. As of fall 1999, Connecticut's public schools had a total enrollment of 553,993 students. Of these, 403,913 attended schools from kindergarten through grade eight, and 150,080 attended high school. Minority students made up approximately 30% of the total enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools in 2001. Total enrollment was estimated at 562,138 in fall 2000 but expected to drop to 541,000 by fall 2005. Expenditures for public education in 2000/01 were estimated at $5,697,000. Enrollment in nonpublic schools in fall 2001 was 70,058. The state's private preparatory schools include Choate Rosemary Hall (Wallingford), Taft (Waltertown), Westminster (Simsbury), Loomis Chaffee (Windsor), and Miss Porter's (Farmington).
Fall enrollment in college or graduate school was 204,212 in 2000. In the same year Connecticut had 46 degree-granting institutions. In 1997 minority students comprised 18.3% of total postsecondary enrollment. Public institutions of higher education include the University of Connecticut at Storrs; four divisions of the Connecticut State University, at New Britain, New Haven, Danbury, and Willimantic; 12 regional community colleges; and five state technical colleges. Connecticut also has 23 private four-year colleges and universities. Among the oldest institutions are Yale, founded in 1701 and settled in New Haven between 1717 and 1719; Trinity College (1823) in Hartford; and Wesleyan University (1831) in Middletown. Other private institutions include the University of Hartford, University of Bridgeport, Fairfield University, and Connecticut College in New London.