The public education reform took hold in the Jacksonian era, aiming to establish free public school for children from all economic backgrounds. Reformers from the middle-class supported this reform strongly, because they were alarmed by the growing numbers of the uneducated poor- foreign and native. The three main goals of this reform were to a.) Education for common men and women, b.) Make higher education possible for women and c.) Education for free blacks. This reform became known as the “common school movement.” At the core of this movement was Horace Mann, a Massachusetts state legislator and secretary of the Massachusetts board of education. From Mann’s Protestant background, he concluded that education was a child’s “natural right.”