The Avery Coonley School history

As new grades were added the school grew, and in 1911 Coonley commissioned Wright to design a larger space for the students.

The school, led by Lucia Morse, was launched as the Kindergarten Extension Association School in 1912.

In 1915, John Dewey and his daughter Evelyn featured the Cottage School in their book, The Schools of To-Morrow, which examined how progressive schools around the country put new educational ideas into action.

In 1916, the Cottage School was closed and a first grade program was launched at the Downers Grove kindergarten, which was renamed the Junior Elementary School.

In 1924, Coonley and Morse helped found a journal entitled Progressive Education, in which they published their own practical experiences at the school, accompanied by articles written by leading educational theorists, including John Dewey.

The seahorse swims upright, from which derives the school motto: "Onward and Upward", and representations of seahorses are reflected in decorative ironwork and the weather vane on the 1929 building.

Avery Coonley was featured regularly in Progressive Education and other professional journals, and in 1938, the editor of Progressive Education, Gertrude Hartman, published a profile of the Avery Coonley School in her book Finding Wisdom: Chronicles of a School of Today.

Morse died in 1940, after 34 years as director, and several years went by without a strong local leadership.

To ensure a sounder footing for the future, Coonley merged Avery Coonley with the National College of Education (NCE, formerly the Chicago Kindergarten College and now National Louis University) in Evanston, Illinois, in 1943.

German and French were added in 1949, with students beginning conversational French in first grade.

In 1924, Coonley and Morse helped found a journal entitled Progressive Education, in which they published their own practical experiences at the school, accompanied by articles written by leading educational theorists, including John Dewey. It became the leading professional journal of the progressive education movement and was published until 1957.

Coonley died in 1958; ACS had looked to Coonley for her leadership over the years but even more so for her philanthropy.

Under the direction of newly appointed headmaster John Malach, a summer program was launched in 1960, open to all children from the surrounding area, to increase revenues and visibility.

As part of Malach's "bid to reforge the leadership role that Avery Coonley School had played during its early years", ACS joined the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS) in 1961.

Malach also established the Institute for Educational Research (IER) in 1964 as a center for educational experimentation.

In 1965, the benefits of the National College of Education partnership were less evident and the Administrative Board purchased Avery Coonley from the NCE. Under Malach's leadership, ACS continued to experiment and innovate.

The increasing focus on gifted education was symbolized by the 1972 Marland Report to the United States Congress, which was the first acknowledgment of the characteristics of gifted children and their specific educational needs.