The study of the school history of Astoria is of interest to the
student of education in that it reveals a condition different from
that of some of the other cities of Oregon, particularly those of the
Willamette Valley. In the latter, private and public schools struggled
for the mastery, with the private school far in the lead for many
years.[1] In Astoria, on the contrary, the public school idea had a
firm hold from the beginning and asserted itself as soon as the
establishment of a public school was possible. The history of
Astoria's educational progress, covering a period of fifty-two years,
is chiefly the story of the beginning and gradual development of a
system of public schools. There is traceable, however, something of
the conflict, so prominent elsewhere, between the public and the
private school idea.