They collected data via surveys and interviews with educators across the United States, met in a series of multi-day committee meetings, and developed consensus and dissenting reports.

This meant that each state developed its own system, including its own structure for secondary education, or high school.

Its subgroups, consisting of eight to ten members each, were convened by the following individuals: The committee provided its recommendations in a report published in 1894 that answered an initial set of eleven questions, and outlined important curricular knowledge within each major instructional specialty including Latin, Greek, English, "Other Modern Languages", mathematics, and the sciences (physics, chemistry, and astronomy).

These recommendations were generally interpreted as a call to teach English, mathematics, and history or civics to every student every academic year in high school.

The recommendations also formed the basis of the practice of teaching chemistry, and physics, respectively, in ascending high school academic years.