Ella Flagg Young (January 15, 1845 – October 26, 1918) was an American educator who served as superintendent of Chicago Public Schools.

[3] After only a few months she dropped out because she wasn't being intellectually challenged and because of the lack of support from her parents.

She was told she would never make it as a teacher by her mother but persevered and decided to set up her own practicum to test her potential in the classroom.

[2] Her election had come with the backing of Margaret Haley, head of the Chicago Teachers Federation.

Young was a significant influence on John Dewey's thinking when he authored The School and Society.

[4] She also published two volumes for the University of Chicago in 1902 as part of a series which also included her 1900 dissertation.

[2] In 1903, she and John Dewey, along with a group of other scholars (James Rowland Angell, George Herbert Mead, E. W. Moore, and James Hayden Tufts) published a series of monographs in the university's Decennial Publications.

This series led William James to declare that there was a Chicago "school of thought".

The series would play an important role in the development of the democratic and pragmatic movement in American education.

[2][3] Young received a reputation for giving teachers at Skinner School the liberty to devise their own teaching methods.

[3] She also ran faculty study groups on subjects such as Greek drama and English literature.

[7] The style of administration she practiced received praise, including from Mayor Carter Harrison III, who called the Skinner School under Young's leadership, "the most effective social institution in the city".

[2] At the time, the school district had 290,000 enrolled students and owned property worth $50,000,000.

[5] She was the school superintendent who during the 1911 spring break requested all schoolchildren in the Chicago area to organize neighborhood searches for five-year-old Elsie Paroubek, who had disappeared April 8 of that year.

After controversy arose, with protest against her departure being led by Jane Addams and others, she was reappointed to the position.

In 1998, an addition was built to the school almost doubling the usable floorspace, and the masonry was renovated and the windows were glazed.