The program was also administered by the U.S. Office of Education, the Federal government agency that interfaced with the nation's school systems and its thirty-two million students.

The Office, however, allowed the Treasury to work with the schools directly as the main objective of the program was raising money.

[2] Children were expected to provide direct financial aid, as well as indirect support by receiving instruction in "good citizenship" and the "preservation of democracy".

Teaching thrift, conservation, and war finance was considered "educationally sound" and therefore not in conflict with the schools' primary function.

"Serve" meant directly training in or performing war-related tasks such as providing first-aid, radio/telegraph communication, firefighting, enemy plane spotting, childcare, etc.

[4] Approximately ten months after the United States entered World War II upon the attack on Pearl Harbor, the program was inaugurated on September 25, 1942, with a parade in Washington, D.C., in which over 4,000 children marched to the U.S. Treasury Building to be greeted by first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, assistant Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr,[2] and John W. Studebaker, the U.S. Commissioner of Education.

[5]: 154 The program was in full operation in fall 1942, led by Homer W. Anderson, who had been the Superintendent of Public Instruction for St. Louis, Missouri.

[6] Every participating school would receive a "Certificate of Service" if its program sufficiently "stimulate[d] the regular voluntary purchase of War Stamps and Bonds by students and teachers".

The bricks were originally used in the construction of Independence Hall in Philadelphia that were replaced during a renovation, and were intended to be permanently displayed in the state capitals.

[8] The program published a quarterly journal titled Schools At War distributed to nearly every schoolteacher in the country.

The journal functioned to provide methods to encourage stamp sales, publicize goals and progress.

Other publications included teaching aids:[1]: 174 Lesson plans were developed in all grades to stress thrift and conservation.

Students were instructed to buy war stamps, collect scrap, help with recycling drives and with victory gardens, and encourage their parents and neighbors to do the same.

Patriotic songs in an official Schools at War songbook were written by changing the lyrics of common tunes.

Art classes were still to be instructional, but the projects were to have secondary benefits in aiding war activities of the school and their communities.

[10] As another incentive, any school with at least ninety percent of its students buying a war stamp every month was entitled to fly a special "Minuteman flag".

[a] If meeting the 90 percent purchase goal for an entire semester, the school was allowed to add an additional star.

Near the end of the program, a special insignia reading "Schools-at-War, 1941–1946" was designed for schools that had maintained their status.

A ceremony was held at the Indiana World War Memorial, filmed to be shown in movie newsreels, in which students from the ninety schools displayed the flags in a giant "V" pattern.

[16] To encourage the purchase of stamps by students, schools set goals for specific military equipment.

[1] The metal label panel on a jeep cost an additional $6.75, which many schools declined, receiving only a citation of the sponsorship.

Although the program predominantly reached its participants through their schools, children continued the program during the summer and after school in other participating youth organizations, including the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, 4-H Clubs, Future Farmers of America.

Large universities generally did not prioritize participation in the war savings program because of the finite room in collegiate curricula.

[14] In Worcester, Massachusetts, over the entire period of March 1942 through 1945, 34,000 students raised $1,632,416 for the purchase of war bonds and stamps.

[31] In Tonganoxie, Kansas, the town's small high school with 130 students sought to raise $175,000 for a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber to be named "Chief Tonga".

After several months, the students were $2,000 short on the morning of the final day and managed to sell another $5,000 in bonds on their lunch period to meet the goal.

It was captured by the Germans in Italy and recaptured a year later by Canadian paratroopers in Holland, who, noting the Stockton tag, returned it to the American military.

It had strong backing by teachers and administrators, who, being well respected, effected further support from the community (which purchased most of the bonds sold by the students).

[1]: 176 Factors that negatively impacted the program included resistance by some school administrators to any Federal involvement in education, the size of the state and local education bureaucracy, teachers who felt overburdened, and physical complexities related to the thousands of schools that operated without common organization.