Although teacher education was offered at the university's founding in 1848, the School was officially started in 1930 and today is composed of 10 academic departments.

[2] Public universities, including Madison, had been facing issues surrounding underclassmen attrition and education quality.

[4] The Board's composition during the twenties, led by Bart McCormick,[5] lent towards alliance with professional educators.

[7] They felt that the department suffered from a lack of autonomy, and that its split would raise the standing of education training to that of other professions with independence (engineering, law, agriculture, and medicine).

[2] Professional educators and university administrators had previously disagreed on whether the structural change was necessary, though the annual report claimed widespread support and cited the precedents in Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota.

[8] Its first director, psychology professor V. A. C. Henmon, had departed for Yale in June 1926[note 1] and had been against the School of Education's split.

His presentation was successful, which left Frank with the task of convincing the practice-driven education professionals and the scholarship-driven College of Letters and Science that Anderson's proposal struck the proper balance of theory and practice.

The regents approved the proposal later in April, and the School opened for the 1930 academic year with Anderson as dean.

[17] Historians E. David Cronon and John W. Jenkins wrote in their 1994 history of the university that the School gained esteem apace and remained close with the College of Letters and Science.

They added that those relationships had endured to the time of print, and that the School's closeness with other faculty was idiosyncratic as compared to other American institutions of higher education.

[17] Julie Underwood served as the school's eighth dean[18] for a decade before returning to the faculty in 2015 and eventually retiring in 2021.