This booklet describes how students and other researchers can use historical resources in their community to explore the history of their school and to determine how that history relates to community-wide and statewide developments. Although the manual is written primarily from the perspective of the public schools, the underlying theme of the manual--that local resources can be used by students and teachers for the recovery and understanding of local educational history--applies to nonpublic schools as well. The manual can be used on either the elementary or secondary levels. Following a brief introduction in Chapter I, the second chapter discusses the development of K-12 education in New York state. Chapter III contains a chronology of major events in education in New York from 1784-1984. The fourth and fifth chapters describe the variety of historical records and other resources available for researching the history of local schools and suggests where to find and how to use them. Chapter VI provides suggestions for classroom activities on local educational history. The booklet concludes with a list of further reading materials. (RM)