Around 1843 he was appointed by the governor of Rhode Island agent to examine the public schools of the state, & suggested improvements; & his operate resulted in the reorganization of the school models ii years late. From either 1845 to 1849 he was the number 1 commissioner of public schools inside the state, & his administration was marked by the distinct step in training progress. Giving to Connecticut, he was, from either 1851 to 1855, “superintendent of common schools,” & principal of the State Normal School at New Britain, Connecticut.

From either 1859 to 1860 he was chancellor of the University of Wisconsin and agent of the board of regents of the normal school fund; within 1866 he was president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland; and from 1867 to 1870 he was the first United States commissioner of education, and in this position he laid the foundation for the subsequent work of the Bureau of Education. His primary service to a induced of education, notwithstanding, wwhen rendered as the editor, from either 1855 to 1881, of the American Journal of Education, a thirty-of these volumes of which are then the veritable cyclopedia of education, a single of the virtually all valuable compendiums of trading tools on the subject ever brought together through the professional of any one human. He likewise edited from either 1838 to 1842, and once more from either 1851 to 1854, the Connecticut Common School Journal, and from either 1846 to 1849 the Journal of the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction. He died at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 5th of July 1900. Among Western training reformers, Barnard is entitled to rank next to Horace Mann of Massachusetts.