Horace Dutton Taft (28 December 1861-28 January 1943) was an American educator, and the founder of The Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut.

He was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, the younger brother of William Howard Taft. After graduation from Yale University in 1883, where he was a member of Skull & Bones, he won the Townsend Prize and later became a tutor of Latin at Yale.

In 1890 he opened a college preparatory school for boys in Pelham Manor, New York.

On 29 June 1892 he married Winifred Shepard Thompson at Niagara Falls, New York. There were no children of the marriage.

In 1893 he opened a school in the Warren House at Watertown, Connecticut, adopting the name The Taft School in 1898. Many of the schools alumni went on to attend Yale.

Taft retired as headmaster in 1936.