Proceedings of the Annual Meeting

REPORT ON SCHOOL STATISTICS.

To the Department of Superintendence.

GENTLEMEN: Your committee, consisting of the undersigned and Messrs. James McAlister and George P. Brown, holding over from the last year, conclude their report *

* PRELIMINARY REPORT, MADE IN FEBRUARY, 1891.

GENTLEMEN: Your Committee, appointed at the last annual meeting for the purpose of considering and reporting on the subject of School Statistics, beg leave to offer the following preliminary report, setting forth the results of their studies on the subject, and postponing for another meeting, or for the work of another committee, if it be your pleasure, the completion of the details of a scheme of statistics which will afford the data required for a comparative study of domestic and foreign educational systems. Your Committee would first call attention to the object and purpose of collection of statistics, which they conceive to be the following:

Statistics reveal the nature and efficiency of the powers and forces involved in a process. Forces and powers are revealed in their results. Their results are of little moment, if dead results, except as they indicate what the living power has been and still is. In matters of education we inquire into the aims and purposes of the educative process, and learn this by a quantitative study of the means employed and the results obtained. It is evident, therefore, at the outset, that the quantities given by our statistical tables can have no significance except in connection with the qualitative elements involved. We pass over at once from the how many to the what kind. We seek, again, new quantitative data that may indicate the quality, but we never reach quantitative data that are significant in and for themselves. Your Committee would suggest as the four principal heads under which school statistics may be grouped:

First, Attendance of Pupils.

Second, Course of Study.

Third, Teaching Forces and Appliances.

Fourth, Support-Revenue and Expenditures,

Under these four heads they would group the following details:

Statistics of attendance should answer questions like the following

(a) How many?

(b) How long? (c) Who?

That is to say: (1) How many pupils in the aggregate? (2) How many relatively to the entire population? (3) How many relatively to the population of the school age, say 5 to 21, 6 to 14, or some other period agreed upon? Then this item should be further defined in five items: (1) How many enrolled during the annual session of school? (2) How many as average belonging? (3) How many in actual average daily attendance? (4) How many were dropped and afterward readmitted? (5) The number of cases of tardiness.

Under the second item of attendance (How long?) we wish the number of daily school sessions for the year, and the hours of a school session, the length and hour of recesses and intermissions.

Under the third item of Who? we include such items as

(1) How many of each sex ?

(2) How many at each year of age, and the average age?

(3) Race.

(4) How many born in the town or State where the school is situated?

(5) How many born in other parts of the same nation?

on Statistics by offering, first, a list of the items which, in their opinion, should be collected to show the workings of a school system.

They have arranged these items in three classes. The first class includes the essential data which should be taken every year, and from all schools. This first list contains the essential and indispensable items for every annual report.

The second list contains the more important of what we may call occasional statis

(6) How many born abroad?

(7) Occupations of parents.

II.

Under the second of our four chief heads we should ask for statistics regarding the course of study, and thus determine by this grade of schools as follows:

(a) Kindergarten.

(b) Primary and grammar school.

(d) Higher education.

We should ask very carefully as to the relations of these items to the first class of items, especially age, sex, and average attendance.

The primary and grammar schools are to be distinguished from the secondary schools by the following tests The introduction of algebra, or of an ancient or modern language, marks the beginning of the secondary course of study. The higher course of study should be marked by analytic mathematics, or by logical and philosophical studies, or by advanced language studies.

III.

The third general head, The Teaching Forces and Appliances," includes

(1) Buildings and accommodations.

(2) Size of schools under one principal teacher (or else number of pupils per teacher).

(3) Number of teachers.

(4) Supervision.

(5) Means of training teachers.

(6) Examinations of teachers.

(7) Methods of discipline and instruction used by teachers.

IV.

The fourth general head, "The Support of Schools," includes—

(1) REVENUE. Items of.

(a) Receipts from State and local taxation.

(b) Receipts from funds or productive property.

(2) EXPENDITURES.

(a) For teachers' salaries, including supervision.

(b) Incidentals, including janitor hire, fuel, apparatus, and other current expenses.
(c) Permanent investments, including building and repairs.

Your Committee would call attention to the importance of a detailed discussion of the use to be made of these several items, in studying the effective forces of educational systems, and in comparing one with another. Such discussion is not here attempted, but is suggested as a proper subject of a supplementary report. Moreover, your Committee have observed the prime necessity for such a definition of the several items as to prevent misunderstanding. A description of the best methods of keeping and tabulating the several items would also be a very useful addition to such a report. In dealing with reports, not merely reports from a foreign country, but with reports from different sections of the United States, your Committee has been impressed with the necessity of a glossary of terms used in tabulating statistics. There should be a careful collation of all terms and designations used here and abroad, and so minute a description given of the processes of ascertaining the data under the several heads, as to leave no doubt in the mind as to the exact meaning of each. Without this accurate information there can be no satisfactory comparative study of school systems. All of which is respectfully submitted.

W. T. HARRIS.
JAS. MACALISTER.
GEORGE P. BROWN.

tics, and should not be expected every year, perhaps, nor from all schools. A State superintendent may, for example, collect statistics one year regarding the place of nativity of pupils and parents, another year he may take occupations, and another year he may collect items regarding the preparation of the teaching force.

In our third list we have included still less essential items, which may be collected at still rarer intervals.

In the next place, we have given a tabular summary showing in detail the items actually collected in the several States of the Union, and side by side with it an exhibit of the statistical items collected in the several countries of Europe. As these details cannot be read before an audience, your committee submit the same for printing in an appendix, hoping that they will be found useful to State officers in the preparation of their forms and blanks for collecting these returns. All of which is respectfully submitted.

W. T. HARRIS, Chairman of Committee.

APPENDIX I.

SCHOOL STATISTICS.

I. FUNDAMENTAL ITEMS.

1. Number of children of legal school age, classified by race and sex (school

population).

a, White males.

b, White females.

c, Colored males.

d, Colored females.

NOTE.-These letters, a, b, c, d, are used in these tables always to indicate race or sex as here indicated.

2. Number of pupils enrolled on the school registers (excluding duplicate registrations), classified by race and sex (a + b + c + d).

NOTE.—The plus sign (+), when used, indicates that the items between which it is placed are taken separately. Thus, a + b means that the white males and white females are given separately. Where this plus sign is omitted, the items are not given separately in the reports.

3. Average daily attendance, classified by race and sex.

4. Average length of school year (days).

5. Number of teachers, classified by race and sex.

6. Number of pupils receiving kindergarten instruction, classified by race and sex. 7. Number of pupils receiving elementary instruction (including kindergarten pupils), classified by race and sex.

8. Number of pupils receiving secondary instruction, classified by race and sex. 9. Number of students receiving higher instruction, including colleges, schools of medicine, theology, law, technology, classified by race and sex.

10. Number of students in special schools, classified by race and sex, including trade schools, evening schools of all kinds, manual training schools, schools for the defective and dependent classes, reform schools, commercial schools, and nurses' training schools. 11. Number of buildings used as schoolhouses.

12. Total seating capacity of such buildings (number of pupils that can be accommodated).

13. Value of all property used for school purposes.

14. Average monthly salaries of teachers classified by race and sex.