Academic departments are held strictly responsible for the mastery of content. In this connection, they have a free hand in setting up whatever requirements they deem necessary to meet this responsibility. The Department of Education takes the initiative in reporting lack of content mastery (and also evidence of superior mastery). We have found that such departments are very sensitive to criticism of this kind and a number have voluntarily asked for assistance in shaping courses for teachers. This plan has, in our opinion, produced much better results to date than mere requests for cooperation. It must be admitted, however, that we need closer collaboration than we have yet achieved.

Academic faculties in social studies, finance, and business administration form committees to advise with students.

We have developed a very close integration between the College of Education on the one hand and the College of Liberal Arts and the Graduate College on the other. We utilize the facilities of the entire campus by introducing great flexibility into individual student programs with respect to the amount and nature of academic work which seems indicated in each individual case.

In developing and carrying forward our program for the training of superintendents of schools, the faculty of the Graduate School of Public Administration plays an active part in determining the nature of the program, and practically all of the students taking the program in preparation for the superintendency are members of one or more seminaries in the School of Public Administration.

Chapter 3

Selection and Guidance of Students

THE QUESTIONS which were included in this section of the inquiry were directed to problems of implementation. The assumption seemed valid, that selection and guidance procedures, generally, have been developed imperfectly and that many schools, colleges, and departments of education are uncertain and somewhat confused as to how selection and guidance responsibilities can best be implemented. As will be shown, the institutions canvassed report efforts and activities in this area which reveal rather general interest and concern, but which vary greatly in kind and intensity.

The importance of effective selection and guidance procedures seemed to be too generally understood and accepted to justify further elaboration in this study. Cocking and Williams have presented effectively the case for the application of these procedures in relation to the education of school administrators, with special reference to the importance of maintaining a balanced ratio between supply and demand for professionally trained administrators. It is difficult, however, to reconcile the apparent general acceptance of the importance of these procedures with the report of "indifference which national organizations of school administrators on the one hand, and professional schools offering programs in school administration on the other hand, have displayed in the establishment of entrance requirements to programs preparing for school administration . . . This is especially true in the one-year graduate program through which the majority of school administrators are being educated. In the majority of schools visited there are only two selective bases operating in this first year professional program, namely, the completion of a four-year undergraduate college program, and sufficient money to permit attendance at the institution."2 Returns from this present inquiry definitely substantiate this latter observation. Now to the questions raised in this inquiry.

1. Are systematic efforts made in your institution to identify and interest the more potentially capable persons in the work of administration?

The extent to which reported activities were "systematic" seemed to trouble some of the respondents. For this reason 5 of the affirma

1 Cocking, Walter D. and Williams, Kenneth R. The education of school administrators. Procedures used at selected institutions. Sponsored by the National association of colleges and departments of educa tion and the Commission on teacher education of the American council on education. Washington, D. C., The Council, 1941. 146 p. (mimeo.) p. 13-16, 70.

Ibid., p. 69-70.

tive responses might well have been negative in the light of qualifying statements and descriptions of activities submitted, while 2 negative responses should have been affirmative on the same basis. This undoubtedly reflects a desire for accuracy and, in some cases, modesty lest too much be claimed. Encouraging as well as interesting is the fact that 42 respondents indicated that such systematic efforts are being made in their schools. Only 19 replied in the negative, while one passed the question.

a. Describe these methods briefly.

Statements, descriptive of methods used to identify and interest the more potentially capable persons in the work of administration, were received from 34 institutions. Of these, 21 were specific and detailed, while 13 were general. The following statements reveal varying practices and points of view:

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

The counseling work done with undergraduate seniors, students in their fifth year internship and in the first year of graduate study are the chief media through which we attempt to identify the more potentially capable persons for administrative work.

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Practically all persons who come to the University of Georgia for special training in administration are selected. One member of the staff in particular, in addition to the aid given by others, spends a considerable portion of his time in identifying the problems of school administrators in the field, locating young people of potential promise as school administrators, working with them in their field situation, and finally advising them regarding further preparation. This procedure as worked out means that young people seeking further preparation as school administrators are carefully guided and advised before they enter upon their particular preparation. We have found this process to be very valuable in a great many respects.

KANSAS STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE (PITTSBURG)

Through a study of the undergraduate transcript, and through a guidance program at the undergraduate level by counsellors and deans and through a guidance program at the graduate level, through a graduate committee for each student, those students most likely to succeed in the field of administration are encouraged to work out a program helpful to them in that field and are recommended to the appointment bureaus as most likely to succeed. UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

One of the ways used to get the interest of the students of the right sort in the work of school administration is to permit senior students in the College of Education to take an introductory course in school administration. The other methods are for the most part, the work of individual instructors who teach both graduate and undergraduate courses in the field of school administration.

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

We have a half-time professor who gives fifty percent of his load to travel ling in the State of New York. One of his responsibilities is to try to find

likely young men who would make good principals and superintendents. These he encourages to come into the University. We make a definite and systematic canvass each summer of all the men in our classes in order to find the men who seem to be good potential administrators. We then make a special effort to get them to continue their advanced work and to make efforts to secure administrative posts. We have two $800 assistantships, four $600 assistantships, and ten scholarships which are used to attract the kind of men we would like to have prepare in the various fields, including school administration.

YALE UNIVERSITY

Enrollment in the Department is limited to 50 new students per year, all on the graduate level. This makes it possible to choose the best from the much larger number than those who apply for admission and who are able to satisfy the general Graduate School requirements. In addition the Department constantly seeks the cooperation of graduates of the department and other institutions in finding especially capable persons who may be secured for the several teaching fellowships available in the Department. The following statement should be included here, but without identification, because it describes a situation and a point of view which surely is not confined to the State and the institution reporting:

In the interest of accuracy it should be somewhere set down that the situation in... does not lend itself to guiding men into school administration. . . . The school administrators of the State are almost invariably men who were earlier acceptable coaches (sometimes departmental teachers in other fields than physical education) who find there are chances for their being made high school principals; and who later, after a few years of high school principalships, then find themselves elected to city superintendencies.

It is difficult to accept the situation described here as a valid basis for concluding that careful selection and guidance of students in training for administration is thus nullified in its effect or not worthy of increasingly rigorous application. It is precisely because of the universality of the situation described; the casual, haphazard, and somewhat accidental nature of the process which has frequently characterized entry into, and progress within, the teaching profession; that emphasis has been given in late years to the importance of rigorous selective and guidance procedures in the field of professional education for teaching and administration. If a professional status for workers in the field of education is ever to be achieved on any basis comparable to that enjoyed by members of the older professions, surely it must rest upon a sound foundation of professional education. Present practices of employing boards in selecting school personnel will be modified and improved only as these boards may be helped to appreciate and to apply increasingly higher standards of selection. In the total process of bringing about such reforms in practice, teachertraining institutions have a strategically important role. This responsibility, of course, is shared with State departments of education and State and national professional associations.

In addition to the statements quoted thus far one rather vigorous demurrer was submitted, as follows:

In our negative reply to this question we should like to utter an emphatic and vigorous protest against the policy of many institutions where administration per se is held up as a much finer thing professionally than classroom teaching. It is altogether unnecessary for us to interest the more potentially capable persons in the work of administration since the salary differential is already considerably in favor of administration.

It may well be that in the fact which this respondent deplores (that the salary differential tends to make work in administration attractive to many persons in training) lies one reason why more rigorous selection of trainees for administration is desirable. All of this does, however, serve to point up a problem germane to the matter under discussion. There can be no doubt that classroom teaching and administrative activities each make many essentially different kinds of demands upon personnel in terms of native capacities and training. That any responsible educator would differentiate between the two in terms of finer or less fine or desirable professional opportunities, is open to question. If there has been any tendency to glorify one as compared with the other the honors go to the classroom teacher. It is important to bear in mind that professional schools must provide a type of guidance which will offer, among other things, opportunity for all students to direct their training toward the kind of service which will give the individual concerned the best possible outlet for his peculiar talents and aptitudes. Such opportunities will include making fully available all of the information which can be assembled relating to employment opportunities, financial possibilities, professional rewards, and satisfactions. As pointed out by Cocking and Williams 3 a realistic process of fact-facing with respect to employment possibilities in terms of supply and demand will serve to bring home to the professional schools the necessity for increasingly rigorous selective procedures in the whole field of teacher education. Without doubt more sins have been committed against individuals in permitting them to enter upon, and to continue in, programs of professional education for which they are not adapted or for positions that, for them, never materialize, than ever have been committed by steering potentially good classroom teachers into administration.

3

2. Are specific means in use in your institution for selecting the students most promising in such matters as general ability, scholastic achievement, health, personality, ability to grow, leadership, and professional interest?

While 42 affirmative responses were received to this question, as compared with 16 negative responses, not more than 50 percent of the

Ibid., p. 13-16.