Date of Award:

5-1940

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

School of Teacher Education and Leadership

Department name when degree awarded

Education

Committee Chair(s)

E. A. Jacobsen

Committee

E. A. Jacobsen

Abstract

Inasmuch as this study is concerned primarily with state school administration and an educational survey concerned with administration, it appears proper to devote some attention to the evolution of these two things. The first consideration will be given to the development of state educational administration.

When grants were made by congress to the various states for educational purposes, the responsibilities of administration went to the states. The state administrative systems evolved as a natural process. Cubberley traces this development from the time the boards consisted of ex officio state officers entirely, through the time when school men were ex officio members, on to the time when most boards were a combination of the two types, and finally shows the transition to the lay-appointive boards now approved in theory if not entirely in practice.(1)

Schrammel has analyzed the state administrative systems and has given us an accurate account of their composition, functions, etc.(2)

The state superintendency, as an office which has continued to the present time, was first established in Michigan in 1829, although New York claims the distinction of having the first superintendent in 1812. Reeder has made an exhaustive study of the superintendent as chief school officer in the United States.(3) The evolution of the superintendent from a clerk to an executive officer of the school system follows rather closely the evolution of state boards of education. As responsibilities have grown, state administrative organizations have adjusted themselves to changing conditions. No definite plan has been followed, and, consequently, the variations in state administrative systems today are many.

Since an educational survey is the basis of this study, it seems essential to establish the significance of the survey movement in education by means of a brief digest of its evolution, and to place the Utah survey in relationship to the general movement and the present study.

Long before the term 'school surveys' came into use there had been more or less systematic studies of school systems. On hundred years ago Horace Mann and Henry Barnard were inspecting the schools of the New England states and were writing critical evaluations of what they found. They were visiting Europe with a view to finding better forms of organization and better methods of teaching than were common in their day in American schools. Before these men inspected schools and studied their strong and weak points Victor Cousin, a representative of the French educational system, had visited the Prussian schools and had rendered a report that was translated into English in 1832 and was widely read in America as well as in England. Calvin Stowe, following the example of Cousin, visited Prussia for the purpose of studying the school system. He went at the request of the legislature of the State of Ohio and reported to that body. His recommendations were the basis of far-reaching reforms in the educational systems of Ohio and other states west of the Alleghany Mountains.

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, popular interest in schools and colleges was greatly stimulated by the writings and addresses of numerous educational reformers: G. Stanley Hall, John Dewey, Charles W. Eliot, William Rainey Harper, Francis Parker, William T. Harris, and others. The magazines of the 1890's described the leading municipal school systems of the United States, thus reflecting the popular interest in the reforms that were being inaugurated by the leaders in these systems. The editor of the FORUM was especially active during the decade of the 90's in preparing educational articles describing the leading school systems. In 1897 he published what may be thought of as the first general survey of a particular educational field. His article dealt with spelling and reported the results of tests that he administered in a number of school systems. Rice did not use the word survey in his article on spelling, but his method of quantitative comparison of results of teaching and his analysis of the significance of his finds were of the type that later came to be recognized as characteristic of school surveys.

In the same year (1897) that Rice's article appeared, a publication appeared in Chicago under the title, Report of the Educational Commission of the City of Chicago. This report reflected the educational views of President Harper, who was the most influential member of the Commission. It was a thorough study of the educational system of Chicago and contained numerous recommendations for changes that the Commission deemed desirable.

The rapid development, during the first part of the twentieth century, of techniques for measuring results in education provided new methods which added impetus to the survey movement.

The schools were not the only institutions of organized society that were subjected to searching scientific inquiry. Municipal organization, housing, recreation, and other aspects of community life were studied by political scientists and sociologists by methods that yielded quantitative facts and permitted comparisons and evaluations on a large scale.

The year 1910 and the years immediately following may be thought of as the years during which the school survey movement had its real beginning. Up to that time studies of school systems were made either by public officials in the performance of their routine duties or by investigators interested in some particular phase of education. In 1910 and 1911 a new element entered into the situation. This new element can be described by saying that certain school systems imported experts from outside the system for the purpose of securing advice regarded as superior to that which could be secured from public officials or casual observers.

In 1910 Charles S. Meek, the superintendent of schools of the city of Boise, Idaho, invited Calvin N. Kendall, the superintendent of schools in Indianapolis, to spend a week inspecting the schools of Boise. Kendall submitted a report which was published in the Idaho Statesman, the local newspaper. It dealt with such matters as school buildings, teachers, the course of study, reorganization of the system and the attitude of the community. In 1911 Professor Paul Hanus of Harvard University inspected schools in Montclair, New Jersey, and Professor E. C. Moore of Yale University inspected the schools of East Orange, New Jersey. Both inspections resulted in published reports dealing with the problems of the schools.

It is interesting to note that in Part II of the Thirteenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, published in 1914, one of the questions most fully discussed was whether outsiders should be brought into a school system to pass judgment on the success of the system. There are in that yearbook several strong statements contending that a survey should be made by members of the official staff of a system, not by experts imported from outside.

In spite of the opinion held by the writers of the yearbook referred to above, the conduct of surveys by individuals from outside the system to be surveyed became the fashion. The reason outsiders were favored was that the regular members of the school staff were usually too fully occupied in routine administration to make the survey. Furthermore, in some cases either the board of education or some group of citizens believed that the affairs of their schools were not being well conducted and desired an impartial judgment. A number of the surveys made in the years between 1911 and 1920 did, indeed, result in a reorganization of the personnel of the staff of the system surveyed. Superintendents were literally afraid of surveys during the period mentioned and were for this reason opposed to the rapidly developing measurement movement in the educational world.

Some of the earliest surveys were carried on in situations that were distinctly controversial. For example, the school system of Baltimore, Maryland, was surveyed in 1911 for the purpose of setting at rest in one way or another the disturbance that had arisen as a result of the resolute efforts of a highly competent superintendent to raise standards. The Board of Education of Baltimore appealed to the United States Commissioner of Education to make a study of the situation and to render a report.

A high point in the survey movement was reached in 1915-16 when Leonard P. Ayres conducted with a large staff a survey of the schools of Cleveland, Ohio. Several special features of this survey may be noted. A large part of the survey was devoted to vocational education. Tests of reading accomplishments were developed and applied for the first time on a large scale in the course of this survey. A plan of publicity was organized for the purpose of making the people of the city acquainted with the results of the inquiry.

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