CHAPTER IV

INVESTING PUBLIC MONEY IN A NEW GENERATION

THE COST OF EDUCATING AN INDIVIDUAL

We all know something about how much the family invests in its sons and daughters. The provision made by the father for his children is recognized as an expression of the parent’s willingness to give to the second generation as good a start in life as the family can afford. We are less likely to realize the extent to which the community is drawing on its material resources for a similar purpose. The city of Chicago—to choose a single example—gives to each boy or girl who goes through elementary school and high school an aggregate of six hundred and thirty dollars. If a child were notified to go to the city hall when he is eighteen years of age and receive this sum of money, we should recognize what it means for a community to pay for the education of its new generation. We should understand that the children of a city are its wards. When the matter is obscured by the complexities of the social machinery through which this bonus is distributed, we lose sight of the magnitude and directness of public expenditures for education.

The example of Chicago can be pursued even further. The sum stated above is too small, for it is based on the annual expenditures for conducting the schools; it does not include the large outlay for school buildings and for real estate which the city is called upon to make in order to provide rooms in which the education may be given. Nor do the figures cover irregularities. If the pupil does not get through each year’s work in regular order, the city is often called upon to provide more than the normal number of years of training.

One further item is to be added to the calculations above given, in the case of those who go to the city normal college. For these teachers-in-training the city pays an additional two hundred and twenty-eight dollars a year, raising the aggregate expended on such a student to nearly eleven hundred dollars.[15] Such students are typical of a vast number of young people who are attending at public expense state normal schools, state universities, and public technical schools. Indeed, even where students attend endowed institutions and pay tuition, the actual cost of their education is commonly borne in very large measure by the community, which in the last analysis is the source of the endowment.

TOTAL SCHOOL EXPENDITURES IN THE UNITED STATES

Another method of presenting the facts is to deal with totals. The figures which represent the expenditure for public education in the United States are so large that the individual who reads them usually passes them over with little comprehension unless he is given some background for comparison. Perhaps this background can be furnished by recalling the statement quoted in the last chapter, where it was pointed out that a century ago there was practically no conception of the principle of free public schools. Schools were supported in large measure by charity or by tuition. Most communities provided only a very short term and collected a rate bill, or personal tuition, from the pupils to supplement the small fund secured from taxation. During the quarter of a century before 1850 there was a widespread movement in the Northern states which gradually secured in the face of much opposition full public support for schools. Rate bills did not disappear entirely until 1871, the last state to abolish them being New Jersey, but at that date the principle of support through general taxation was completely established.

In 1870, as we are told by the Commissioner of Education, the total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools had reached sixty-three million dollars.[16] Nineteen years later, when the population had increased about 60 per cent, expenditures had more than doubled, reaching one hundred and forty millions. Since that time expenditures have increased by leaps and bounds, far surpassing increases in population, as indicated by the following table:

TABLE I. EXPENDITURES FOR PUBLIC ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS COMPARED FOR A PERIOD OF YEARS, INCLUDING ALSO A COMPARISON OF POPULATION FOR THE SAME PERIODS

====================================================================== | 1889-1890 | 1899-1900 | 1909-1910 | 1914 ————————————————-+————————————+————————————+————————————+————————————- Population[16] | 62,622,250| 75,602,515| 91,972,266| 98,741,324 Expenditures[17] |$140,506,715|$214,964,618|$426,250,434|$555,077,146 Expenditure per | | | | capita of | | | | population | $2.24 | $2.84 | $4.64 | $5.62 Expenditure per | | | | pupil in average| | | | attendance | $17.23 | $20.21 | $33.23 | $39.04 ======================================================================

These gross figures indicate a growth in schools that has never been paralleled in the history of any country. The doubling of expenditures between 1900 and 1910 is due in part to the rapid evolution of high schools. Elementary schools, however, have shared in the development. Teachers are more highly trained than ever before, new courses have been added to the curriculum, and better hygienic conditions have been provided in school buildings. There can be no mistaking the evidence that American communities are willing to support schools in a program of expansion and improvement.

COST A DETERMINING CONSIDERATION IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

An adequate comprehension of the meaning of the statistics of educational costs will make it impossible for the teacher of Latin to sit apart and say that it is not his duty to think of the community. The teacher of science cannot ask for unlimited equipment for laboratory exercises; the teacher of music or arithmetic cannot say that he is interested merely in spiritual and intellectual affairs and that he has no reason to consider material matters. The impressive fact is that a great public trust has been committed to the hands of teachers. The community has erected schoolhouses and taxed itself to the point where school expenditures have come to be looked upon as a serious burden in many a section of the country. It is a professional obligation resting on the teacher, be he of high or low degree, to think of his relation to this matter of public expenditures. The public is likely to become more and more insistent in the demand that public expenditures be absolutely purged of waste of any kind, either the waste that arises from extravagance or the waste that results from inefficiency.

RELATION OF SCHOOL EXPENDITURES TO OTHER PUBLIC EXPENSES

There is still another way in which the facts regarding the magnitude of the public investment in education can be formulated. In 1913 the Bureau of Census secured figures to show what proportions of the total funds spent by cities are devoted to various departments, such as general government, police, fire, and so on. For the larger cities it appears that about one quarter of the public revenues go to maintaining schools; in cities of smaller size the fraction is larger, reaching in some cases nearly one half. For purposes of our present study a few examples will suffice. These are given in Table II. Two cases are exhibited in Fig. 4.

TABLE II. PER CENT OF TOTAL GOVERNMENTAL COST PAYMENTS DEVOTED TO VARIOUS CITY DEPARTMENTS[18]

========================================================================= |GENERAL| | | | | | | |OTHER |GOVERN-|POLICE| FIRE|HEALTH|SANITA-|HIGH- |CHARI-|SCHOOLS|SMALL |MENT | | | | TION | WAYS | TIES | |ITEMS —————————+——————-+——————+————-+——————+——————-+——————+——————+——————-+———— New York | 13.6 | 12.1 | 7.0 | 2.3 | 8.0 | 7.8 | 8.7 | 27.9 | 12.4 Chicago | 15.3 | 15.8 | 7.9 | 1.3 | 8.8 | 6.6 | 6.4 | 24.6 | 13.4 Phila- delphia | 13.8 | 15.0 | 5.1 | 1.8 | 7.1 | 14.6 | 10.4 | 21.6 | 10.4 St. Louis| 12.4 | 15.5 | 8.2 | 1.1 | 10.2 | 13.0 | 6.6 | 25.3 | 7.8 Boston | 10.8 | 11.4 | 8.1 | 2.9 | 9.3 | 10.5 | 8.3 | 24.6 | 14.3 | | | | | | | | | Albany | 12.3 | 13.3 |14.1 | 1.4 | 7.6 | 9.3 | 3.0 | 27.9 | 11.1 Dayton | 7.6 | 10.1 | 9.9 | 1.5 | 10.5 | 18.4 | 4.1 | 33.4 | 4.6 Des Moines | 6.1 | 6.1 |15.0 | 0.8 | 4.6 | 9.7 | 0.3 | 46.5 | 10.9 Grand Rapids | 9.4 | 9.4 |14.0 | 3.0 | 6.8 | 6.5 | 1.9 | 42.3 | 6.9 Richmond | 9.7 | 10.8 |10.6 | 2.9 | 12.7 | 21.6 | 4.7 | 21.0 | 6.1 =========================================================================

These figures show why it is that the business man and the taxpayer are addicted to criticisms of school expenditures. It is difficult for the ordinary citizen to get this great expenditure of public money out of the center of his vision. He can, perhaps, be interested by some enthusiast in the introduction of domestic science or civics or some other new course of study; he may even become convinced of the need of improvements in the equipment of school buildings; but sooner or later, when the enthusiast has ceased to speak, the persistent fact that it costs a great share of the revenue of the city to conduct the schools will reassert itself as a dominant item in his thinking.

URGENT DEMANDS FOR ECONOMY AND EFFICIENCY

In not a few cases the problem of financing schools has in recent years become especially acute. Communities are in many cases at the limit now permitted by state laws controlling the levying of taxes. The maintenance of schools even at their present level is very difficult, and all the time there is the urgent push within the system for enlargements and improvements. Other communities which see the rapid increase in school expenditures, even while they are willing to tax themselves more for schools, are asking for clear evidence that school work is being done efficiently.

Such an attitude appears, for example, in a resolution passed by the citizens of Portland, Oregon, at a regular annual meeting of the voters held December 27, 1912:

Whereas, the average daily attendance at the public schools of this district has increased from 10,387 in 1902 to 23,712 in 1912, and the annual disbursements have increased during the same period from $420,879.61 to $2,490,477.28; and whereas, it is of the utmost importance that the public schools should be kept at the highest point of efficiency.

It is hereby declared to be the sense of this meeting that a full and complete survey be made of the public school system of this district.[19]

Many other examples could be given of school inquiries which have grown out of the demand for either better administration of finances or more efficient training. In 1910 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of New York ordered a survey of the schools of that city because the Board did not believe itself to be in possession of adequate information on which to base appropriations for education and because, to use the words of the resolution,

It is the sense of this Board that efficient and progressive administration of the schools ... is indispensable to the welfare and progress of the city and that generous appropriations ... are desirable in so far as assurance and evidence can be given that such appropriations will be expended for purposes and in a manner to promote the efficiency and welfare of the schools and to increase the value and effect of the instruction given therein.[20]

Such quotations show the intimate relation between finance and teaching, between the attitude of the community toward expenditures and the modern demand for a scientifically conducted school system.

EXPENDITURES IN RELATION TO WEALTH

Returning to the detailed study of school finance, it may be laid down as a fundamental principle that in general school expenditures are related to the ability of a community to pay taxes. Taking for purposes of illustration the three largest cities, we find that they have different degrees of wealth. New York City has an average wealth of $1765.28 per inhabitant; Chicago has only $1604.20; Philadelphia, $953.65. Evidently the capacity of these cities for supporting schools is very different. The differences in wealth correspond roughly to the varying scale of expenditures for elementary schools in these three cities. New York expends $45.67 per pupil; Chicago, $37.58; and Philadelphia, $32.22. The less wealthy cities commonly spend less on schools.

There is a certain equity in the variation in expenditures above noted. But there are conditions under which the variations in wealth are so great that if expenditure depended on the ability of a community to pay for schools, the children would suffer. In such cases the state must take a share of the costs and must, in the interests of the general community, pay for better schools than the city or district can itself afford.

If one thinks of a mining town, for example, where the population is made up entirely of laborers with large families and where the homes are crowded together in a small area, it will be recognized at once that the ability to support schools is very different from that of a well-to-do manufacturing city or of a sparsely settled, fertile farming region where the children are few and the taxable wealth is comparatively great. In the case of the mining town the state must step in to equalize in some degree the educational opportunities of the children. It is not to the advantage of the state as a whole that the many children of that town should be seriously limited in their schooling, because they will in due time scatter to other communities, and the safety and progress of these other communities require that there shall be adequate educational opportunities in the mining town.

This one example is enough to suggest the problems which arise in the study of support for schools. The sources of these funds and the equitable distribution of state school taxes constitute one of the large problems of public finance and call for careful scientific study. Such questions as the following arise and must be answered: Shall state grants be determined by the pupil enrollment, by the average attendance, by the aggregate attendance, or by the number of teachers employed?

COSTS OF DIFFERENT LEVELS OF EDUCATION

Turning to details of expenditure, we find a new set of problems. Perhaps the most impressive fact is that there is a wide discrepancy in every city between the average expenditures per pupil in elementary schools and high schools. Again, we may select as typical the facts for the cities referred to in an earlier table. These average figures are less striking than some which could be cited. In Los Angeles, California, the cost per pupil in the high school, at the same date as that for which the figures in Table III were compiled, was $285.67 as contrasted with the cost of $59.41 per elementary pupil.

TABLE III. COST PER PUPIL IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND HIGH SCHOOLS IN SELECTED CITIES[21]

============================================ | ELEMENTARY | | SCHOOL | HIGH SCHOOL ——————————————+——————————————+—————————————— New York | $45.67 | $105.86 Chicago | 37.58 | 85.15 Philadelphia | 32.22 | 87.10 St. Louis | 37.21 | 113.72 Boston | 44.81 | 82.77 | | Albany | 35.69 | 70.56 Dayton | 29.85 | 63.77 Des Moines | 33.66 | 51.17 Grand Rapids | 40.45 | 87.36 Richmond | 22.24 | 56.73 ============================================

It requires very little consideration to explain why there is a difference between these two types of expenditures. High-school classes are often small, teachers receive higher salaries, and equipment is more expensive. It requires much more consideration to justify the difference. There are some who hold that the elementary school is being sacrificed to the high school. Indeed, there are some people so extreme in their views that they would make all high schools tuition schools. They hold that Boston is in expenditures much less open to criticism than St. Louis. In St. Louis, on the other hand, it is pointed out that a most elaborate scheme of high schools has been organized with a view to providing every high-school student in every section of the city with the broadest possible opportunities. By way of further answer to the critics of the high school, it is asserted that the community gets back in public service from the student who has taken higher courses more than such courses cost. Certain it is, as the figures in Table III show, that cities are making expenditures on a most generous scale for the maintenance of high schools; and the total amount of this expenditure is greater than the table indicates because there are large initial appropriations for school buildings which are not taken into account in these statements of current expenses.

COSTS OF DIFFERENT SUBJECTS OF INSTRUCTION

Pursuing the matter further, we find that there are the widest discrepancies in costs due to differences in the subjects taught, to differences in the number of pupils assembled in class, and to other less conspicuous differences.

In order to bring out the differences between subjects in the same school, Professor Bobbitt has calculated the cost, per thousand student hours, of instruction in twenty-five medium-sized high schools, and presents in Table IV the median[22] cost of each subject.

TABLE IV. COST, PER THOUSAND STUDENT HOURS, OF INSTRUCTION IN HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE VARIOUS SUBJECTS OF THE CURRICULUM[23]

==================================== SUBJECTS | MEDIAN COST ——————————————————————+————————————- Shopwork | $93 Normal training | 92 Latin | 71 | Commercial | 69 Modern languages | 63 History | 62 | Household occupations | 61 Science | 60 Mathematics | 59 | English | 51 Agriculture | 48 Music | 23 ====================================

Translating this table into the form of a series of questions which school authorities and communities must face, we may ask: Is it desirable that shopwork be supplied in a school when it costs nearly twice as much as English? Is Latin enough better than modern languages to justify its retention in the program of a school when it costs eight dollars more per unit of instruction?

Like series of facts for the elementary schools can be borrowed from an unpublished study by Mr. G. Lee Fleming of Hibbing, Minnesota, and are reproduced in Table V. Certain selected facts are also exhibited in Fig. 5. The table shows that reading absorbs nearly two thirds of the expenditures of the first grade, while in the third grade the same subject gets a little less than one third of the expenditures, and in the sixth grade about one sixth. Opening exercises require about the same expenditure in all grades. Geography comes into prominence first in the fourth grade. A study of the table will show that financial statements of this type are indexes of academic organization.

TABLE V. THE PORTION OF EACH THOUSAND DOLLARS SPENT FOR INSTRUCTION IN EACH SUBJECT IN EACH OF THE FIRST SIX ELEMENTARY GRADES[24]

===================================================================== SUBJECTS | First |Second | Third |Fourth | Fifth | Sixth | AVERAGE | Grade | Grade | Grade | Grade | Grade | Grade | ————————————+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+———————— Reading | $611 | $407 | $307 | $240 | $150 | $156 | $312 Arithmetic | 5 | 101 | 176 | 187 | 181 | 190 | 140 Language | 95 | 110 | 126 | 130 | 178 | 105 | 124 Music | 86 | 90 | 84 | 67 | 58 | 67 | 75 Spelling | 3 | 92 | 90 | 93 | 80 | 71 | 71 Geography | — | — | 9 | 102 | 124 | 152 | 64 Writing | 49 | 68 | 61 | 61 | 52 | 59 | 58 Drawing | 60 | 80 | 55 | 66 | 32 | 42 | 56 Manual arts | — | — | 23 | 9 | 60 | 76 | 28 Opening | | | | | | | exercises | 34 | 21 | 23 | 21 | 24 | 25 | 25 Physical | | | | | | | culture | 11 | — | 15 | 14 | 40 | 39 | 20 Folk dancing| 11 | 22 | 25 | — | — | — | 10 Hygiene | — | 3 | 6 | 10 | 11 | 13 | 7 Construction| | | | | | | work | 28 | — | — | — | — | — | 5 History | — | — | — | — | 10 | 5 | 2 Handwork | 4 | 6 | — | — | — | — | 2 Sense | | | | | | | training | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | 1 ————————————+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+———————— Total | $1000 | $1000 | $1000 | $1000 | $1000 | $1000 | $1000 =====================================================================

COSTS OF CLASSES OF DIFFERENT SIZES

A second determinant of costs is the size of the class. One of the simplest ways of reducing expenses is to give a single teacher a large number of pupils to care for. In 1916 the superintendent of schools in St. Louis calculated that the reduction of elementary classes in the schools of that city by an average of one pupil per class would cost the city $65,000 per year. Los Angeles and Indianapolis have small elementary classes, the averages being 23.7 and 24.7 members per class respectively. The cost of elementary instruction is very high, being $59.41 and $50.45 respectively. St. Louis and Chicago have much lower costs, namely, $37.21 and $37.58 respectively. These low costs are secured in a very large measure by grouping children in large classes of 37.6 and 40.3 average membership per class.

SALARIES

Teachers’ salaries differ in different cities and affect the problems of cost; the number of hours that teachers teach is another cause of variation.

BOOKS AND SUPPLIES

Certain cities supply the pupils with books and materials, while other cities require the children to bring their supplies from home. In the long run, the cost falls on the community in either case, but it is differently distributed. In the first case, the taxpayers pay for the supplies as they do for school buildings, each taxpayer contributing according to the assessed value of his property. In the second case, parents pay for supplies according to the number of their children and without regard to their property.

In regard to general supplies, there are also differences in policy. Some cities are lavish in furnishing maps and reference books and specimens for nature study, while others are very economical in these respects, sometimes justifying their policy by saying that they put all they can afford to expend into teachers’ salaries. The question is thus raised: How far is it legitimate to spend money in providing material equipment, and how far should it be devoted to the payment of high-salaried teachers? Is it well, for example, to ask a teacher of good training in geography to instruct a class without any wall maps? Is it economical to ask a teacher of history to conduct his classes without books of reference? Or, comparing various kinds of material equipment with each other, one may ask whether it is more essential to spend money on well-lighted, well-ventilated rooms that are barren of apparatus or to put up with old buildings and purchase laboratory equipment.

THE MEANING OF FINANCIAL ORGANIZATION AND EDUCATIONAL ACCOUNTING

One reason why it is important that questions like those in the foregoing paragraphs be explicitly formulated is that many citizens think of school finance as wholly distinct from school organization. Very often members of the board of education will disclaim any knowledge of the course of study or of the qualifications of teachers and say that it is their sole duty to supervise expenditures. Consideration of the real problems of school finance soon brings to the surface the fact that financial expenditures are merely means to the end of supplying adequate opportunity for all the children who are required by legislation to attend schools. School finance is one aspect of school organization.

In recent years there has been a movement in the direction of better accounting systems which are designed to reveal the needs of the schools and the ways in which these needs are being met. The financial records of progressive school systems, instead of throwing together expenditures in general accounts, are keeping items of supervision distinct from items of teaching. Costs of supplies of various kinds are kept apart. Thus, janitors’ supplies are kept separate from crayon and other educational supplies. The cost of coal is used as a means of checking the efficiency of janitors.

The Bureau of Education of the United States has prepared bookkeeping forms, and a number of school systems are keeping uniform records of expenditures. This will greatly facilitate comparisons and scientific studies in the future and will help to make school finance more than a mere haphazard distribution of public money.

EXERCISES AND READINGS

What would it cost to supply all the members of a college class with free textbooks? Would it be equally just to supply a college class with notebooks? with writing paper?

Why is a laboratory fee charged in certain courses? Is a laboratory fee just in a class in physics? in chemistry? in drawing?

In case a boy is going to become a plumber, is the public under any obligation to train him so that he will become an expert? How about a doctor? What steps does the public take to insure efficiency in teachers? in railroad engineers? in mail clerks?

What are the state laws with regard to the amount of tax that may be levied for schools? Are upper limits really necessary?

A certain town is about to build a new schoolhouse. The building will cost in the aggregate about $30,000. If the building is provided with a sightly lawn in front and with an ornamental pattern in the brick, it will cost $400 more than if it is perfectly plain and the yard is made of gravel. If the corridor is made sixteen feet wide rather than twelve, the cost will be $400 greater. Shall the two expenditures be made or not?

CLARK, E. Financing the Public Schools. The Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation. (Copies may be secured from the Russell Sage Foundation.) This is a volume of the Cleveland survey.

CUBBERLEY, E. P. Public School Administration. Houghton Mifflin Company. This deals with the problems of public-school organization, including the general principles of finance.

RUGG, H. O. Report on the finances of the school system of Grand Rapids in the “School Survey, Grand Rapids, Michigan.” Board of Education, Grand Rapids.

RUGG, H. O. Report on the finances of the school system of St. Louis in the “School Survey, St. Louis, Missouri.” Board of Education, St. Louis.

FOOTNOTES:

[15]

Average cost per pupil of maintaining elementary schools for 1914-1915 $37.58 Average cost per pupil of maintaining high schools for 1914-1915 $82.36 Average cost per pupil of maintaining Chicago Normal College for 1914-1915 $228.84

Report of the Superintendent of Schools for the Year Ending June 30, 1915, in the Sixty-first Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of Chicago, p. 196.

[16] Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1916, Vol. II, p. 20.

[17] Ibid. p. 19.

[18] _Bulletin No. 126_, Table II, United States Bureau of Census, 1913.

[19] Quoted in fuller detail on pages 426 et seq. of the “Portland Survey,” by Ellwood P. Cubberley. Published by the World Book Company, 1915.

[20] Report of Committee on School Inquiry, p. 61. Published by the city of New York, 1911-1913.

[21] Figures taken from the financial survey of Grand Rapids, Michigan, prepared by Dr. H. O. Rugg and published in the survey of that city published by the Board of Education, 1917, and from the survey of St. Louis by the same investigator.

[22] The median is that figure above which and below which fall half the cases. It is, therefore, a suitable sample of the whole group. It is a better representative figure than the average.

[23] J. F. Bobbitt, “High-School Costs,” in the _School Review_, Vol. XXIII, No. 8 (1915), p. 526.

[24] G. Lee Fleming, Instructional Costs in the First Six Elementary Grades. Master’s Thesis, Department of Education, The University of Chicago, 1916.