CHAPTER V

DELEGATING RESPONSIBILITY FOR CARRYING ON SCHOOLS

CLASS INSTRUCTION GIVEN OVER TO THE TEACHER

Although the community as a whole recognizes the need of education, and is willing to supply the necessary financial support, it cannot manage directly the details of school operation. The community cannot decide what seven-year-old children shall study. The community cannot decide what ought to be done with a disorderly pupil. It becomes necessary, therefore, for the community to devise some method of picking out suitable representatives who can carry on the schools.

The first task to be thus delegated was that of classroom instruction. One reads in the records of the early town meetings of New England how the whole community participated in the discussion of all financial matters and of many problems connected with the course of study. For example, the site of a schoolhouse, its cost, and its plan have always been subjects of community discussion. Again, the community has often decided whether it wants geography taught or certain branches of mathematics. But when it came to the daily routine of school work, the community employed a teacher and turned the children over to him.

SUPERVISION

The next stage of representative control was reached when the community came to a recognition of the necessity of some kind of intelligent supervision of teachers. Visiting committees were appointed, usually including the clergyman of the town, to look into the work of the classes and report to the town meeting.

So long as communities were small and fairly homogeneous in their social and intellectual characteristics it remained possible to get on with direct town-meeting control of the schools in all except the details of teaching classes and the supervision of teachers. One reads, to be sure, of disagreements at times between the town meeting and the teacher. The visiting committee and the teacher sometimes had a clash, and the supporters of each presented their views with vigor before the whole community. Problems of organization and administration were not lacking even in those simpler days, but the machinery of school management was fairly direct and simple.

SKETCH OF DEVELOPMENT OF A SCHOOL SYSTEM

How this direct control of schools became impossible with the growth of communities can be illustrated by a single example. In the city of Chicago in its early years the schools were independent of each other. Indeed, in the first years immediately after the incorporation of the town, the schools were private schools to which the taxpayers paid a stipulated sum out of the proceeds of the sale of school lands or out of district levies. The variable character of the teaching which was secured under this plan led to the adoption in 1835 of a partially centralized system of inspection and management. The districts were left independent in all financial matters, but a central board of inspectors was provided which was to unify the schools of the town. This central board was continued after the incorporation of the city, in 1837, but the districts were left independent in financial matters even after that date. The districts voted on the amount to be paid to teachers, on the housing of the schools, and on other matters relating to taxes. There were district committees to care for these local financial matters.

Even though the city government was centralized by the incorporation of 1837, the schools remained distinct. The central board of inspectors adopted certain textbooks, but it appears that the schools paid little attention to this action. How meager was the district provision for schools appears in the fact that it was not until 1845 that the first public-school building was erected.

It is not difficult to imagine the chaos under which such a system suffered. In 1851 the city council took away from the districts the power of hiring teachers and gave it to the central board of inspectors. It also appointed a business manager. The board of inspectors thus gained in power and influence, but they found themselves confronted by educational problems which they could not solve. In 1853 they adopted the plan which was relatively new in American cities, but was coming into vogue, of appointing a superintendent of schools. This officer at once graded the children, organized a uniform course of study, and took steps to equalize instruction in the schools of the city.

THE COMMUNITY SLOW TO DELEGATE SCHOOL CONTROL

The historical sketch outlined above gives us a clear insight into the way in which problems of school organization arise. The community must delegate the work of carrying on schools. There is a natural hesitation in intrusting this important work to anyone. As a result, the community is constantly taking a hand, even in these latter days, in all kinds of school discussions. Sometimes the whole city is drawn into a discussion of school matters. Sometimes the individual parent, in his capacity as a citizen, attempts to take into his hands the authority of the community, especially when the way in which the schools are being managed seems to him to be unfavorable to the interests of his children.

LIMITS OF AUTHORITY AND RESPONSIBILITY NOT CLEAR

The various officials who are created in the process of developing a representative system of school control often find themselves unable to determine the limits of their authority or responsibility. For example, it is almost impossible to determine where the duties of a business manager end and the functions of the superintendent begin. Thus, when it comes to the employment of teachers and the determination of salaries, the question arises whether these matters should be settled on educational grounds or on financial grounds, or on both.

Especially acute is the problem of determining the proper relation of the board of inspectors to the teachers and superintendent. The inspectors, or the board of education as they have come to be called, are chosen as the immediate representatives of the community. They are citizens in whom the community has general confidence, but they are not charged, as was pointed out above, with the daily tasks of teaching. The board must accordingly appoint teachers and a superintendent. These latter are selected because they have training and technical qualifications which the community needs in the schools. The technical officers have in an important sense an independent place in the educational system. It will be remembered that the teacher was the first one to whom the community delegated responsibility for the schools. Not infrequently the community finds its board of representative citizens on one side of a school issue and its technical officers on the other side.

Take a commonplace example. In the development of the course of study it has come to pass that many new subjects have been introduced which cost a great deal. Manual training and domestic science, as was shown in the last chapter, are expensive. Superintendents and teachers are enthusiastic about the educational value of these subjects. Sometimes the board of education has to curtail the expenditures involved because the community does not seem to be prepared to pay the price. If the board is supreme and the superintendent is its servant, how can a campaign of explanation be organized which will show the community what is needed? On the other hand, if the superintendent is at liberty to go directly to the community without the consent or sympathy of the board, complications arise which are not difficult to imagine.

STATEMENT BY A PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

A series of difficulties in the administration of the schools of Chicago brought out from the Public Education Association of that city a statement of the relation between the board of education and the technical officers of the schools which illustrates so clearly the matters discussed in the foregoing paragraphs that it may properly be quoted at length.

WHAT IS A REPRESENTATIVE BOARD OF EDUCATION?

Some people want the school board to be large, so that everyone may be represented. They think that it is desirable that there should be members on the board from every district in the city, every nationality, the various trades, and the various professions.

A board cannot be made into a representative body in this sense. It would never be large enough to include everybody, and it would be unwieldy in action. What is needed is a small board that will be broad in its interests, that will ask many questions covering all sections of the city, and that can act promptly. This board should have laid before it carefully drawn plans touching all the interests of the community.

This small board has to decide general policies and select the people to carry out these policies. It should not operate the schools but should see that they are operated. It should require evidence from the people who operate the schools showing that they are doing it successfully. It should demand and issue reports that are clear and intelligible to the whole community.

THE FUNCTIONS OF A BOARD OF EDUCATION

The functions of the board of education have never been fully understood in American cities because it has been thought of as the means employed by the people to conduct the schools. This is a wrong notion. The people want trained teachers and trained officers to conduct the schools. The people want the board of education to organize the schools so that they shall employ the most expert people who can be secured.

HOW A GOOD BOARD GETS THE WORK DONE

This statement leads to a consideration of the second group of people who have to do with the school organization. The schools could not get on without trained teachers. There was a time when each parent taught his own child. That was in the days when there wasn’t much to teach. To-day the parent places his child in the care of a specialist. The parent has come to the specialist because the parent has confidence that the specialist knows how to take care of the children. Teachers are not mere hirelings and nurses, inferior to the children; teachers are trained specialists.

As the system grows more complex there appear several classes of specialists—some who know how to deal with the pupils, some who know how to provide the children with proper seats and proper ventilation, some who know how to make courses of study, and some who keep the records of the schools.

Furthermore, the school system grows complicated on the material side. Buildings have to be erected and cared for. Land has to be evaluated and cared for. Some people think that all this is an open book to everyone who is in business. The fact is that knowledge of school equipment is just as highly specialized knowledge as knowledge of railroad equipment. A wholesale grocer would not think of himself as competent to estimate the cost of Pullman cars just because he knows about business. The better school systems now have accounting methods in schools which bring out such matters as the cost per unit of teaching in high schools and elementary schools, the standard cost of instruction in different subjects, and the cost of school equipments as related to their sanitary and hygienic fitness.

Every complete school system has its business interests in the hands of competent specialists who know about school costs in detail and in particular.

MAKING THE MACHINE WORK SMOOTHLY

By the time a school system reaches the point where it has all these specialists, it becomes necessary to give much attention to the central planning of a scheme of operation which shall make the whole machine work smoothly. There must be a central office where management is provided. In setting up this central office there has been a great deal of experimenting. Sometimes a teacher has been put in charge; sometimes a board member, in such case the president of the board has taken charge. Some years ago the city of Cleveland tried the experiment of putting a business manager in charge. This business manager appointed the superintendent of instruction. If one goes back into the history of Chicago, he finds that a business manager to take charge of school lands was appointed two years before the superintendent of instruction was appointed.

Gradually out of all the experimenting there has arisen a new type of school officer, a superintendent of schools who is a trained school manager. This manager does not teach; he does not shovel coal into the furnaces in the schools; he does exactly what the head of any great corporation does; he organizes the undertaking. He must know human nature; he must know how to get reports; he must know how to tell the people about the needs of their schools; he must know how to straighten out tangles; and he must know how to judge results. This manager must give his whole time to getting the machinery to work and keeping it in order.

In a large school system the manager’s office will be subdivided and there will need to be some further organization to keep it from falling apart. There will be one person in such an office who will know more about heating school buildings and one who will know about the quality of teaching. The more the subdivision the more precautions necessary to hold all parts of the system together.[25]

REPORT OF COMMITTEE OF SUPERINTENDENTS

Another recent document which throws much light on the problem of the relation between school officers is a report presented to the Department of Superintendence, a division of the National Education Association. This report opens with extracts from a number of letters from superintendents in all parts of the country. The discussion then proceeds as follows:

OBSOLETE ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM

The impression which a careful study of this material [referring to the material upon which the report is based] makes on one’s mind is the painful one that most administrative situations are undefined and shifting. Schools are administered, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but in most cases without clear definition of responsibility or authority. Public interests are fortunately protected in most instances, but the machinery is the primitive machinery of the vigilance committee, with now the superintendent, now the board of education, now the city council, now a parents’ association, trying to determine what steps shall be taken to promote public welfare.

STATUS OF SUPERINTENDENCY VARIES

In such a situation the accidents of personal influence play an unjustifiable part. Several of the letters from successful superintendents state explicitly or show between the lines that they are entirely in control of the policies of the schools. Some go so far as to say that any effort to define the responsibilities and authority of the superintendent would curtail their influence and would therefore be undesirable. At the other end of the scale are reports which show that the superintendent is shorn of all influence. In many cases he is little more than a clerk, dependent from day to day on the accidents of the board’s attitude for the meager authority which he tries to exercise. In some cases he goes to the board meeting only when especially invited. He has teachers sent to him by the board, and he knows nothing about the financial management of the system. Such a superintendent usually recommends the adoption of a state law endowing his office with rights.

The extreme situations referred to above may occur within a single state, showing that there is no such thing as a typical and clearly defined American school administration.

DISTRICT CONTROL DISCARDED SYSTEM OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION

The origin of the present situation is not far to seek. American schools were first controlled by the citizens of the district. They met in intimate neighborhood groups and settled the problems relating to their children. Communities were fairly homogeneous, the course of study was simple, school buildings were all about equally unsanitary, and teachers were equally untrained. A majority vote was a democratic and accepted method of carrying the community through these undesirables.

AN EFFECTIVE SUBSTITUTE TO BE DISCOVERED

Within a half century all this has changed. We know to-day that every center in a state is involved in the behavior of each of its communities. Indeed, our generation is witnessing the assumption by the federal government of an influence and authority in education which is without precedent in American history. This is not the place to comment at length on these changes, but one result is absolutely certain—the simple district control of schools is gone. It remains for us to decide what we shall have in its place. What we have to-day is a series of experiments of every variety that can be set up through the exercise of human imagination. Most of these experiments are going on behind closed doors. Most of them involve sooner or later a conflict of authority. Very few of them are understood by the people of the communities in which they exist.

DANGERS OF THIS PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT

The result is, first, much clumsy administration, even where everybody acts in the spirit of most cordial coöperation. Matters of vital importance to the school are delayed. Secondly, baneful agencies, seeking to profit unjustly, can set up in the school system influences which would have no weight if there were clear and definite responsibility and authority. Thirdly, the people of the community, being uncertain about what is going on, often become restless and critical and unwilling to give adequate support to the schools. Fourthly, the teaching staff sometimes becomes demoralized and relatively inefficient, at times the disorganization goes so far that teachers are actually and openly antagonistic to the board or superintendent, or both.[26]

ORGANIZATION UNDER SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES

It is by no means simple to prescribe a remedy for the difficulties which these quotations have described. When a democratic community delegates its unlimited powers to a number of different classes of people, there is sure to be a succession of problems of adjustment. Ultimately all parties will come to recognize the fact that educational problems can be solved only when a full study of the situation is substituted for personal opinion. Every party will have to be ready to acknowledge the supremacy of a thorough scientific statement of the conditions and results of school work.

Fortunately, examples are not far to seek of school administration which is based on scientific study. Two conspicuous examples will serve the purposes of this exposition.

CONTROL OF SCHOOL WORK THROUGH TESTS

In the city of Detroit there has been carried on for the last three years a systematic series of tests in the fundamental school subjects. The teachers-in-training in the city normal school are given courses in tests and in the interpretation of results so that they carry into the school from year to year the type of preparation which makes them intelligent and sympathetic from the first.

At first some unhappy results followed the wholesale measurement of results. Many of the teachers thought that the method was arbitrary and that their work would be misrepresented. Even the good teachers were afraid. They had been accustomed to the purely personal type of supervision based on opinion and answerable, when occasion demanded, by opinion. The teachers who were not sure of the success of their work were violent in their objections. The Board of Education, which at the beginning of the testing was composed of some of the cheapest politicians in the city, led the attack on what they termed a fad and a theory.

Experience has, however, justified in fullest measure supervision by a measurement of results. It has become increasingly clear to all teachers that tests show clearly where the work is strong and where it is weak. Not only so, but the tests help the teacher to determine with precision the exact points where the results need to be improved.

Above and beyond this, however, is the advantage which has come to the schools in their relation to the community. No longer is it necessary for teachers to speak in uncertain terms of their work. If the community will listen, it is possible for the Detroit school officials to make clear by scientific reports based on tests exactly what is going on in every school and in every grade.

The community showed its appreciation of the type of school management which was intelligent enough to base itself on exact studies of results by doing away absolutely with the corrupt and inefficient board and electing in its place a group of thoroughly representative citizens who are supporting scientific management and developing the schools along lines dictated by such management.

The example of Detroit is by no means the only one which could be cited. An increasing number of cities are revising their courses, training their teachers, and educating the communities by similar methods.

A STUDY OF THE BUILDING NEEDS OF A CITY

One other example must suffice for the present, since the subsequent chapters of this book are devoted to the treatment in outline of the various types of scientific inquiry which ought to govern school organization. This example is borrowed from a report prepared in 1916 by the superintendent of schools of the city of Minneapolis.

In a pamphlet entitled “A Million a Year” there is laid before the citizens of Minneapolis a clear statement, first, of what they had been doing in the way of erecting school buildings for the seven years preceding the report. The report then shows in detail what buildings cost, through a careful analysis of the records for earlier buildings. Then come statements of the uses of schools and the conditions which determine the kind of building which should be put up in each section of the city. Estimates are given in great detail of the needs for five years, and the city is asked to act on the situation as thus described.

The spirit of the study can be clearly seen from the introduction, which is worth repeating in full.

Why a five-year school building program? The reasons are: that the Board of Education may be able to calculate for some time ahead the financial resources available to meet building needs as these develop; that the numerous children of those sections of the city whose citizenry may not be over-insistent and persistent in their demands for improved and enlarged school accommodations may be as well provided as the children of other sections whose needs, real or fancied, are vigorously and incessantly pushed; in short, that there may be established and carried out a deliberately formulated, comprehensive and consistent policy of providing adequate and equitable building accommodations for all children of the city.

The program, as herein outlined, is the result of nearly a year’s study by the Board of Education, by a special committee of the Board, and by the executive officers of the Board.

In making this study and in formulating this program, the Board has invited and has received the suggestions and the coöperation of Parents and Teachers’ Associations throughout the city. Two public hearings on the subject were given, to which each of the sixty-two associations was invited to send representatives. Each association was also invited to submit in writing the needs of the district represented as it saw them.

A generous, indeed an almost unanimous, response was received to both these invitations. The educational policies involved in the program have been discussed by the principals of the schools and by the Educational Council. It has been the effort of the Board throughout to enlist the thoughtful help of those chiefly and most immediately concerned.

The program is published now in order to give still wider publicity to the interests it represents. It is still a tentative program, subject to such modifications as may result from further study by the Board and from suggestions and criticisms that may come from any one interested, whether individual citizen or organization. Such suggestions and criticisms the Board invites.

This program, modified as it may be, will be made the basis of necessary legislation, which is to be the first step in carrying it out. Such legislation, to provide the necessary funds, whether by bond issue or special tax levy, will be sought of the next Legislature.

The people of Minneapolis should understand clearly that the Board of Education has no means whatever of carrying into effect this, or any other, building program, for the Board has no power to raise one cent of money, either by bond issue or through tax levy. The State Legislature only has power to authorize bond issues and tax levies; on the authorization of the State Legislature, only the City Council may sell bonds. On recommendation of the Board of Tax Levy, the Board of Education may levy taxes within the maximum approved.

The Board of Education, representing the people of the city in their educational interests, is formulating this building program. If this program meets the approval of the people, the Board of Education will be pleased to carry it into effect. Before the Board can do this, however, the people, through their representatives in the Legislature, in the Board of Tax Levy, and in the City Council, must provide the necessary funds.[27]

THE ERRORS OF DEMOCRACY

The funds asked for were voted by the people. It would not be a complete statement of the facts, however, to omit the statement that an unfavorable reaction came in the form of a new board of education which at once began to blockade the kind of policy represented by this study.

American cities proceed slowly to a full realization of the possibilities of a satisfactory school organization. Democracy always masters its problems slowly and after many slips. The hopeful fact is that more communities are providing agencies for the scientific study of their school problems and are following in their organization the results of such study.

EXERCISES AND READINGS

In most communities there arise, from time to time, demands for new school legislation, or there occur controversies within the board of education or with regard to the superintendent of schools and his authority. As a practical lesson in democratic government the study of the changes that occur at such a time is very informing.

If there is no such exceptionally clear exhibition of the complexity of our public-school government, let the student find out what are the personal and professional characteristics of some board of education.

Would it be better, in some city known to the student, to elect a board or to have it appointed? Is a definition by law of the rights and duties of a superintendent advantageous, or should the superintendent acquire all the power and influence he can get from the board? Should a board of education examine textbooks? Should it determine the scale of salaries to be paid to teachers?

If a class does very poorly in a test in arithmetic, what are some of the different interpretations that can be put on this fact? Is the superintendent responsible, or the teacher, or the home?

Our American cities change teachers and superintendents frequently. What are the elements of cost which enter into such a change?

The best kind of material for reading under this chapter is a superintendent’s school report or one of the reports of a survey of a city school system.

CUBBERLEY, E. P., and others. Portland Survey. School Efficiency Series. World Book Company. This is one of the first strong school surveys, and takes up very fully the functions of the different officers of the school system. The parts dealing with administration are largely the work of Professor Cubberley, whose work on administration was referred to under the last chapter.

MACANDREW, W. The Public and its School. World Book Company. A humorous report dealing in an interesting and striking way with a number of administrative problems.

Seventeenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Part II. The Measurement of Educational Products. Prepared by the National Association of Directors of Educational Research. Public School Publishing Co., Bloomington, Illinois. This report gives a comprehensive survey of the work which is being done by efficiency experts in public-school systems.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] _Bulletin No. 1_ of the Public Education Association of Chicago, 1917, pp. 3-5.

[26] Report of the Committee on Relation between Boards of Education and Superintendents, in _Journal of the National Education Association_, Vol. I, No. 9 (May, 1917), pp. 967-968.

[27] A Million a Year, pp. v-vi. Monograph No. 1, published by the Board of Education, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1916.