CHAPTER XXI

SCIENTIFIC SUPERVISION

EVOLUTION OF THE DEMAND FOR SUPERVISION

In the days when the school system was simple in its equipment and in its course of study no distinction was drawn between the problems of teaching and the problems of organizing the school. The teacher did everything that was done in the school. The teacher made the program, promoted the pupils, consulted with the town officials and parents, conducted the classes, and in not a few cases swept the floor and built the fire. There was, to use a phrase of the business world, no overhead management.

The course of study has grown complex. The work of the classroom is absorbing, and yet its success depends on equipment and organization that need to be studied and intelligently arranged. The work of one school must be correlated with the work of the schools in neighboring communities. The public must have authoritative information about the fiscal needs of the school and about the outcome of the public investments in education. The demand has arisen for a new type of school officer—the supervisor. This officer is not a teacher but a manager. His duty is one of organization and central adjustment.

THE PRINCIPAL

The new demand here referred to can be described by means of an example which exhibits one of the greatest weaknesses of our present school system. Schools of all grades which have grown large enough to employ three or more teachers commonly have an officer who is known as the principal.

In the small school the principal spends most of his or her time in teaching. In larger schools the principal does no classroom work. In both cases the principal is universally selected for a special position in the school because of his or her success in teaching. The work of the principal is thought of as that of a head teacher. The fact is, however, entirely at variance with this idea; the work of the principal is not that of teaching. Principals ought to be managers and central organizers. They ought to know the system as a whole and ought to devote time and thought to problems of a managerial type. The weakness of our present school system is that most principals are in no sense equipped for this central managing task. They do not know how to use profitably the release from classroom work which attaches to their office and title. The result is that they drift, often with the full cognizance of the board of education, into the habit of spending time on trifling clerical tasks which are wholly unworthy of the special position which they are supposed to occupy in the system. It is a deficiency of our educational system that while there are institutions for the training of teachers there are only a few general courses for administrative officers.

There certainly can be no objection to experience as a teacher in the classroom as preliminary training for the person who is to occupy a school principalship. But the moment the experienced teacher leaves the ranks and takes up the office of principal, a wholly new set of central problems should come within his view. He should recognize the fact that from this time on his task is one of a broader type, and the successful execution of that task will require a kind of study which is demanded at most in very minor degree of the teacher.

OTHER SUPERVISORY OFFICERS

What has been said of the principal is true also of assistant superintendents and of the superintendent of the school system. It is true also of departmental supervisors who have general oversight of certain subdivisions of the work. All these officers ought to become expert in a type of study and a type of management which are not expected of the individual teacher.

LACK OF PUBLIC APPRECIATION OF CENTRAL PROBLEMS

In general, it is evident from a study of American school systems that emphasis has not been laid on central organization. Cities have employed a superintendent when they had a population of five thousand inhabitants and have expected a single officer to continue to perform all the duties of that office when the population has increased to one hundred thousand. A principal is put in charge of a high school of two hundred students and continues to have full responsibility for the school when it increases to eight hundred students. Boards of education have refused to give supervisory officers clerical assistance, and have thus required a principal or superintendent receiving the highest salary of any person in the system to do work which a clerk could do more economically and quite as efficiently, thus interfering with the performance of important central duties for which no time is left.

MANAGERIAL TRAINING IN RELATION TO DEMOCRACY

The training of a large number of persons who will be competent to take up managerial functions is especially important in the school system of a democracy because the problems of each community are in some measure local problems to be solved at the point where they arise. In a school system which treats every child and every community exactly alike administration is simplified through uniformity. In a school system which is as complex as ours there must be an intelligent adaptation of organization to particular ends, and every device which will promote such adaptation is economical.

THE PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT DISCUSSION

The general discussion of supervision will be clearer if we take up for brief description some of the problems which should be dealt with by central officers and some of the methods of solving these problems. It will not be the purpose of this discussion to attempt anything like a complete enumeration of such problems or methods, but merely to suggest their type.

STUDIES OF THE COMMUNITY

First, there must be a study of the community. To some extent the individual teacher must take a share in this study. The character of each pupil and the facts about his home surroundings are important to the teacher in carrying on class work. But there must be some agency which can devote time and attention to a systematic collection of facts. The teacher has a right to expect that the school system as a system will make information readily available which it would be difficult for an individual to collect. The central officers should make such a study.

The making of a school census is a duty of the central officers who have in hand the enforcement of the compulsory-attendance laws. When these officers recognize their task as a large educational task, they will make the census not merely a formal basis for compelling attendance but a means of collecting a body of facts on which educational adaptations can be based.

It has been pointed out in earlier chapters that the community should be studied with a view to discovering the needs of pupils. Up to this time such studies have been made as special undertakings in a few isolated communities. For example, the industries of Richmond, Virginia, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and of the state of Indiana have been studied by special commissions and reported at three annual meetings of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education. What is needed is a constant study of these problems in every community. Again, teachers cannot meet the demand. This problem is a central problem, and the central management must be equipped to get information which the teachers need but cannot collect.

SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT OF TEACHERS

A second group of central problems have to do with the selection of teachers and their continued training while in service. It used to be very generally assumed, and in some quarters it seems to be assumed to-day, that in the teaching profession there is no need of training beyond the initial normal course or the initial college course that brought the candidate through the first requirements. A kind of persistence in professional efficiency on the part of teachers is assumed.

The day of such easy-going neglect of professional requirements is over. Score cards of teachers’ qualifications are being worked out. The relative importance of such personal qualifications as a pleasant voice and manner as compared with such products of training as knowledge of the correct forms of English expression and knowledge of geography or Latin must be determined with direct reference to the particular duties which are required of the teacher. The development of methods of correcting deficiencies in the equipment of a teaching corps, the proper distribution of the time and energy of a group of teachers, and the proper method of keeping the records of the work of teachers are all central problems. As the teacher stands in a central relation to his or her class, so the supervisor stands in a central relation to a corps of teachers.

Of all the problems touching teachers, that of their training in service is perhaps the most important. There is a great deal of very blind and ineffective effort expended each year in futile attempts to meet this problem. A great deal of required reading is done by teachers, and a great many meetings are attended which could be turned to better account if there were well-organized systems of training in service and of parallel promotional requirements.

STANDARDIZATION BY MEASUREMENT OF RESULTS

A third group of problems are those which have been referred to in the chapter on standardization. The results of classroom work must be evaluated and comparisons must be made on a large scale to guide the future work of the pupils. In some measure this is a problem for teachers. But so far as the individual class teacher is concerned, there will have to be dependence on central agencies for the collection of material which can be used in comparisons.

At the present time a large share of the standardizing material is being collected by private agencies. Men and women who are interested in the promotion of educational science are making individual studies and are bringing together bodies of comparative material. This is entirely legitimate so long as the movement of standardization and quantitative treatment of results is in what may be described as an experimental stage. As soon as the utility of measurements has been proved, it becomes a public obligation to provide agencies for this work.

The growth of the movement toward the addition in all large school systems of one or more officers whose duty it shall be to measure results has been commented on in earlier connections. There is a national organization of school-efficiency officers with a membership including representatives of some twenty of the leading systems of the country. This shows in a concrete way that the demand for central officers of standardization is beginning to be met.

AN EXAMPLE OF PUBLIC RECOGNITION OF THE NEED OF EFFICIENCY MEASUREMENTS

A single example of a personal type may serve further to impress on the reader the character of this movement. Mr. S. A. Courtis, who is widely known as the author of a system of arithmetic tests, began his work in testing as a teacher in a private school for girls, the Liggett School of Detroit. He devised tests to find out how well his pupils were doing their work. He found at once that he needed comparative material because he saw that the success of his classes was in a measure a comparative matter. He published his first findings, and secured the coöperation of other interested teachers and school officers. Soon he became a center for arithmetic tests. He was compelled to give up more and more of his time and energy to a task which was broader in its scope than the task of teaching his classes. The school was intelligent enough to recognize this general service to all schools and gave him time and assistance in organizing his tests. The individual work of a scientific student thus began to develop. He was called to all parts of the country to discuss his methods and results, and centers of interest were established where his tests were used.

Ultimately Mr. Courtis was called to assist in the survey of New York City and in the surveys of other systems, notably Gary, Indiana. He was also asked to organize for the city of Detroit a department of investigation as a permanent division of the administration of the city schools.

SCIENTIFIC STUDIES AND CENTRAL SUPERVISION

Example after example could be given of the organization of public supervision on the basis of private scientific investigation. These examples are important not only as exhibitions of the demand for more central supervision but also as demonstrations of the demand that all the larger problems of the school system be approached in the scientific spirit. The school system of this country, like all public institutions, has passed through the period of first organization. This was a period of urgent practical demands. Work had to be done by any means that came to hand. The situation was like all pioneer situations. In many cases teachers who were meagerly trained had to administer unorganized courses of study, and the public had to be satisfied with results which were, to say the least, uncertain. The pioneering period is not altogether passed yet, but there is wealth enough in most communities to support a more deliberate type of organization. There is a perfection of the instruments of education, an organization of the agencies of education, and a standardization of results which were impossible in earlier days.

The business of the central officers in a school system can be defined in terms of this discussion as the collection and distribution of scientific information and the administration of the system in keeping with the scientific information thus collected. Such a formula can be carried over to problems other than those enumerated thus far in this chapter. The problems of promotion and of the course of study, even the problems of class management and instruction, have large supervisory aspects with which the central school officers must deal.

SCIENTIFIC SUPERVISION

Such a statement gives a view of the principalship or superintendency of schools which is wholly different from that which is expressed by applying to these offices the title “head teacher.” In England the chief officer in a school building is the head teacher or the head master. These names imply merely an extension of the teaching function and fail to recognize the necessity of a scientific study and administration of the schools.

The view advocated in this chapter is also at variance with the conception expressed in the titles of the chief school officers of German schools. There the head of a school is a rector or director. His personal authority is large. He continues in many cases to teach; his administrative influence as implied in his title arises from the fact that he represents the state. His task is that of dictating school policies, not that of organizing the school on the basis of a complete scientific study of the educational situation in the community in which he works.

It cannot be asserted that the American principals of schools are everywhere devoted and competent students of the science of education. There is, however, a freer opportunity in our schools than in those of any other nation for a complete realization of the scientific ideal. There is comparative freedom of organization, and there is comparative adequacy of equipment. There is at hand a body of broadly collected information. With this background there is every prospect of a more intelligent use of all the opportunities which are gradually being evolved for intelligent scientific supervision.

EXERCISES AND READINGS

The study of community needs has been carried on most vigorously in trying to answer the question, What industrial training do pupils in cities need? The National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education has organized three extensive surveys, one in Richmond, Virginia, one in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and one in the state of Indiana. One of the best exercises which can be suggested is for the class to study the needs of a community after the model of one of these surveys.

A second exercise that may be suggested is that of examining the operations of a school building in detail. How does a building get its supplies? How many janitors are there? Who supervises the janitors? How much time does a principal spend in visiting rooms? What reports does a principal have to render? What reports do the teachers render to the principal?

The volumes of the Cleveland survey, including those which deal with industrial education, are models of exposition of community needs. (Copies may be secured from the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City.)

There is a body of sociological material with which students of this chapter ought to become acquainted. See the _Survey_ (New York City), a journal devoted to the discussion of sociological problems.