School Reports and School Efficiency
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM.
- Author:
David S. Snedden and William H. Allen, for the New York Committee on Physical Welfare
of School Children. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1908. ^Pp. xi + 183.
To the great majority of people the school report is the only tangible evidence of what the school administration is doing. Citizens generally canot be expected to know what goes on in the school rooms and in the meetings of boards of education, nor what is taking shape in the back of the superintendent’s head. Even were they afforded the utmost opportunity and gifted with unusual perception, it is not likely that without convenient summaries and condensed statements they could form any idea of the public school system as a whole. If the school report is at once the evidence and test of the school administration it is clear that its ideal is such a marshalling of the facts regarding the schools of the city as will give the reasonably intelligent citizen a clear notion of just how well the schools are performing the duties entrusted to them.
The book before us is a study of the school reports for the purpose of ascertaining how far and in what manner they seek to embody such an ideal. It is a study in comparative administration.
This study reveals so wide a diversity among school reports as to preclude the idea of any uniformity of belief as to what they should contain. While uniformity of scope and treatment is not to be expected, it might reasonably be supposed that the similar purposes of the school administration in different places would give to these reports a certain family resemblance. In so far as such a resemblance can be traced, it does not appear to be so much the result of parallel internal development as the product of external compulsion or suggestion. The fact that state educational departments are charged with the allotment of state school funds according to a fixed unit in school work, has led to an emphasis upon such units. A similar influence has been exerted by the United States Bureau of Education in its request for information along certain definite lines.
Apart from these influences tending toward a certain uniformity, there are other forces working in the same direction, though less effectively. The trend of current discussion in educational affairs is not without its influence, and when certain facts are needed in any city to point a moral or adorn a tale, the experience of other cities suggests investigations or arrangements of material which are new to the city in question. Conscious efforts to promote uniform treatment of statistical data, a theme which has been discussed almost to weariness by the National Education Association and kindred organizations, have been singularly fruitless.
With these general considerations by way of introduction the work takes as its main theme the scope of educational statistics. In them we find the condensation of educational experience, and here more than in other parts of the text we should expect the experience and practice of one city to be helpful to another. Too often, indeed almost universally, the tables of facts are isolated from the text of the report and no effort is made to explain their meaning or set forth the salient facts which they present. In view of the volume of tabular matter there is a painful paucity of interpretation.
The method pursued by the author, in recording the facts, is to furnish specimen tables from the different reports in regard to each matter touched upon, giving a selection of the simpler and then the more detailed statements to be found in them. The following heads are treated in this way: School plant, expenditure, census, attendance, age of pupils, promotion, survival, compulsory attendance, high schools, evening schools, vacation schools, libraries, medical inspection, teachers, and summaries. The variety of forms exhibited is highly instructive although, it must be confessed, somewhat bewildering. The author has confined himself so strictly to a study of methods that he is disposed to let the tables speak for themselves. This is all very well if one understands their language. One cannot help but feel that in many cases some explanation why the detailed tables are to be regarded as superior, beyond the fact that they are more detailed, would have been illuminating and would have somewhat relieved the tedium for the general reader of this important chapter.
No attempt is made to outline a model report. Instead, in chapter five we have a series of questions which might be answered in a school report. The list does not pretend to be exhaustive, but in reality it constitutes a somewhat formidable program if it be assumed that the greater part of these points should receive attention.
Conscious of the fact that somewhat staggering demands are made on the school administration, the discussion of “suggested economics and improvement” comes as an antidote. This is a brief discussion of short cuts and methods to get at desired results, tending to a simplification of records and such forms and registers as will supply the needed information, without excessive work. This is a very vital point and the suggestions as far as they go are admirable.
While the subject presented in these pages is thoroughly technical, the work may be commended most heartily to school authorities and to all who are interested in the progress of our schools. It is an appeal for exact information and should not be passed by without a hearing. Such information in regard to our schools?one of the most important branches of our government?is sadly lacking. It has too often been assumed that the management of schools was a matter for experts, which outsiders could not properly judge. Within certain limits this is true, but it fails to distinguish between the scholastic and the administrative sides of school work. We undoubtedly need, both among our school authorities and in the public at large, a keener perception of the requisites of a sound and effective administration. It is not perhaps too much to say that there is no great business enterprise of the people of which they know so little as they do of their schools. In private affairs such ignorance on the part of directors and stockholders would lead to bankruptcy.
The authorship of the several chapters of the book is distinctly stated. The general considerations herein briefly noted are the work of Dr Snedden; the particular application to the city of New York is the work of Dr Allen. Those who are familiar with Dr Allen’s work are aware that he can always be relied upon for a readable and spicy statement. But in view of the predominantly local interest of his discussion and the inexorable limits of space it has seemed best in the foregoing notice to lay the greater emphasis on those larger aspects of the subject which are from the pen of Dr Snedden. Roland P. Falkner.
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