CHAPTER XIX.

INTRODUCTION TO THE STATISTICAL TABLES.

By EDWARD L. THORNDIKE,

Teachers College, Columbia University.

In this brief introduction to the statistical portion of the Report of the Bureau of Education for the school year 1906-7 I shall try to show in some measure what these statistics reveal that is of interest and significance; first, to all intelligent citizens; second, to the half million men and women who are engaged in the work of teaching; and, third, to those teachers, clergymen, editors, statesmen, and other students of education who lead public opinion and should possess expert knowledge.

From the quantitative point of view education may be considered as a business, and educational statistics as a statement of the accounts of that business. On one side we have, as a debit account, what is put in the labor of the teaching staff of the country, the supplies that are used up, the depreciation of the plant, and the time and labor of the students educated. On the other side, as a credit account, should be the changes produced in these students, their increase in bodily welfare, knowledge, skill, power, worthy interests, and noble ideals. Between the two we have, as an administrative account, a statement of the organization of the schools, the courses of study or training, the methods of teaching, the books, apparatus, tools, and other appliances, and the like.

The Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of Education is of necessity restricted chiefly to a statement of the debit account of what the nation has this year invested in the work of education. For the credit account, of the returns from the year's investment, could not be made out in full until each individual for whose happiness and usefulness to the nation and the world as a whole the investment has been made has lived his life-not, indeed, until his influence has lived its whole life to the end of the world. Moreover, to measure even the immediate returns in the easiest case, that of increased knowledge, in one-tenth of the schools of the nation, would demand an appropriation hundreds of times that now made for the Bureau of Education.

The administrative account also is in this country too complex for report. If education were controlled, or even supervised, by a central authority, there might be sufficient uniformity in educational practice to permit of a general account of it. But in fact it is almost true to say that no two cities or towns organize their schools alike, that no two teachers teach alike, and that no two schoolrooms have identical supplies to work with. It is certainly true to say that the variations amongst States, amongst communities within the same State, and amongst schools within the same community, make an annual census of the methods of conducting the business of education a task immeasurably beyond the resources of the national Bureau.

The majority of the statistics in this volume are then to be read and studied as the statement of the nation's annual investment in education. The main topics treated are the institutions supported, the cost, the teaching staff, the value of the material plants that have in part and of the supplies that have wholly been used up during the year, the number and nature of the students and the time they give.

So far as the resources of the Bureau permit, there are included also items of the credit account. Though no direct measures of actual changes produced in boys and girls by education are given, indirect measures often are, in the numbers who have been given the advantages of certain more or less well-defined influences, who, for instance, have graduated from an elementary school, or from a high school, or from a medical school.

So also in the case of the administrative account. Completeness is out of the question, but facts that can be obtained are reported. Such are the public provision by certain communities of kindergartens, of evening schools, and of special schools other than kindergartens, elementary schools, and high schools; the kinds of courses offered by colleges; the distribution of the expenditures amongst different items; the distribution of the receipts amongst different sources; and the changes made in the courses of study.

I estimate that our account as a nation for the year 1906-7 stands somewhat as follows: We use in formal school education a material plant valued at from twelve to thirteen hundred million dollars, the labor of 550,000 teachers or other educational officers," and more or less of the time of some eighteen million students, equivalent roughly to the time implied by one hundred and fifty days' attendance on elementary school by twelve and a half million children, by a full year's work in a school of secondary grade by a million boys and girls in their teens, and by a full year's work in a college, professional school, or other institution by two hundred thousand young men and women.

al rate as "the labor of a teacher" the labor of one individual doing such work as the institution

We pay for the labor of these teachers, many of whom work for only part of the normal city-school year, about $300,000,000." We pay for fuel, light, janitorial services, repairs, depreciation of books, school supplies, insurance, and the like about $90,000,000. For depreciation of the plant not so charged we should properly provide during the year a sinking fund of perhaps $25,000,000. Adding an interest charge of 5 per cent on the investment in the plant and our annual bill for formal school education comes to over four hundred and seventy-five millions. Additions to the plant were made to the extent of from ninety to a hundred million dollars.

As a partial estimate of the returns from this investment we may take the number of students whose education has been carried to a specified standard of accomplishment and power. Thus I estimate that in 1907 3,000 students reached the standard denoted by three years or more of academic, technical, or professional study in advance of a reputable college degree; that 25,000 students reached the standard denoted by at least three and not over four years of such study in advance of a four-year high-school course; that an eighth of a million students reached the standard denoted by at least three and not over four years of study in advance of an eight-year elementaryschool course; and that three quarters of a million students reached the standard of completion of an elementary-school course of seven or eight years or its equivalent.

Concerning the method of administering education we may note that the public provision for and control of education has now so far advanced that roughly nine-tenths of elementary education and the education of teachers, over two-thirds of secondary education, and over a third of college and higher technical education are provided and controlled by the public. Professional education, other than the training of teachers and engineers, is still largely a function of private provision and control.

The following rough comparison may serve to define further the status of education in the country at large:

The plant used for formal education is valued at 1 per cent of our entire national wealth, or twice the value of our telephone systems, or ten times the value of our Pullman and private cars, or one-tenth the value of our railroads.

The number of teachers is approximately that of the clergymen, engineers, lawyers, and physicians together, five times that of the regular Army and Navy, and about twice that of the saloon keepers and bartenders and their assistants.

The annual expenditure for education, exclusive of additions to the plant, is somewhat over twice the expenditure for the War and Navy

a Including a reasonable allowance for the work done in return for personal support by members of religious orders and other nonsalaried workers.

Departments of the National Government. It is three and a half times the expenditure of the National Government in 1907 for pensions. It is about one and a fourth times the cost (New York wholesale prices) of the sugar and coffee we consume annually.

The statistics of this volume are of course not given in the form of such a business accounting as has been described, but in the possibly less logical but certainly more feasible form of a census by institutions of

1. Teaching staff.

2. Student body.
3. Material equipment.
4. Courses of study.

5. Expenditures.

6. Receipts.

Each of these topics may be dealt with quantitatively in four ways: (1) Mere facts may be measured; e. g., the fact that only 46 per cent of teachers in public high schools are men. (2) The typical condition and the variations from it may be measured; e. g., we may find that in public high schools of medium size (of 6 to 11 teachers, inclusive) the typical condition is to have 35 per cent of the teachers men, but that the variations from the type are very wide, the range being from 0 to 83 per cent, and four-tenths of the schools having percentages of either 20 or lower or 50 or higher. (3) Differences and changes may be measured; e. g., we find that the percentage of men teachers is higher in the one or two teacher schools than in medium-sized schools, and that in the last ten years the percentage of men teachers in public high schools has notably decreased. (4) Relations may be measured; e. g., we may ask such a question as, "Does a higher than usual percentage of men teachers tend to be accompanied by, or, to use a more technical term, correlated with, a higher than usual percentage of boys amongst the students?"

THE FACTS OF THE EDUCATIONAL CENSUS OF 1907 AND THE CHANGES
WITHIN RECENT YEARS.

It is obviously impossible to give here a complete digest of the facts gathered. The whole report itself is such a condensed digest. I shall therefore give only some principles of guidance to the use of the report and certain general tables which it has been customary to insert in the introductory chapter.

The facts concerning staff, students, equipment, receipts, expenditures, and in some instances the course of study are reported by the Bureau in the case of

The public school systems of States (pp. 543-574).

The public school systems of cities and towns of 4,000 inhabitants

Universities, colleges, and technological schools (pp. 737-867).
Agricultural and mechanical colleges (pp. 869–924).

Schools of theology, law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine (pp. 925-997).

Normal schools (pp. 999-1041).

Public and private secondary schools (pp. 1043-1078).

Schools specially devoted to manual and industrial training (pp. 1079-1115).

Commercial and business schools (pp. 1117-1122).

Schools for the training of professional nurses (pp. 1123-1125).
Schools for the colored race (pp. 1127-1139).

Reform schools (pp. 1141-1163).

Schools for the blind, deaf, and feeble-minded (pp. 1165-1199). In each of the above cases there is a general report for all schools of the particular type preceding the elaborate tables that give the data separately for each institution. The schools of communities of less than 4,000 inhabitants are, of course, not reported as individual systems. The facts in the case of secondary schools, nurse-training schools, and business schools are also given this year only in summaries. In studying the report as a whole, as well as the summaries of it that have been compiled by officers of the Bureau, the reader should bear in mind that the Bureau is compelled to rely upon reports voluntarily made by school officers, and that these are rarely complete for every item of information sought, and are subject to errors that are, as regards direction, both constant and variable. The failure to record a quantity that really exists, of course, makes the total in each case by so much too small, except in so far as corrections are applied by the Bureau. The errors constant in direction are, however, often in the direction of making the quantities reported too large. The membership statistics, for instance, do not as a rule measure the numbers of pupils an omniscient observer would find really belonging to the schools either on any one day or on the average throughout the year, for, as is well known, a pupil does not always disappear from the register of a school as soon as he ceases to attend it. Again, in financial accounts, there is a tendency for the same dollar to be reported twice as spent; for instance, first, when borrowed money is expended for improvements, and again when the debt is paid.

The reader must also bear in mind the ambiguity of such units of measure as "a teacher," "a student," "a day," "a course." A teacher may mean a person devoting his full capacity for labor to the work, or an assistant who is also a student and is so counted, or a local lawyer who gives thirty lectures in the course of the year, or even one who is advertised to do so but does not. Teachers on leave of absence are probably counted as full-time workers in the reports