CHAPTER XLVI.

STATISTICS OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

During the scholastic year ending June, 1898, there were enrolled in institutions of various classes reporting to the Bureau of Education 626,115 secondary students. This was a gain of 41,211 over the preceding year, or more than 7 per cent. The total number of pupils enrolled in the schools of all classes in the United States for the year was 16,687,643. The secondary students comprise about 3.75 per cent of this aggregate enrollment. The secondary students enumerated were distributed among eight classes of institutions as follows:

In the elementary schools of nearly all the States there are many students pursuing secondary studies where high schools are not accessible. These students and others not reported probably exceed 25,000. The aggregate number of secondary students in the United States may be safely estimated at 650,000. This total does not include the 70,950 students enrolled in commercial schools, although many of the branches taught in these institutions are equivalent to high-school studies. These students who spend only a few months in the commercial schools are not given the standing of students who are enrolled for the entire year in secondary schools.

For the year 1897-98 there were 5,315 public high schools and 1,990 private high schools and academies reporting to this office. This chapter is devoted almost exclusively to the statistics of these 7,305 secondary schools. The following table shows the growth of public and private high schools and academies for the past nine years: