VI. The American common school in New York, New Jersey, and Penn- sylvania during the first half century of the Republic........... PART I. CHAPTER I. LAWS RELATING TO CITY SCHOOL BOARDS.1 1. General Remarks.-The typical city system; Selection of members of school boards; Some notable systems; Control of revenues; The superintendent; Selection of teachers. 2. Detailed descriptions of the school systems of New York City; Chicago, Ill.; Philadelphia, Pa.; Brooklyn, N. Y.; St. Louis, Mo.; Boston, Mass.; Baltimore, Md.; San Francisco, Cal.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, N. Y.; New Orleans, La.; Pittsburg, Pa.; Washington, D. C.; Detroit, Mich.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Minneapolis, Minn.; St. Paul, Minn.; Denver, Colo.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Charleston, S. C.; Hartford, Conn.; Savannah, Ga. 3. Tabular summary of school laws relating to the foregoing cities. If it were required to describe the typical organization of an American city school system, the following might be given: A board of edu cation is created by law whose members are elected by the people, serve without pay, and have full legal power to establish, maintain, and control free public schools for all children of school age in the limits of the city. Each year they make estimates in detail of the amounts of money required for the schools during the next coming year, which estimates are submitted to the city council. That body appropriates money for those purposes named in the estimates which they think necessary and proper in view of all other needs of the city's government, and of the expected revenue from the taxes which they consider it expedient to levy. The money once appropriated is controlled by the board of education who buy sites, build and repair schoolhouses, purchase supplies, hire and pay the necessary officers and teachers. They make regulations for the management of the system and employ as their principal executive officers a secretary and a superintendent, the former to look after the details of their business affairs and the latter to have especial care of all matters relating to instruction. The superintendent is presumably an experienced educator, well versed in pertains to school management, and a thorough student of pedagogy on its philosophical side; he is selected, moreover, with reference to his administrative ability. The course of study is largely the handiwork of the superintendent and embodies his ideas. The teachers are appointed by a committee of the board, acting with the superintendent. New teachers must be graduates of the city normal school or of an institution of equal or higher grade. If the latter, they must pass an examination before the committee. The schools themselves are, (1) elementary, with a course of study covering eight years; (2) high, with a four-year course, and (3) a normal school with a year of professional study for intending teachers. A child is supposed to begin the course at six years of age and to complete it at eighteen, but in practice the average is about a year greater than this. Evening schools are maintained during the winter months, and there may be kindergartens and a separate manual training high school, but these, though growing in popular favor, are not yet sufficiently numerous to have a place in the type system. It may be that the system described has not a single example in the United States which combines all the details mentioned exactly as they are set forth. The number of possible variations are as great as the combinations on the chess board, and in regard to every feature there are instances of radical divergence from the type described; but in a general way it may be taken as representative of the systems of the majority of American cities. MEMBERS OF SCHOOL BOARDS. In regard to the number of members of the board there is not nor can there be any uniform rule. It is sometimes held that there should be some relation between the size of the city and size of the board, but whether this is necessary depends wholly on the extent to which executive powers are confided to paid subordinates, who are supposed to be trained experts in their particular lines. The New York board controls the schools of over a million and a half of people, yet it numbers only 21 members, while Pittsburg, with a population of about a quarter of a million, has 37 members in a central board and 222 in local boards. There are 7 members of the Minneapolis board, while Hartford, with only a third as many inhabitants, has 39 school visitors and committeemen. Such contrasts are numerous. The methods of selecting the members of the governing boards are exceedingly varied. Ward politics is a matter constantly before the mind of school lawmakers, and any amount of inventive genius has been exercised to devise a way of choosing school boards that would make it impossible for the ward boss to interfere. Incompetent principals and teachers chosen to "encourage" political henchmen; contracts corruptly given to fatten the treasuries of partisan organizations; assessments of |