The Alaska division has offices in Washington, Seattle, and Nome. The kindergarten division has offices in Washington and New York. The home education division has offices in Washington and Philadelphia. The division of school sanitation and hygiene has offices in Washington and Nashville, Tenn. All other divisions have offices only in Washington. There are substations under designated directors at Columbia University, University of Chicago, George Peabody College for Teachers, and Leland Stanford Junior University. Brief statements of the work of the several divisions follow: HIGHER EDUCATION. The specialist in higher education has within the year visited 64 colleges and universities, 37 of which have been carefully inspected and reported upon. One was inspected at the request of the President of the United States, August 17 and 18, and a report was rendered to the Secretary of the Interior for transmission to him. Twenty-eight were North Carolina institutions. These were visited at the request of the State superintendent of public instruction, who desired a careful inspection and report upon the colleges of the State. The report was not finished before the end of the fiscal year, but was completed and submitted July 17, 1915. Seven of the institutions visited were Oregon institutions. In accordance with an act of the Oregon Legislature of 1911, authorizing the State superintendent of public instruction to exempt from examination for the State highschool teacher's certificate graduates of those collegiate institutions of the State which the United States Bureau of Education might certify as being of standard college grade, the bureau made an inspection of these institutions in the latter part of that year. The present inspection was undertaken at the request of the State superintendent of public instruction in the belief that the standards of certain colleges of the State had changed since the first inspection was made. The report on the inspection was rendered to the State superintendent in March. The specialist in higher education cooperated with the commissioner in making a preliminary survey of higher institutions in the State of Washington. He assisted legislative committees of the State in drawing up certain bills embodying recommendations made in the commissioner's report of the survey. One of these bills was enacted into law. The other was not reported from committee. The specialist in higher education has represented the bureau at the inaugurations of the presidents of the University of South Carolina, Johns Hopkins University, and Tufts College, at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Catholic University of America, and at 15 conventions and association meetings. He has made 28 addresses before associations, faculties, and students of colleges, boards of trustees, and other audiences. He has acted as vice chairman of the section on education of the Pan-American Scientific Congress, representing the commissioner on the executive committee of the congress. Two bulletins have been prepared by the division under the direction of the specialist in higher education, one of them on "Accredited Secondary Schools in the United States," 1915, No. 7; the other on "Opportunities for Foreign Students at Colleges and Universities in the United States" (in press at the close of the fiscal year, but issued in August as Bulletin, 1915, No. 27). In addition he has prepared five higher education letters and a chapter on higher education in 1914 for the commissioner's annual report. At the request of the Adjutant General of the War Department, this division has rendered decisions as to the eligibility of 402 universities, colleges, and schools for inclusion in the list of institutions to be accredited by the United States Military Academy. The organization of a committee on higher educational statistics, composed of members of the large national associations directly interested in higher education, mentioned in my statement of last year, has been completed and has begun its work. The division. of higher education is also cooperating with seven other committees of national associations in the investigation of problems relating to higher education. The specialist in land-grant college statistics examined and certified the reports of the expenditures of the Federal appropriations made to the land-grant colleges, collected and tabulated the reports of presidents and treasurers, and prepared this material for publication as a chapter of the commissioner's report. He collected the statistical information and designed a series of charts to illustrate the land-grant colleges, the State-aided colleges, and other universities, colleges, and technological schools for the bureau's exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition; also charts to illustrate the changes in administrative organization and academic development of certain classes of universities during 30 years. He has begun a study of the present condition of the principal and income derived from the land. grants of the Morrill Act of 1862. Definite information on this subject is difficult to obtain, many of the colleges benefited by the act not having kept records which show the exact status of the fund derived from it. This study will carry with it a brief history of the organization of each of the land-grant colleges. He has visited six land-grant colleges for Negroes and five land-grant colleges for whites in the States of West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, and has examined their business organiza tion and methods. He has also made a study of the methods of registration in 100 colleges and assisted in an inquiry into the teaching of Portuguese and Spanish in the secondary schools of the United States. The division has conducted a large correspondence, preparing replies to from six to a dozen letters of inquiry daily. While most of this work is of a routine nature, many of the replies can only be made after somewhat prolonged investigation. SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION. The division of school administration has completed a bulletin on the administration of schools in cities having a population not less than 2,500 nor more than 30,000. This bulletin was prepared in response to a demand from school officers for a publication setting forth the duties generally required of administrative officers in cities of this size, and the way in which these duties are generally performed. The division prepared for the commissioner's report a chapter on current progress in education in cities of less than 25,000 population, and began an annotated bibliography of the more important topics in the reports of city schools, which will be helpful to all students of education. It is also preparing a card catalogue of the more important of these reports. The division issued 15 city school circulars on various phases of city school work. In response to special requests it has criticised and offered suggestions for improvement in many courses of study in the public schools of small cities, and has compiled memoranda on religious instruction and Bible reading in the public schools; school bonds; absence of teachers on pay; high-school fraternities; length of time served by superintendents in the smaller cities; length of daily school sessions in a number of cities; and many other subjects. It has received, entered, and filed approximately 2,000 reports, courses of study, rules and regulations, and directories of city schools, and miscellaneous publications relating to city school work. The chief of the division delivered many addresses at college and university summer schools, teachers' institutes, school rallies, highschool commencements, and State educational meetings. These included "Teaching observed in city schools," "Economizing the pupil's time," "A wider use of the school plant," "Interesting a community in its schools," "Educating for new conditions," "The six-year high school," "How a superintendent may survey his own schools." He attended the meetings of four national education associations, and assisted a committee of the National League of Compulsory Attendance Officials in making a study of school attendance in cities. The division completed the compilation of a digest of the general school laws of all the States, which is now being published as a bulletin of the bureau. Appended sections to the digest treat of "State constitutional provisions relating to public education" and "Public school systems in American territories, districts, and insular possessions." The preparation of the digest has involved the examination and summarizing of approximately 15,000 pages of school law and State constitutions. The subjects treated are arranged according to a logical scheme of classification in use in the bureau for several years, and about 8,000 cross-references are inserted. The division has also completed an historical study of the development of public education in the State of Alabama, the results of which have been published as a bulletin of the bureau, and has begun a similar study of education in Tennessee. The main purpose of these studies is to give to the people of the States of whose school systems the studies are made information that will be helpful to them in their efforts toward the further development of their school systems. A specialist in educational systems was added to the division in November, 1914, to investigate current methods of teaching reading in the primary grades and to formulate such methods as will improve the teaching of reading in the elementary schools. She has begun an inquiry into the methods of teaching reading in schools in the United States and abroad; she has studied standard tests in reading ability, has investigated the subject of school hygiene in connection with the teaching of reading, and has tabulated the contents and vocabularies of 150 primary reading books. She has conducted an experiment in teaching reading by a "Phonic method" in the primary schools of Washington, D. C., has demonstrated this method in the summer school of the University of Virginia, and has corresponded with many hundreds of primary teachers on this subject. SCHOOL BUILDINGS AND SCHOOL SANITATION. The Bureau of Education has no funds wherewith to employ fulltime specialists in the interest of the improvement of school buildings and the health of school children, but during the past year two special agents on part-time appointment have responded to as many as they could of the demands for help on these important subjects. One of these special agents, located at Nashville, Tenn., has on request given specific advice to school authorities in regard to the architecture of school buildings and the hygiene and sanitation of schoolhouses and grounds, particularly in rural communities. He has had charge of the models of rural schoolhouses which the bureau has been lending to communities about to erect new buildings, and has distributed them among school and school officers where they could be utilized to the greatest advantage in guiding and developing a taste for a better type of rural school architecture. It has been the practice to give preference in lending these models to those who would agree to duplicate them and undertake to adapt the plans suggested to local needs and local climatic conditions. Counties in several States have taken these models as standards and are working out better school buildings for their rural districts. This special agent has spent some time helping with rural school surveys in several counties in Tennessee and has attended meetings of associations interested in public health in Cincinnati, Chicago, and Houston, Tex. He has held conferences in Nashville with school officers from all parts of the country, especially from Tennessee and the adjoining Southern States. In cooperation with Mr. Sherman C. Kingsley, of the Elizabeth McCormick memorial fund of Chicago, he has prepared a bulletin on open-air schools, and in cooperation with Miss Helen Le Garde, of Providence, R. I., he is preparing a bulletin on school baths. He has also completed a bulletin on schoolhouse architecture, which is supplementary to a comprehensive bulletin which he prepared for this bureau in 1910, and which has been of very definite value to school boards and school architects in this and other countries. This special agent has also been made director of the recently established substation of the Bureau of Education at Nashville, reference to which is made elsewhere in this statement. The second special agent in this division was appointed in January, 1915, and has given to the bureau 18 days of service in the office at Washington. In this time he has conducted correspondence relative to the health of school children, has studied and summarized the work of the bureau on this subject in the past three years, and has helped make plans for the continuation and improvement of this work. He is cooperating with Dr. J. H. McCurdy, of the International Y. M. C. A. Training School, Springfield, Mass., in preparing for this bureau a comprehensive study of the status of physical education, athletic training, health supervision, and instruction in hygiene. He is cooperating with the members of the Board of Health of the Territory of Hawaii in making a comprehensive study of health conditions of school children in one or more of the Hawaiian islands. Requests which come to this bureau emphasize particularly the need for more assistance in planning school buildings; in the care of the health of school children; in the improvement of janitor service in schools; in methods of lighting, heating, and ventilating; in school furniture; in the hygiene of school instruction; in more intelligent adaptation of school work to defective children in school lunches; and in the organization of special schools |