pulsory attendance law. Of course, it is well understood by all that a large percentage of youth not enrolled are beyond the reach of the compulsory attendance law. But the contention of the writer is that the present method of distribution of the State Common School Fund is inequitable, unfair, and lacks the essentials of giving an educational incentive to local communities. No premium is placed upon the universal education of the people, but rather upon the lowest average enrollment and attendance. It is quite well understood, too, that many cities having a low percentage in actual attendance have many enrolled in private schools. But such communities ought not to be given such State aid or share in the distribution of the State funds as will actually encourage those communities to foster other than public schools with State funds. A city or community should not receive money for the education of children whom it is not educating. This brings us to the conclusion that State funds ought to be distributed on the basis of the number of pupils actually taught, the average daily attendance rather than upon the basis of the school census. This conclusion is reenforced by a careful study of the statistics of the cities compared with each other and with those of villages and rural communities. Here is a table compiled by selecting the names of cities, villages and townships at random over Ohio. In the case of villages and townships, only those have been selected that maintain high schools, thus placing them as nearly as possible on the plane of the cities, so far as educational advantages are considered. A study of these tables will make clear the present discrimination in favor of the larger cities in the matter of the distribution of the State Common School Fund. The twelve cities listed in this table, chosen at random, average $3.64 per pupil taught, while the eleven villages average $2.03 per pupil taught in their sharing of the State Common School Fund. The enrollment of nonresidents in the villages accounts for their lower value. This means that the twelve cities average 80% higher than the eleven villages. But this is not all. The average tax levy for school purposes is much lower in the cities than in the villages and townships, showing that they are relatively much better able to maintain their schools without aid than the villages and townships. For example, Cincinnati, with a levy of but four and one-eighth mills, received from State funds $6.51 per pupil taught, while the villages and townships averaged but a little more than two dollars per pupil taught, with many of them levying twelve mills and upwards. This same discrimination is noticed when one compares the smaller and the larger cities. Ashtabula levied thirteen mills school tax and received from this fund only $2.71 per pupil taught, while Cleveland levied only 5.62 mills but received $3.73 per pupil taught. When reduced to ratios, the aid Cincinnati received is to the aid Painsville received as 5 to 1; ratio of Cincinnati to Ashtabula, 7 to 1. Shouldn't the State place its help where needed? Should not a more equitable basis of distribution of the State's school funds be found? The writer has collected data bearing upon several other phases of this question, but the length of this paper precludes a further detailed discussion at this time. .. As to the matter now in hand the writer would say that the school-census or schoolenumeration basis, although now in use in one form or another in thirty-eight states and territories, is one of the most unsatisfactory bases, because it is not only theoretically defective but in practice it only slightly equalizes inequalities and advantages; it often renders those inequalities more marked, as shown in the tables submitted; and it offers no incentive to a community to make its own maximum of effort.1 III. STATE SUPPORT; EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS; APPORTIONMENT OF FUNDS [From Study of Education in Vermont; Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Bulletin No. 7, 1914, pp. 144147.] EXPENDITURES FOR ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS A financial comparison between the public school system of 1892 and the school system of two decades later makes possible certain interesting and illuminating conclusions. The number of pupils enrolled in 1892 and 1912 was substantially the same, approximately 65,000. The average daily attendance increased during this period from 45,057 2 to 52,160, or nearly 16 per cent. The total expenditures for the maintenance of elementary and secondary schools during the fiscal year 1892 were reported as $743,543, of which amount $549,980, or about 74 per cent, went for teachers' salaries. In 1912 the expenditures for current expenses amounted to $1,672,709, of which $968,382, or about 58 per cent, went for teachers' salaries. To view the situation from another angle, while the total expenditures have increased about 125 per cent during the past twenty years, the amount expended for teachers' salaries has been raised only about 76 per cent. The average cost 1 In 1914 a new apportionment law attempted to remedy these inequalities and to improve the basis of apportionment, but as it applied only to the county apportionment, the inequalities in the state apportionment to the different counties remain as great as before. 2 The average daily attendance for 1882 was reported as 47,772. per pupil in daily attendance rose from $16.50 in 1892 to nearly $24 in 1912, an increase of nearly 50 per cent. During this time the potential resources, that is, the taxable property, increased about 30 per cent - the grand list of the state being $1,600,000 for 1892 and $2,193,901 for 1912. DIRECT STATE SUPPORT AND EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS A large number of comparisons similar in general character to those just made might be presented as indicative of the effort being put forth by the state and the towns to support the public schools. It is essential, however, not to obscure the remaining fact that the state needs yet to provide both for a greater equalization of the burden of school support among the communities of the state and for a further enlargement of the funds to be used for the elementary and secondary schools, if these schools are to be conducted on the high level requisite for the progressive welfare of the state. The urgencies of the educational situation revealed in the portions of this report dealing with the rural and the secondary schools are such that additional expenditures on the part of the state must be resolutely faced. It is not a question of how much Vermont is expending per capita. It is a question of developing a school system equal to the needs of its people. The development of the state's school system during the past twenty years has already been greatly stimulated by direct state subsidies. The proportion of the total expense for the maintenance of the elementary and secondary schools borne directly by the state was considerably increased during the decade 1902-12. The increase of the state school tax from five per cent to eight per cent in 1900, the grants of state aid for transportation and board of pupils, for advanced instruction and for union supervision, and the establishment of the permanent public school fund are important items of this increased proportion. In the granting of state aid to the lower schools two distinct ends are now generally recognized by American states: (1) to equalize the resources of local communities with which to meet definite educational needs, and (2) to stimulate local communities to further educational effort. Vermont's plan of apportioning state funds seeks to accomplish both of these ends. In 1912, 772 schools, or practically one-third of the entire number, had 15 pupils or less. With this condition, all calculations of ex 1 Estimated on the number of polls, and the value of real and personal property as given in the Report of the Special Commission on Taxation of Vermont, 1908. pense based upon the pupil are unsound, even though showing a per capita cost that is equal to or above that of other towns or states. The principal item of school cost is the salary of the teacher. A normal expenditure per pupil in small schools means a low salary level for the teachers. This combination of many small schools with a high average cost per pupil explains Vermont's rank of fourteenth among the states of the Union in the average annual expense per child as compared with her rank of forty-third in the average annual salary of teachers. It seems clear that the general standard of the elementary schools of the state will be raised only through an enlargement of the state's direct support of these smaller schools, coupled with an intelligent and expert educational oversight on the part of the state. The inauguration of an administrative system of efficient type will reduce certain expenses, but in the long run the state must spend more money to obtain a steadily improved system of schools. No other investment that the state can make will return so great a profit. PRINCIPLE UPON WHICH STATE SCHOOL FUNDS SHOULD BE DISTRIBUTED The practice recently and most widely followed in the distribution of state funds to local communities has had in view solely the justice of the distribution, and has therefore based its award upon the school census or upon some form of school attendance. The plan at present in operation in Vermont makes its major grant depend simply on the number of legal schools, without regard to their size, or efficiency, or the wealth of the community that maintains them. Both of these plans are characteristic of the period when the state confided everything in education to the varying discretion of the towns, a period when the state itself had no definite educational policy. This has changed; the state has become educationally conscious, intelligent, and ambitious. The recommendations of this report contemplate for Vermont a strong, well-centralized and efficient state control in education. It is obvious that with the introduction of such educational leadership the power of state funds must be put behind the policies to be inaugurated. Hereafter money should no longer be granted on a per capita, or per school, or other merely numerical basis. State aid, when administered by the advice of an informed and vigorous central authority, should invariably be granted in such a manner as to stimulate and reward local effort which is harmonious with state policies. Hence in Vermont, what assistance the state can give should go for better trained and better paid rural school |