FOREWORD BY THE COMMITTEE

The Advisory Committee on Education was appointed by the President of the United States on September 19, 1936, initially for the purpose of making a study of the experience under the existing program of Federal aid for vocational education, the relation of such training to general education and to prevailing economic and social conditions, and the extent of the need for an expanded program of Federal aid for vocational education. The Committee was requested to develop recommendations that would be available to the Congress and the Executive. Under its original assignment, the Committee was known as the President's Committee on Vocational Education.

In a later letter dated April 19, 1937, the President stated that he had been giving much thought to the general relationship of the Federal Government to education, that numerous bills in connection with educational matters were pending in the Congress, and that it was his understanding that the Committee was already in possession of much information bearing upon the subject. He therefore requested the Committee to give more extended consideration to the whole subject of Federal relationship to State and local conduct of education, and to prepare a report.

In accordance with this request, the Committee enlarged the scope of its work and prepared a comprehensive report, which was transmitted to the President on February 18, 1938, and was transmitted by him to the Congress on February 23, 1938. The report was printed as House Document No. 529, Seventy-fifth Congress, third session. An indexed edition of the report, differing in pagination but not in text, was also printed for public use by the Advisory Committee, and has been made widely available.1

1 The Advisory Committee on Education, Report of the Committee, for sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. Price 35 cents.

The Committee was assisted in its work by a temporary staff of specialists in education, public administration, and economics. The major function of this staff was to collect, analyze, and interpret available data bearing upon the problems under consideration by the Committee. Time did not permit any extensive amount of original research, and original research was not attempted except in areas where the existing information seemed entirely inadequate. The work of the staff did result, however, in a number of studies which present in convenient form a large amount of information bearing upon the status and problems of education in the United States.

The present volume is one of the studies prepared by the research staff. The statements and conclusions contained in it are those of the authors, and do not necessarily conform to those of the Committee. The findings of this study were considered by the Committee, however, in formulating the conclusions and recommendations that appear in its own report.

Dr. Newton Edwards, the senior author of this study, is Professor of Education, The University of Chicago. He has made extensive investigations of the legal basis of school organization and administration and of the educational problems of a changing population. This study grows out of previous investigations of the economic and social bases of the national interest in education. Dr. Herman G. Richey, the co-author, is Assistant Professor of Education, The University of Chicago. He assumed major responsibility for the gathering of the data employed in this investigation and for their arrangement in graphic form.

AUTHORS' ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are indebted to Professor Eugene S. Lawler, of Northwestern University, for assistance in securing unpublished data from State departments of education and to members of the staff of the Advisory Committee on Education for numerous helpful suggestions. It is understood, of course, that the authors assume full responsibility for the interpretations of the data presented in the study.

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