bership, competent specialists should be employed to do the work, as was done in the case of the report on teachers' salaries. In some cases it will undoubtedly be better to lay the full responsibility for the investigation upon some one competent person, giving him the help of an advisory committee and empowering him to employ expert assistance where it may be needed. Work may be divided up between the Council representatives on the one hand and such other agencies of research on the other hand as may be in a position to do certain parts more thoroly and economically. On occasion, competent agents should be employed to travel from one place to another, in this country or in foreign countries, making such personal studies of actual educational institutions and processes as may add to the value and usefulness of any given report. All of these things should be done with the utmost care to avoid the waste of a single dollar of the resources of the National Association. But there should also be care to make every report as valuable and as useful as possible, and any wise expenditure which may be necessary to that end should be recommended by the Council to favorable consideration by the directors of the Association.

When a good report has been published it should be followed up, that the good that is in it may not be lost. In some cases it should be followed up by further investigations in the same field. In other cases, or it may be in the same, the good report should be followed up by bringing its recommendations to the notice of those who can put them into effect, and, if need be, by urging that such recommendations be carried into effect. The co-operation of the Committee on Resolutions of the Association should be sought to this end.

The program for this meeting of the Council has been prepared with the idea in mind that is here presented—that more and more the Council is to be an effective working body, and that its work is to result in a literature which shall make for positive improvements in education. An advanced student of educational doctrine, who is also a teacher of long and varied and successful experience, will this evening present the annual, or as it happens this time, a biennial survey of educational progress. At this first session the two important reports which have already been published by the Association on certain aspects of public-school finance are to be followed up by a discussion of the next steps to be taken toward improvement in our public-school finance. In the session of tomorrow the two reports already published on instruction in library administration and industrial education in schools for rural communities are to be followed up in a somewhat similar way. At the same session, three additional topics, relating to provision for exceptional children, the shortage of teachers, and moral education, are to be considered with a view specifically to the question: What steps shall be taken in the premises by the National Council? Every member of the Council has been requested to participate in some of these discussions. Of the fifty-six members now living, thirtyone have expressed their intention to be present at this meeting; and of these twenty-five have named the topics on which they will speak and their names.

accordingly have been placed upon the program. The other members present will undoubtedly speak on such topics as they may choose. Finally, these discussions are all intended to be preparatory to a consideration by the committee on Investigations and Appropriations, and later by the Council as a whole, of the practical question: What shall the Council do about these things? and the correlated question, What action shall it recommend to the National Association? Let us enter upon these discussions in the hope that from them shall emerge some action which shall count for the positive betterment of American Education.

It is with deep sorrow that I have to announce the death, since the last meeting of the Council, of three of the most honored and useful of its active members: William R. Harper and Albert G. Lane, of Illinois, and Charles D. McIver, of North Carolina; and of three of the most venerated of its honorary members: John Eaton, of the District of Columbia, Albert P. Marble, of New York, and William H. Payne, of Michigan. In place of public exercises of commemoration, notices of the life and services of these men, our brothers, will be found in the Anniversary Volume recently issued, except that the memorial of William H. Payne will appear in the published proceedings of this meeting. We cannot forget their works nor the strong uplift of their personal character and influence. Our membership in this Council has been greatly enhanced in value to us all because those six great teachers have been members here with us. So great indeed have their services been that the whole history of American education has been immeasurably enriched thru their lives. We pause here to speak our few words of appreciation of friendship and remembrance-and to gather from the mention of their names new courage for the work before us, new devotion to its loftiest spirit and purposes.

There is one more suggestion that I venture to make in closing. In many ways, provisional and previsionary as yet, the nations are making comparison of their educational standards and practices. From such comparisons there must ultimately issue some world-standards in education. Such worldstandards will not only make for the uplift of education; they will make for a spirit of union among the peoples; they will make for world-peace and a nobler civilization. Already the great army of teachers thruout the world halfconsciously are working for this common end. Their national differences are of great price and of lasting significance, but their unities are greater than their differences. Has not the time come when they may profitably enter into more direct co-operation for these common ends? And may not measures looking toward such co-operation profitably be taken here, at this meeting of teachers and friends of education, on the eastern edge of the Pacific, at a time when representatives of the nations are met in that second great conference for peace, on the eastern edge of the Atlantic? It is greatly to be desired that

American teachers do their full part in this matter, even if their part be to initiate a movement that shall be world-wide in its influence.

I would accordingly propose that a committee be appointed by this Council, of which our world-honored leader, Doctor Harris, should be chairman, to take this matter under consideration, and that if it seem good to such committee a conference be had with the officers and directors of the National Educational Association with a view to extending, on behalf of the Association, an invitation to the teachers' associations of other lands to co-operate with us in whatever ways such co-operation may be found desirable; the chief end of such united effort being the strengthening of those educational influences which work for the common good of all peoples that on earth do dwell.

I trust this plan may seem to you worthy of serious consideration. But that no hasty action be taken, I would respectfully ask of the Council that this and the several other suggestions offered in this paper be first referred for orderly consideration to a special committee who shall report to the Council at one of the earlier sessions of this meeting.

PUBLIC-SCHOOL FINANCE WHAT NEXT?
I

JESSE D. BURKS, PRINCIPAL OF TEACHERS TRAINING SCHOOL, ALBANY, N. Y. The many desirable or necessary next things in public-school finance provide a wide field for such a discussion as the present one. Before any important step in administration can be taken, however, and before the problems involved can be discussed to the best advantage, we ought to ascertain some general and definite administrative standards by which to measure the effectiveness and economy of various financial policies that may be proposed or adopted from time to time. It is to the need and the value of such standards that this part of the general discussion will direct special attention.

There has been a marked tendency for each community in the United States to develop its own standards in the conduct of its educational system without much regard to what other communities have been doing. To a certain extent this is necessary and proper. Local conditions as to wealth, commercial and industrial activities, cost of living, and the like, modify very materially the needs and the resources of communities. There has no doubtbeen much wasteful experimentation that might have been avoided by a little comparative study of administrative problems. The situation is not unlike that under which the early geographical explorers undertook their voyages. The new-found shores were uncharted, the trackless ocean held men back by its terrors, safe retreats and harbors were unknown. It was not until these hindrances were removed that commerce and free intercourse between the Old World and the New were found safe and easy.

The remarkably wide variation in administrative practice among the cities of this country is in itself sufficient evidence of the need for comparative

study as a basis for the more intelligent and effective administration of our schools. The following tabular statement concerning the financial administration of the city-school systems of this country shows at a glance the striking variation. The available data for all cities above 25,000 in population are included in the table:

In order that administrative standards may be established it is, of course, first necessary that an appropriate body of facts be ascertained. Each of the six special studies upon which the present discussion is based rests upon a large body of facts specially collected by the person who undertook the investigation involved in the study. These studies are excellent examples of the kind of work that must be carried much farther if school administration is to be made a matter of exact knowledge rather than of individual opinion. The point to be emphasized just here is that such studies might be made with much greater ease and, therefore, with greater frequency if the many school reports now periodically issued were so modified as to meet not only local and temporary needs, but to serve the purposes of general comparative study as well.

There is an immense body of data in the annual school reports of cities, in the state reports, in the reports of the United States commissioner of education, and elsewhere, which might easily be made to furnish the basis for the accurate study of many important educational problems. In the school reports of a random twenty-one cities, for example, were found 1,462 different headings under which statistical data are given. Of this large number of headings, however, over 900 are found in but a single one (that is, some one) of the twenty-one reports. Over 200 of the headings are found in but two of the reports; 100 are found in but three; and 90 per cent. of all the headings are found in fewer than five of the reports. It is obvious that while there is a great mass of data available, there is a notable lack of agreement as to what

facts it is worth while to include in school reports. This makes it almost impossible to utilize these reports as a basis for comparative study.

Lack of uniformity in reporting, then, constitutes the first obstacle in the way of a comparative study of school administration. Another serious obstacle is the fallacious statistical method that characterizes most of the school reports. The two most conspicuous and most general fallacies are: first, the fallacy of averages; and, second, the fallacy of mixed species. It will be well to consider examples of these errors.

The fallacious use of the average may be illustrated by the statement of per-capita expenditure for schools given in the report of the commissioner. of education. This statement consists of a series of averages, first for the United States as a whole and then for each of the five geographical divisions and for each state, separately. For the state of New York, for example, the expenditure per pupil of the forty-nine cities of the state is given as $28.15. When we calculate the per-pupil expenditure of each of these cities separately, we find the following remarkable variation:

All of the cities except one, it will be seen, are below the average; most of them far below. The one city above the average is so far above and has such an immense preponderance in expenditure and in school attendance as to counterbalance all of the other forty-eight cities of the state. The average fails to give an adequate idea concerning the expenditure per pupil in this state, because the deviation of the individual cities from the average is a factor as important as the average itself. Similarly, the averages for the geographical divisions are undoubtedly misleading, and could not be used to great advantage as a basis for a comparative study of administrative problems. The fallacy of mixed species is almost invariably found in school reports. It is a common practice, for example, to compute expenditure per pupil by taking the gross expenditure for all of the schools of a city and dividing by the whole number of pupils. Expenditure for "teaching and supervision" or for "current expenses," however, may include expenditures for kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools, truant schools, trade schools, manualtraining schools, mechanic-arts schools, teachers' training schools, vacation schools, recreation centers, schools for blind, deaf, and other defective children, recreation piers, city colleges, and day nurseries. It is evident that a bare statement of "cost per pupil" not only must frequently fail to convey an intelligible meaning, but must often actually misrepresent the essential facts.