Statement by a Public Education Association
A series of difficulties in the administration of the schools of Chicago brought out from the Public Education Association of that city a statement of the relation between the board of education and the technical officers of the schools which illustrates so clearly the matters discussed in the foregoing paragraphs that it may properly be quoted at length.
WHAT IS A REPRESENTATIVE BOARD OF EDUCATION?
Some people want the school board to be large, so that everyone may be represented. They think that it is desirable that there should be members on the board from every district in the city, every nationality, the various trades, and the various professions.
A board cannot be made into a representative body in this sense. It would never be large enough to include everybody, and it would be unwieldy in action. What is needed is a small board that will be broad in its interests, that will ask many questions covering all sections of the city, and that can act promptly. This board should have laid before it carefully drawn plans touching all the interests of the community.
This small board has to decide general policies and select the people to carry out these policies. It should not operate the schools but should see that they are operated. It should require evidence from the people who operate the schools showing that they are doing it successfully. It should demand and issue reports that are clear and intelligible to the whole community.
THE FUNCTIONS OF A BOARD OF EDUCATION
The functions of the board of education have never been fully understood in American cities because it has been thought of as the means employed by the people to conduct the schools. This is a wrong notion. The people want trained teachers and trained officers to conduct the schools. The people want the board of education to organize the schools so that they shall employ the most expert people who can be secured.
HOW A GOOD BOARD GETS THE WORK DONE
This statement leads to a consideration of the second group of people who have to do with the school organization. The schools could not get on without trained teachers. There was a time when each parent taught his own child. That was in the days when there wasn’t much to teach. To-day the parent places his child in the care of a specialist. The parent has come to the specialist because the parent has confidence that the specialist knows how to take care of the children. Teachers are not mere hirelings and nurses, inferior to the children; teachers are trained specialists.
As the system grows more complex there appear several classes of specialists—some who know how to deal with the pupils, some who know how to provide the children with proper seats and proper ventilation, some who know how to make courses of study, and some who keep the records of the schools.
Furthermore, the school system grows complicated on the material side. Buildings have to be erected and cared for. Land has to be evaluated and cared for. Some people think that all this is an open book to everyone who is in business. The fact is that knowledge of school equipment is just as highly specialized knowledge as knowledge of railroad equipment. A wholesale grocer would not think of himself as competent to estimate the cost of Pullman cars just because he knows about business. The better school systems now have accounting methods in schools which bring out such matters as the cost per unit of teaching in high schools and elementary schools, the standard cost of instruction in different subjects, and the cost of school equipments as related to their sanitary and hygienic fitness.
Every complete school system has its business interests in the hands of competent specialists who know about school costs in detail and in particular.
MAKING THE MACHINE WORK SMOOTHLY
By the time a school system reaches the point where it has all these specialists, it becomes necessary to give much attention to the central planning of a scheme of operation which shall make the whole machine work smoothly. There must be a central office where management is provided. In setting up this central office there has been a great deal of experimenting. Sometimes a teacher has been put in charge; sometimes a board member, in such case the president of the board has taken charge. Some years ago the city of Cleveland tried the experiment of putting a business manager in charge. This business manager appointed the superintendent of instruction. If one goes back into the history of Chicago, he finds that a business manager to take charge of school lands was appointed two years before the superintendent of instruction was appointed.
Gradually out of all the experimenting there has arisen a new type of school officer, a superintendent of schools who is a trained school manager. This manager does not teach; he does not shovel coal into the furnaces in the schools; he does exactly what the head of any great corporation does; he organizes the undertaking. He must know human nature; he must know how to get reports; he must know how to tell the people about the needs of their schools; he must know how to straighten out tangles; and he must know how to judge results. This manager must give his whole time to getting the machinery to work and keeping it in order.
In a large school system the manager’s office will be subdivided and there will need to be some further organization to keep it from falling apart. There will be one person in such an office who will know more about heating school buildings and one who will know about the quality of teaching. The more the subdivision the more precautions necessary to hold all parts of the system together.[25]