STANFORD LIBR

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL SITUATION

In 1910, Minnesota expended $13,724,437 for public schools. In 1920, she expended $38,358,555, or more than two and one-half times as much as in 1910. This increase in expenditure for schools is an indication of interest in the schools and of willingness to support them. It typifies the desire of Minnesota citizens to provide adequately for the education of their children. Table I shows the increase in expenditure for public schools in Minnesota from 1910 to 1920. Figure I presents this growth graphically.

TABLE I

MINNESOTA'S INCREASE IN EXPENDITURE AND INVESTMENT FOR PUBLIC
SCHOOLS, 1910 AND 1920

a The totals here given are the amounts appearing in the reports cited. These amounts include not only expenditure for maintenance, buildings, and all other expenses but certain other items which ought not to be included in toto, e.g., textbooks sold to pupils, see below, p. 151.

All data for 1920, except as otherwise indicated, are taken from the Minnesota Department of Education Report, 1919-20, pp. 183, 185.

All data for 1910, except as otherwise indicated, are taken from the United States Commissioner of Education Report, 1911, 2:699, 703.

a Computed.

• Includes all public property used for school purposes.

Generally speaking, the important measure of school expenditure is the amount spent per child, and Table I, above, shows that Minnesota increased not only her total expenditure for schools, but that the expenditure per child enrolled also increased from $31.17, in 1910, to $76.16, in 1920, an increase of over 144 per cent. During the same period, the value of school property per child enrolled increased from $72.57 to $149.99, an increase of over 106 per cent.

This is a record to which Minnesota points with pride. No state or individual ought, however, to be satisfied with merely surpassing past achievements. It is only by comparison with equals that we are able to judge of the real status of any individual or state. We are at once interested

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104 FLETCHER HARPER SWIFT AND FRANCES K. DEL PLAINE

to know whether Minnesota has made an unreasonable increase in her school expenditure, and how it compares with that in other states. It would not be useful at this time to compare Minnesota with the average for the United States, since that would be to compare her with many states so poor in natural resources, so hampered by mixed populations, and so backward in education that Minnesota's citizens would at once resent the implication that in either wealth or progress, she was on a level with such states. We have, therefore, chosen two groups of states with which to compare her: five contiguous states in her own geographical division of the United States, and four excellent school states representing widely separated sections of the country.

GROWTH OF TOTAL EXPENDITURE FOR COMMON SCHOOLS IN MINNESOTA $10,000,000 $20,000,000 $30,000,000

$40,000,000 $50,000,000

Expenditure for education is, however, only one measure of school progress. There are two fundamental questions with regard to any democratic system of education: first, how many of the children of school age are in school; and, second, how long is the school term offered them?

Table II shows how Minnesota compares with other states as to the per cent of children of school age who are in school, and as to the length of school term. From 1890 to 1920, the per cent of the children of school

age who have been in school, has increased in Minnesota from 74.6 per cent to 81.8 per cent, an improvement of only 7.2 per cent in 30 years. In the meanwhile, part time schools and compulsory education in other states have shown marked effects. Table II shows that Minnesota's rank in the United States with regard to per cent of school population enrolled has steadily declined from II in 1890 to 22 in 1910 and 1920. Arkansas, Florida, and North Carolina now enroll more out of every 100 children between 5 and 18 years than does the rich and enlightened state of Minnesota. In the actual length of school year, there has been an improvement from 128 days in 1890 to 160 days in 1920. But the rest of the country has progressed more rapidly, and Minnesota has slipped back from twenty-sixth in the United States in 1890 to thirty-third. In the year 1920, the most recent year for which data for the entire nation is available at the present writing, Minnesota's school term, with only 4 exceptions, was the shortest north of Mason and Dixon's line.

TABLE II

MINNESOTA'S RANK IN THE UNITED STATES AS TO PER CENT OF SCHOOL POPULATION ENROLLED AND LENGTH OF SCHOOL TERM, 1890-1920a

All data in this table are computed on the basis of totals given in the United States Commis sioner of Education Report, 1911, 2:692, 696; and upon unpublished data for 1920, furnished by the United States Bureau of Education.

Among other measurements that may be applied to schools are three used by Ayres in his study of state school systems.1 It was his conclusion that a school system tends to be a better system as it rises in the scale with regard to these particulars. The three criteria are:

1. The per cent that high school attendance is of total attendance. 2. The per cent that the number of boys is of the number of girls in high schools.

3. Annual salary expenditure for each teacher employed.

Ayres compares the states with regard to these factors since 1890. With regard to every one, Minnesota ranked lower in 1918 than in 1890. Table III, which follows, shows this decline.

1 L. P. Ayres, An Index Number for State School Systems, pp. 16-19.

• Whatever objections may be raised with regard to Ayres' conclusions, his data are interesting and illuminating.

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All data in this table are computed from tables given in Leonard P. Ayres, An Index Number for State School Systems, pp. 31, 37.

How MINNESOTA'S PERCENT OF INCREASE IN TOTAL SCHOOL EXPENDITURES
COMPARES WITH THAT OF CERTAIN OTHER STATES

This brief resumé of trends and rankings in Minnesota's educational history brings us to the question of her present educational rank among the states. One of the most satisfactory rough measures of a state's ability to provide schools is the wealth back of each child. Minnesota ranks eleventh among the 49 units composing the Union, with respect to the wealth for each child enrolled in school. Yet according to Ayres, Minnesota's educational rank in the Union is only nineteenth. In taxable wealth, Minnesota ranks tenth among the 48 states and the District of Columbia.3

3 Computed on the basis of unpublished data furnished by the United States Bureau of Education and Minnesota Department of Education Report, 1919-20, pp. 181, 183, 165, 159.

It must be remembered that 17 of the 30 states which Minnesota outstrips when compared with the nation as a whole are southern states where negro population, small wealth per capita, and the disastrous effects of the Civil War make comparison with Minnesota obviously unfair. Excluding these 17 states, we find that among the 32 states left, Minnesota ranks nineteenth among 32, or 3 ranks below the average of the states with which it is fair to compare her, and is outranked by Montana, Iowa, and North Dakota.

In view of the fact that in expenditure per child in average daily attendance she ranks thirteenth, it would be reasonable to expect that in results obtained, Minnesota's rank would approximate her rank in expenditure. The real facts, however, are (see Table IV) that with respect to the number of children out of each hundred who are even enrolled in school, Minnesota ranks twenty-second; with respect to the number of children out of each hundred enrolled who are in average daily attendance, Minnesota ranks eighteenth; and that in average length of school year, Minnesota ranks thirty-third in the United States. What do these facts signify? Many things, but most evidently this, that a school dollar spent in Minnesota does not buy the education that it does in other states. What is the explanation? Chiefly this, that, as will be shown later, Minnesota is spending on a few children the money that belongs to all. They mean that so much more money is spent on a few than on the many that, while the average expenditure is comparatively high, the average provisions for education are exceedingly poor. In 1920, St. Louis County expended more per pupil enrolled than did any state in the Union, and paid an average salary to all teachers which was second to that paid by only one state. Such figures raise the average expenditure for the state tremendously, but do nothing for the great masses of the state's children. If five men are hungry, and you give one a banquet and the other four crusts, the average expenditure for food may look satisfactory, but the average provision will be exceedingly inadequate. That is exactly what Minnesota is doing. In 1920, 9 per cent of the school children in the state received 24 per cent of the school money expended. Or, we may say, less than one tenth of the children received more than a fifth of the school money. These facts are presented graphically in Figure 3.

These facts must be borne in mind when we see Minnesota assigned a relatively satisfactory educational rank on the basis of average expenditure. It is a case where averages do not apply-are, in fact, entirely misleading! It is, briefly stated, a case of one banquet and four crusts.

See Table IX.