Internal Organization of Schools and School Systems

Abstract

THIS SECTION summarizes studies which included organizational features at both elementaryand secondary-school levels. Chapters 2 and 3 of Part II of the Forty-Fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (34) dealt with Changes Needed in School to Provide for Special Groups and Internal of a Local School System. The treatment in the first of these chapters was built around: (a) provisions for the care and training of preschool children, (b) provisions for exceptional children in the regularly organized schools, (c) problems of school organization resulting from migration, (d) children and youth in rural and sparsely settled areas, (e) changes in school organization needed to provide educational opportunities for adults, and (f) the organization of vocational education for youth and adults. Chapter 3 is addressed to the Organization of Services and Staff and the following four questions relating to internal organization: (a) Should the local school organization include a nursery school? (b) Should the elementary school be divided into a lower unit and an upper unit? (c) Should grades seven and eight be included in the elementary school or in the secondary school? (d) Should grades thirteen and fourteen be included in the secondary school? Little (25) completed a survey of the number, distribution, age-grade status, and attendance of Spanish-speaking children in Texas in which he found that there were 260,759 school-age children of Latin-American descent in Texas. This number was 20.4 percent of the total white scholastic population in 1942-43. Spanish-speaking scholastics were found in 238 of the 254 counties in Texas. Only 53 percent of these children, aged six to seventeen, inclusive, were enrolled in school and 68 percent of those enrolled in the public schools were in the first three grades. Quigley's (42) study to determine the extent to which the public and Catholic schools in Pennsylvania were providing an adequate health program showed that daily health inspection fell far below accepted standards. Periodic medical examinations and health services were found to be ade-