University and Educational Intelligence

Abstract

Educational legislation in America in 1919 and 1920 is reviewed by one of the specialists of the Washington Bureau of Education in Bulletin No. 13 of 1922. Of the many problems connected with education which have been dealt with by the State Legislatures since the war, several are, or have lately been, subjects of controversy in this country. The proportions in which the cost of supporting schools is shared between the general tax-payer and the ratepayer have been changing at the expense of the former throughout the States, “including the South, where the State, as such, is already relatively a very large contributor and where the need is rather for the further development of local educational spirit.” In the State of New York the increase in appropriations for schools amounted to over twenty million dollars, which was added for the purpose of raising teachers' salaries. Texas appropriated four million dollars for the same purpose. Many of the States passed salary laws more or less on the lines of the “Burnham scales.” Under an Iowa act, for example, a schedule of minima is prescribed, the lowest being 50 dollars a month, while a teacher who has received a degree upon completion of a four-year college course and holds a State certificate must be paid not less than a hundred dollars a month, and after two years of successful experience not less than a hundred and twenty. Teachers' superannuation systems are of recent origin in the United States, very few having been established earlier than the beginning of the present century. Nearly half of the States now have systems established by law for the entire State, and nearly a third have laws for certain cities only. Tendencies in recent pension laws are in general towards a larger participation of public funds in the support of the system, a more thorough application of scientific actuarial data, and more business-like administration. Extensions of the age limits of compulsory education have been effected recently in many States, the upper limit being in many cases raised to sixteen, while the lower limit is commonly seven or eight years.