Registration of city school children, a consideration of the subject of the city school census

Preface

In this monograph I have endeavored to trace the principles underlying the city school census, to discover the salient features of present systems of school censuses, to apply general laws to them, and to account for their failure or success.

The historical presentation offers evidence, which is believed to be convincing, of the reluctant admission on the part of educational boards of the inefficiency of our compulsory education laws and their so-called enforcement.

The failure to see the proper function of the police in regard to school administration, is believed to be at the root of the difficulty, and the school census thus appears only as another point of approach from which the schools may control that element of the population which is most in need of school training.

But that it must stop with even the attainment of that aim, the needs of modern social economy and the spirits of the boards that supervise the employment of under-age children and juvenile delinquents, emphatically deny.

It is therefore toward the extended use of the registration of children that the author most eagerly looks and in which he sees the real economy of what still appears to many administrators of school systems as a futile expenditure of money.

Throughout the work he has "endeavored to emphasize the possibility of (a) an effective school census in contradistinction to a general census; (b) a current or continuous census as distinguished from a discrete census; and (c) an effective extension of the census of children beyond the purposes of mere " compulsory education."

In the hope that the suggestions herein contained may prove of value to those whose vision anticipates the growing complexity of municipal education, the author ventures to present them.

JOHN DEARLING HANEY New York, March 1910

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction — ^The Problem _,

Page

Growth of the municipal community 1 1

Mode of dealing with its problems 1 1

The laboratory method 1 1

The problem of childhood 12

Child Conference for Research and Welfare 13

The present status of the registration of school children 14

The dissertation 15

Part I. Analytical 15 Its divisions 15

Method of approach 15

Part II. Constructive 15 Summary and Conclusions 16

Definition of registration 16

Relation to compulsory education 16

Aim of registration 17

Scope 17

Chapter I. — Germany Early account of Schulpflictigkeit 18

Modem treatment of the subject 18

Laws concerning it 19

School administration in Germany 20

Political divisions 20

Definition of terms 20

School control 23

Inspectors 23

School deputation and school commission 24

Rector 24

The School Commission 24

Size, Members, Powers, Duties 25

School lists 25

Admission to school 25

Discharge 27

Absence 28

Parochial and evangelical schools 28

Directions to parents 3°

Neglect of school duty 31

The school lists of absentees 32

6 Table of Contents

Page

Potsdam Regulations ,2

The school lists ,3

The Solingen Regulations 34

The case of Hans Berg ,4

Chapter II. — France Loi sur I'Enseignement Primaire Obligatoire 36

Admission to school 36

School lists 3 y

Discharge 37

Absence 38

Private schools 30

School neglect 30

Loi sur rOrganisation de I'Enseignement Primaire 40

Inspection 40

Public schools 40

Private schools 41

School councils 41

Letter of the Minister of Education on School Lists 42

Chapter III. — England: London Report of the Education Committee of the London County Council, 1909 46

Status of Attendance in London 46

The supervisory staff 46

The Census 4^

Mode of canvass and punishment for illegal absence 47

Statistics of attendance 48

Relation of the census lists to compulsory attendance 49

Annual versus biennial scheduling 50

Where the book register fails 50

Chapter IV. — Compulsory Education Laws and School Census Laws in the States of the United States

Digest of the state laws concerning compulsory education 51

Digest of the school census laws of the states 53

Digest of the school census laws designed to control attendance 55

Chapter V. — Philadelphia History of the school census law 60

Object of the school census law in Philadelphia 61

The census and the Bureau of Compulsory Education 61

Scope of the school census 62

Law of July, 1901 62

The census and the enrollment 62

The law in practice 63

Table of Contents 7

Page

Census districts 64

The ward division 64

Map 65

Statistics of school population in Philadelphia 66

Value of the statistics 67

Enumerators 68

Attendance officers versus assessors 68

Distribution 69

Appointment 69

Ability 7°

Method of enumeration 7°

Time 7°

Cost 71

Field work 7 ^

Two plans of work 72

Instructions 7^

Reports • 73

Co-operation of parochial schools 73

Authenticity of the information 75

Taking the census : Field work 76

Conditions 76

Work of enumerator C 77

Work of enumerator R 79

Work of enumerator W 81

Work of enumerator W (second day) 83

Cautions 83

Time of year 85

Efficiency of the system 85

Report of principals and district superintendents 86

Chapter VI. — Boston and Chicago

Boston. The law 87

Mode of enumeration 87

Opinions in regard to the character of the census 88

Value of Boston statistics 89

Development of the statistics 89

Chicago. The law 9°

The census of 1908; a general census 9°

Enumerators 9^

Field work 91

Map of wards 9^

Method 93

Instructions 94

Statistics 93

8 Table of Contents

Chapter VII. — Providence and Detroit t, Page

Providence. The law 96

Conclusions of the Supervisor of the School Census 96

Methods of enumeration 97

Cost 97

Field work 98

The record 98

Clerical stafi 98

Co-operation of other departments 99

Detroit. The law 99

Its execution 100

Enumerators 100

Cost 100

The law of census lists and enrollment loi

Its failure in places other than Detroit loi

Its failure in Detroit loi

Co-operation of other departments loi

Chapter VIII. — New York History of the School Census law 102

The census of 1906 102

Field work: Method 102

Police as enumerators 103

The statistical results 104

Analysis of these 105

The law of May 11, 1908 107

The law examined and criticised 109

Attitude of the authorities toward the census no

Partial census of other departments not co-operating in

Mobility of school population 112

Chapter IX. — Summary Chief points of the foregoing systems 113

Why the United States' systems have failed 114

Value of an adequate registration of children 116

Chapter X. — Recommendations Frequency of enumeration 117

Bureau of enumeration 118

Cost 119

Time of year 120

The enumerator 121

The enumerator's record 122

The superintendent's report 124

Table of Contents

Appendix p^^^

1. List of all children, Solingen, Germany 13 1

2. List of all school children, Solingen 132

Introduction

The history of the last decade shows fundamental changes in the methods employed by investigators in economic fields and a constant widening of the areas of study of economic topics. The laboratory method of procedure has come to be recognized as the most accurate and satisfactory way of dealing with the propositions that confront the sociologist, and sociology has itself broadened until it includes all kinds of political study and reform.

One phase of this, a phase partly induced by the modern tendency, yet unchecked, to migrate to the city as the readiest source of wealth, has been the development of the science of municipal administration. Throughout the world there has arisen a feeling that the work that the great city corporations have to perform, cannot be left to the haphazard treatment of politicians and men untrained in the business of handling the enormous forces of municipal power. Just, for instance, as the United States government has come to recognize the advantage of using its consular positions as the best school for its future Ministers, and has made of the higher offices in the consular services civil service positions to be gained by examinations arranged to determine peculiar fitness for consular activity, so there has grown up a determination to have the municipal corporations administered by men that have proved their capacity for this purpose in offices and positions of less importance. Men of wealth have set aside large funds for the purpose of facilitating study of the adequate management of public corporations, and private means have furthered the investigations of all kinds of public corporate waste.

Specific evidence of those statements can be readily found.

There is the fund of ten milHon dollars given by Mrs. Russell Sage for the study of the Improvement of Living Conditions; there is the fund established by Mr. Rockefeller for the study and treatment of the anemia of the poor whites of the southern United States; there is the fund that brought into being the New York Bureau of Municipal Research ; there is the fund contributed from various sources that supports that department of the New York Charity Organization Society known as the Department of Improvement of Social Conditions.

Specific evidence of the results of activities fostered by these means can be as readily found. There is the Pittsburgh Survey, reported in the volumes of the Russell Sage Foundation, a statistical investigation by experts into the living conditions of the city of Pittsburgh with its foreign population, its furnaces, its absentee landlords, its saloons, its liabilities and its schools. There is the exhibition in New York, at the 22d Regiment Armory Building, of the City Beautiful, with its illustrated discussion of Tenement House Reform, Sewage Disposal and Water Supply, Location and Decoration of Schools, Tree Planting, and Tuberculosis Prophylactics.

The subjects of Housing, Child Labor, Compulsory Education, Charities, Playgrounds, Children's Institutions, and Factory Inspection are being gone over anew with the laboratory treatment, to discover truths overlooked before, and better ways of handling the problems of wasteful living and the perplexing questions of our modern concentrated existence. The Commercial Club of Chicago, at an expense of $75,000, contributed by disinterested merchants and professional men, gets out a Plan of Chicago by the architect of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, that that city may develop centers of intellectual life and civic administration so related as to give coherence and unity to the municipality. Dr. Edward T. Devine, in his study of Misery and Its Cause, inquires into the cases of 5,000 families in order to discover generic principles for the distribution of charitable funds.

In Germany this activity has led to the new study of " Stadtebau " which movement, reflected in America, finds expression in Eliot's " City Planning in America." A host of books bearing

Introduction 1 3

on the general problem of city construction ^ finds admirable support in numerous magazine articles all treating of the same subject.

As the discussion ramified and the topics segregated, a broad area of unexplored territory relative to child Hfe appeared. It was discovered that, in the city, property grew so valuable for other purposes that it was not left vacant for the random play of children and that the child's territory was being gradually swept away from him and his life was narrowing and hardening. There sprang up The Playground Association. Similarly, it was found that the old negligent way of dealing with the juvenile delinquent was making work for the State instead of safeguarding it, and there arose the institution of Children's Courts. And then it came to be realized that, after all, society knew very little in a scientific way. about the social life of children, and there came into being the Child Conference for Research and Welfare.

A few moments' consideration of the projects of this society will show how far the world has progressed from the stage at which its only dictum was that children " ought to be seen but not heard." The Conference proposes to publish reviews of the work of all movements relating to children throughout the world, and to bring together the workers from the dififerent movements for the welfare of children so as to produce a more unified and effective action. When it is understood that there are more that twenty-five journals, exclusive of educational periodicals, devoted to the study of childhood, and that in the United States alone more than seven hundred school laws are passed yearly, a better idea of the field of usefulness for such unity and harmony is obtained.

Before, however, any steps can be taken to minister to the necessities of the children, two questions must be answered : Where are they? and How many are there of them? Before these questions are answered, others are more or less premature.

^ H. E. Deming: Government of American Cities. L. S. Rowe: Problem of City Government.

F. C. Howe: The City: The Hope of Democracy. W. B. Munro: Government of European Cities. F. J. Goodnow: Municipal Government.

Yet there is not a city in the United States, and very few in the world, that can give an accurate answer to the inquiries.-

It has, accordingly, been my task to investigate some of the leading systems of enumeration of school children in cities, especially in cities of the United States, to see what their cases present and what efforts the authorities have made toward a solution of the difficulties, and with what success they have achieved their results. In order to do this the more thoroughly and comprehensively, I have examined some of the European systems with a view toward ascertaining their merit and of finding out how far their procedure is adaptable to our own country.

2 The report of the State Superintendent of Education of New Hampshire for 1908, is candid and interesting. He states, p. 155, " The first question which naturally occurs is: How large a percentage of the total number of children of school age are going to school ? The statutes of New Hampshire do not constitute any range of age as ' school age ' unless the census requirement, ' between the ages of 5 and 16,' constitutes school age."

" Prior to 1895, the school census was usually taken by the assessors of taxes as a part of their duty. Since that date it has been made by the local truant officer or by some other agent appointed by the school board. Under the former arrangement the enumeration was entirely worthless since, at times, it would report scarcely one-half the children known to be in school. Under the present arrangement, although far from being strictly reliable, the returns are a vast improvement on those formerly made. They will never be what they should be until the public school system of the State as a whole is overlooked by men trained for the purpose, and who have no other business."

There then follows a very confusing discussion involving figures drawn, without reference, from two tables, one in the front of the book, and one in the rear of it, and some from no evident source at all. The value of his argument is much impeached by this obscure discussion, but the intent of his remarks is clear and sound enough. He continues: " From all these considerations, I conclude that the enumeration is probably too small by at least 3,000 to 8,000. Setting it at the latter figure, we should have as an outside estimate 82,000 children between the ages of 5 and 16 in the State. Of these approximately 75,000 (i. e., 74,065) are accounted for. Where are the other 5,200? In the first place, a large number of them are children between the ages of 5 and 8, lawfully detained at home by their parents; another considerable number, probably less than a thousand, are in orphanages, the school for feeble-minded, the industrial school, and similar institutions. The remainder, precisely how large a number we cannot say, are doubtless in various stages of educational neglect." * * ♦ " The school census must be taken with greater promptness and greater thoroughness every year.

Introduction 1 5

The dissertation divides into two parts: I. Descriptive and expository with illustrative matter; and II. Critical and constructive, suggesting plans of work and remedies for defects.

Part I includes two sections: Foreign and Domestic. The Foreign section treats of the systems of Germany, France, and England. The German division shows a perfected centralized scheme with ramifications for procuring universal education by the rigid application of a compulsory education law whose foundation is the registration of children. It is illustrated by forms used by German municipal communities. The French section is briefer. It presents the more democratic but looser and less efficient French system. The English section, also brief, shows a system practically our own, except for the very important feature of the size of the executive force. The two former systems are national. The system given as English is really the London system.

The domestic section of the dissertation breaks up into several parts, each dealing with a separate community, e.g., Philadelphia, New York, Providence, Chicago, and other western cities and States that have a systematic registration or semi-registration of school children, e. g., Michigan, Idaho, Nevada.

The Philadelphia system is taken up in detail because the city in which it is applied is a large one, and has that kind of population that makes the application of a scheme of registration difficult. This system was viewed at first hand by the writer who participated in the enumeration.

This is followed by briefer expositions of the New York situation, Providence experience, Chicago experience, etc., etc., with a view toward collating the various procedures and estimating their merit.

Part II, the constructive portion, is a critical examination of the foregoing evidence, with a treatment of such topics as Census Districts ; Census Takers, their appointment, equipment, and

It is recommended that all school boards use the card method, entering all the data for each child upon the same card, the card then to be filed away for use in subsequent years. The census is the only way by which we can establish our base line and ascertain just how many and what children we have to deal with. The department of public instruction must obtain more complete reports from all classes of institutions dealing with minor children, and the reports must be better classified than they are now."

T 6 Registration of City School Children

management by a central bureau ; Relation of public, private, and parochial schools by means of census ; Uses of the census for purposes other than compulsory education, e. g., Health Inspection, Factory Inspection, Tenement Inspection, Controlling the Physical Welfare of Children, Improving the Condition of the Poor, etc.

The industrial growth of the American community as well as the tendency of the American youth to be his own master at as early an age as possible, and the increased standard of living, are all tendencies that urge the child into the labor market. With these forces the compulsory education laws and the laws against the employment of under-age children in factories, mines, shops, etc., wage ceaseless war, and the registration of the school population is a matter of more and more pressing concern to those that look toward the enforcement of the laws as the foundation of civic righteousness.

For the purpose of our discussion, therefore, " registration " will, in general, mean the getting of the name of the child on the books of the school so that he is not thereafter lost sight of by the educational authorities until, by age or schooling, he is no longer within their jurisdiction.

It is true that this is usually attempted in one effort by communities that take a census of school children, but it does not have to be so. A child may be registered as well through the action of the attendance office that has picked him up on the streets, as by an enumerator that seeks from his parent the data of his Hfe history. But for the sake of brevity, succinctness, and definiteness of discussion, this dissertation is mainly limited to those projects made in a concerted way to discover the number of children of and approaching school age for which the community feels responsible.

But because the matter of enumeration so nearly concerns the matter of the enforcement of the compulsory education laws, some digressions must be allowed on the heads of truancy and methods of checking absenteeism.

The registration of school children has for its aim several welldefined objects. As conducted by foreign governments, where army service is compulsory, the registration of school children has an imperative meaning that instantly makes it one of the most serious duties of the state, and gives it so definite a goal

Introduction 1 7

that the whole development of the system, with its accompanying information, is most rigorously prosecuted and guarded. Nothing is left to chance.

In the United States the registration of school children has come to mean, as performed by the state governments, the determination of an adequate basis of taxation or apportionment,^ and as performed by the municipal authorities, part of the following :

1. An enumeration of those at the time, or soon to be, under school authority ;

2. A location of these;

3. A brief description of them :

a. For the educational authorities

So that the compulsory education law may be enforced ;

b. For the health authorities

So that the laws of public and private hygiene may be enforced ;

c. For the charitable authorities

So that relief may be offered to the needy, the hungry, and the lonely and neglected;

d. For the child labor bureaus

So that the factory inspection, and the provisions of the child labor laws may be carried out. There is no municipality in the United States at present that takes a census with all these things in view. The isolation of the school census is its vulnerable point. Neither enumerators nor directors know exactly what they are after, and their questions are rather random, and their published figures frequently mere iteration or more or less unprofitable tabulation.

^ E. P. Cubberley, v. School P'unds and Their Apportionment. Ch. IX. Coltimbia University Contributions to Education, No. 2.

CHAPTER I GERMANY History

The material in regard to Schulpflichtigkeit and Schulzwang, or the duty of going to school and the power of the state to compel attendance at school, is, in regard to Germany, very voluminous.

But the material concerning the method of registering children is so intimate a part of the general German system of the registration of population, and the relation between the School Police and the general body of police is so close and so generally assumed by the German writers on the subject of School Attendance, that information concerning the registration of children has had to be got at indirectly by original pamphlets and blanks prepared for the instruction of parents and school boards, and secured by the writer after considerable wrestling with the conservatism of German bureaucracy.

There are, however, certain works that, in treating of the whole matter of school attendance, make reference to the registration of school children. Among the first of these is that of Victor Cousin in the early part of the last century. Yet in the translation of this in 1835, Sarah Austin writes: "I have always been astonished that no researches have been made by any German into the antiquity of Schulpflichtigkeit in the several parts of the empire. The only work I know that touches on the subject is that of J. K. F. Schlegel ' Ueber Schulpflichtigkeit und Schulzwang, 1824.' "

Since this report, and especially since the formation of the present empire of Germany, the works have become much more numerous. One of these is the " Organization und Unterichtsfolge der stadtischen Volkschulen in Deutschland," by Emil Schwartz, Berlin, 1907 (Rheinhold Kiihn). This work gives an idea of the general laws of the kingdoms and the empire that now control the matter of school attendance in Germany. He says, in Chapter I, on School Duty in the German Federated 18

States: In the largest state, in Prussia, these regulations (concerning the beginning and ending; lengthening and shortening of the time at school), are determined on the basis of the Charter of January 31, 1850, and of the General Law of May 2, 1794, Part 2, Title 12. According to Art. 21, of the former, parents and those in parental relation must not allow their children and wards to go without the instruction which is prescribed for the public common school. From the General Law, the following paragraphs apply: "Sec. 43. Every inhabitant who cannot or does not wish to provide the necessary instruction for his children in his own house is constrained, after the fifth year is passed, to send his children to school." " Sec. 44. Only on the authority of the magistrate and the clerical school superintendent, may a child be withheld from school for a longer time or be removed from the instruction of the school for some time on account of intervening obstacles." " Sec. 46. The school instruction must be continued until the child has attained, according to the inventory of his pastor, that knowledge necessary to every qualified person of his rank." These regulations were established for the whole Prussian monarchy by the Cabinet Order of the 14th of May, 1825, hence for those parts of the country in which the general law had not, up to that time, obtained. Similar regulations occur in the cases of other German states. In the kingdom of Saxony school service is regulated by the school law of April 26, 1873; in the Empire, by the order of April 18, 1871.

For Prussia, however, some of the earlier regulations concerning the control of attendance can be seen from the translation from Cousin mentioned before. Quoting from the Entwurf eines allgemeinen Gesetzes ueber die Verfassung des Schulwesens im Preussischen Staate, Berlin 1819, he says:

" Every year after Easter or Michaelmas, the committees and municipal authorities shall make an inquiry concerning all the families lying within their jurisdiction who have notoriously not provided for their children that private education which they are bound to give them in default of public education. For this purpose they shall make a census of all the children of age to go to school. The baptismal registers and those of the civil authorities shall be open to them at the commencement of every year, and the police must afford them every possible facility and assistance.

" If parents and master neglect sending their children punctually to school, the clergymen must first explain to them the heavy responsibility which rests upon parents; after that, the school committee must summon them to appear before it and address severe remonstrances to them. No excuse whatever shall be deemed valid (exclusive of the proof that the education of the child is otherwise provided for) except: certificate of illness signed by the medical man or the clergyman ; the absence of the parents and masters which had occasioned that of the children ; or the want of necessary clothing, funds for providing which had not been forthcoming.

" If these remonstrances are not sufficient, coercive measures are to be resorted to. The children are to be taken to school by an officer of the police, or the parents are to be sentenced to graduated punishments or fines, and in case they are unable to pay, to imprisonment or to labor for the benefit of the parish. The punishments may be successively increased but are never to exceed the maximum of punishment of correctional police.

" The fines are to be awarded by the school committee, to be collected if necessary with the aid of the police and paid into the funds of the committee. The execution of the other punishments

rests with the police. If all these punishments are found

ineffectual, a guardian shall be appointed especially to watch over the education of the children."

Definitions

Before any English reader can get a definite idea of the constitution of the German school system and its method of controlling the registration of children, he must become acquainted with some of the more frequently used terms of the various writers. For the purpose of making the subsequent discussion clearer, some definitions are here inserted :

Prussia is divided into 14 provinces. Each of these provinces is divided into departments called Regierungs-Bezirke. Each of these is subdivided into Kreise, and each of these into Gemeinde. Each department has a council, called a Regierung, with a president. The province has an Ober-prasident. In every province, under the direction of the Ober-prasident, is an institution dependent upon the Ministry of Public Instruction and in some sort a copy of it. As the Ministry is divided into 3 sections (Instructional, Ecclesiastical, Medical), so the Provincial consistorien are divided. The first, for ecclesiastical affairs is the Consistory, properly so-called, (Consistorium) ; the second,.

for public instruction, (Schulcollegium) ; the third, for pubHc heahh, (Medicinal collegium).

The mechanism of the administration of popular instruction is in a few words as follows : Primary instruction belongs mainly to the Regierung and the Gemeinde. Every Gemeinde must have a school, and the pastor is in virtue of his office the inspector of this school. Associated with him is a committee of administration and of superintendence, composed of some of the most considerable persons of the parish, and called Schulvorstand. In the urban parishes where there are several schools of an order higher than that of the country schools, the magistrates form a higher committee which presides over all these schools with their several committees and arranges them into one harmonious system. This committee is the Schuldeputation or Schulcommission. There is, moreover, in the chief town of the Kreis, another inspector, whose authority extends to all the schools of that circle and who corresponds with the local inspectors and committees. This inspector is almost always a clergyman. His title is Kreisschulinspector. He corresponds with the Regierung of every Bezirk through the president of that Regierung. The Regierung includes several councillors, among others a special councillor for primary schools, a Schulrath. He is a paid inspector. He keeps alive, by inspection, the zeal of the Schulinspectoren and Schulvorstande and the Masters. He is the true director of primary instruction in each Regierung. He is responsible to the Ministry of the Interior, and to the Minister of Public Instruction.

Gemeindeschule is another name for Volkschule and is generally used in Berlin instead of Volkschule. It is not a parochial school in our sense of the term. Gemeine or Gemeinde originally meant any community of persons. It is now chiefly used to express the smallest divisions of Church and State, the two most important communities in the world. Town — or Village — Gemeinen have, as parts of the State, their Burgermeister or Schulze ; as parts of the Church, their Pfarrer. — See Krug, Phil. Lex. A Gemeinde is the administrative unit of Prussia, as the Commune is of France, and the Parish or Township of England. The chief magistrate of each Gemeinde is the Schulze, whose functions are, in some degree, similar to those of the French