School commissioner

“ Each county has a school Commissioner whose business it is to examine candidates for teaching, to employ and direct teachers, to approve bills of salary, to visit each school in his district without announcement at least once a quarter, to remove and replace teachers, to make reports to the General Superintendent, to supply text-books, and hold annual teachers’ meetings in order to develop greater ability on the part of the instructors. Compulsory education is recognized in the Republic ”

“ I think it is the best institution in the city, and it would be a good idea to appoint a Commissioner in each ward to bring all the street children there every day and watch them while they play, and see that all have fair play. If school committees were formed of women, I think such an office might be created. ”

“ To be a municipal councillor or a school commissioner is indeed all very well. But the village council is not really very important. It spends only a few hundred dollars a year and to keep up the roads is not an exciting task. The village council rarely has even the "town hall" usual in other communities; it meets in the "salle publique," or the vestry, of the Church, or in the school house. The school commissioners too have no very dazzling work to do. The curé is sometimes their chairman and thus in some degree they come under the control of the Church. ”

“ Honor found a seat near the door just as the chairman introduced the first speaker—the candidate for school commissioner of whom Miss Ferguson had spoken so bitterly.
What they all wanted, he said, was the best education they could give their children. He named the old commissioners, and dwelt upon the fact that they were all prosperous men, and that only one of them had ever had a child in the Kernville schools.
"They want us to be satisfied with anything they choose to give us, while they send their own children to private schools. It's not a square deal. ”

“ This is the most highly paid office occupied by a woman, the salary being the same as that of the Secretary of State, State Auditor and State Treasurer. By virtue of her office the Superintendent is a member of the State Boards of Pardons, Charities and Reforms, Land Commissioners, School Land Commissioners and Education, with power to appoint all members of the last board, which elects the State Commissioner of Education. ”

“ The Commissioner is authorized to arrange, through grants or contracts, with institutions of higher education for the operation of short-term or regular session institutes for special training designed to improve the ability of teachers, supervisors, counselors, and other elementary or secondary school personnel to deal effectively with special educational problems occasioned by desegregation. ”

“ Instead of teachers retained expressly for the purpose,—selected, after strict examination into their capacities, and vigilantly superintended afterwards, by competent judges—the poor children are entered by the neighboring commissioner (often himself entirely unqualified either to teach or to direct teaching,) in the private school which chance, or the teacher's unfitness for any other employment, combined always with cheapness of price, may have already established nearest at hand. ”

“ He has also filled the office of county commissioner for four years and he has done effective service in behalf of the interests of the schools as a member of the school board. In a word, he stands for progress and improvement at all times and lends his support to those interests and activities which are matters of civic virtue and of civic pride. Fraternally he is connected with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and has filled all of the chairs in the local lodge to which he belongs. ”

“ What he does, or may do, shall not be controlled by the Department of the Interior.
2. Ask Congress to provide such legislation that no agents or teachers shall ever be removed without proper cause.
3. All inspectors and special agents shall be under the absolute control of the Commissioner.
4. {44} There shall be a division of the Indian reservation into school districts, with an assistant superintendent for each. It shall be their duty to visit the schools constantly, and keep themselves in full sympathy and touch with the work. ”

“ He could not endure the presence of a child. Often when a clattering youngster belonging to one of the clerks would come chattering into the big business-room adjoining his little apartment, the Commissioner would steal softly and close the door. He would always cross the street to avoid meeting the school-children when they came dancing along in happy groups upon the sidewalk, and his firm mouth would close into a mere line. ”

“ The Commissioner expresses the opinion that population in the Territories has outstripped the number of school-houses and teachers, and that the present Territorial provisions for education are inadequate. He renews his recommendation that greater importance be given to educational office in the Territories. ”

“ Sagacious men have not been wanting among us, to see the radical defects of our primary school system: and in 1829, the late Mr. Fitzhugh7 of Fairfax, stimulated the Legislature to a feeble effort towards correcting them, by empowering the school commissioners of any county to lay it off into districts of not less than three nor more than seven miles square ”

“ Mention six of the principal duties of the commissioner.
43. Have members of examining boards the legal right to engage la summer normal school work?
44. How is the commissioner limited in office expenses?
45. Can an examiner be elected by a plurality vote? ”

“ I think it would be much better to put complete control and responsibility in the District Commissioners, and then provide a board of school visitors, to be appointed by the Supreme Court of the District or by the President, from the different school districts of Washington, who, representing local needs, shall meet and make recommendations to the Commissioners and to the Superintendent of Education—an educator of ability and experience who should be an appointee of and responsible to the District Commissioners. ”

“ The report of the Commissioner of Education for 1876 contains the abstract of the reports of the several State and city superintendents and other official educational publications, showing for each State and Territory the school population aud the enrollment aud attendance in the public schools, the number of teachers in the schools, with rate of compensation, the public-school iucome aud expenditure, and the constitutional and legislative provisions in each State touching public instruction, with more or less full intormation for each State respecting kindergarten and other private schools ”

“ Your Committee believes that in many systems of elementary schools there is injury done by too much formality in ascertaining whether the pupils of a given class have completed the work up to a given arbitrarily fixed point, and are ready to take up the next apportionment of the work. In the early days of city school systems, when the office of superintendent was first created, it was thought necessary to divide up the graded course of study into years of work, and to hold stated annual examinations to ascertain how many pupils could be promoted to the next grade or year’s work. ”

“ The examination is severe, and it is from the body of the professors of the normal schools rather than from the ranks of the primary teachers that the successful candidates are chiefly drawn.
Very limited powers are entrusted to certain communal and cantonal authorities. The commission scolaire is a committee organized in each commune for the purpose of improving school attendance, to which end they administer Minor local authorities. a caisse des écoles or school fund for supplying clothing and meals to needy children. ”

“ All the instruction, discipline, and management were supplied by the boys themselves; and when a number of elder boys joined, a committee, appointed by themselves, regulated the affairs of the community. However, this did not last long. The hot young blood and immature young brain needed a stronger curb than self-appointed committees could supply; and by a general request, the school has since been worked by authority—this authority itself guided by a general vote in many matters of choice immediately concerning the scholars. ”

“ The board must accordingly appoint teachers and a superintendent. These latter are selected because they have training and technical qualifications which the community needs in the schools. The technical officers have in an important sense an independent place in the educational system. It will be remembered that the teacher was the first one to whom the community delegated responsibility for the schools. Not infrequently the community finds its board of representative citizens on one side of a school issue and its technical officers on the other side. ”

“ The prefect, a government employé, presides over the councils. The Academic Inspector, another government employé, is officially the president; four councillors-general, elected by the whole body of the council-general of the department, sit on the Departments of Primary Instruction Council, as do also the director or directors of the Normal Schools of Public Teachers, and four teachers, two male and two female, to be elected by the whole body of lay public school teachers of both sexes in the department, all of them paid employés of the Government ”

“ Centralization is secured by an array of schoolmasters, trained under the Commissioners. No man can attain the rank of a first-class national schoolmaster who has not gone through a training in an establishment conducted after the most approved fashion of the Board—a training by which he becomes thoroughly indoctrinated in all the maxims of that fashion. He is not sent to a model school merely to see the best mode of arranging classes or maintaining the discipline of the school. ”

“ Appointment and Payment of Teachers.—For the purpose of promotion the state through its inspectors undertakes the duty of classifying the individual teachers in four grades, passage from one grade to another being secured by examination. Appointments of teachers to schools are made by the school managers subject to the approval of the commissioners. Rights of dismissal are reserved to the local managers and also to the commissioners independently. ”

“ He should be a person of sympathetic attitude, of high qualifications, and of experience in the field of elementary education. The assistants should be carefully selected by the board on the recommendation of the county superintendent. Poor supervision is little better than none.
The Schools Examined.—The county superintendent and his assistants should give, periodically, oral and written examinations in each school, thus testing the work of both the teacher and the pupils. These examinations should not conform in any perfunctory or red-tape manner to a literally construed course of study. ”

“ The control of the state comes in to the extent of providing district inspectors who visit the schools once a year, and hold a meeting of the teachers in their district once a quarter. In each province there is a chief inspector who is bound to visit each school once in two years, and reports direct to the minister of public instruction. ”

“ Schools are 'vested' and 'non-vested.' Vested schools are those built by the Board of National Education; non-vested schools are the ordinary schools, and are managed by those who built them. If a committee of persons build a school, it is looked on by the Board as the 'patron.' If a landowner or private person builds a school, he is regarded as the patron if he has no committee. The patron, whether landlord or committee, has power to appoint or dismiss a manager, who corresponds with the Board. ”

“ Causes of complaint, which a student considers himself to have against an academical officer, must be laid before the academical amtmann, if such officer belong to the inferior class of the servants of the High School. When it affects a head or teacher, then before the academical senate; if it affects the prorector, or academical senate, then it must be carried to the curator of the university, who must receive it, and lay it before the minister of the interior. ”

“ There may be, it is true, a district board, but these are laymen, much better acquainted with the principles of farming than with those of teaching. They have no standards for judging a school and seldom visit one. The selection known as the "Deestrict Skule" illustrates fairly well the ability of the old-time school board to pass judgment upon the professional merits of the teacher.
Nominal Supervision.—In other states there is a county superintendent on part time who has a kind of general but attenuated supervision over all the schools of a county. ”

“ The local education authority shall throughout their area have the powers and duties of a school board and school attendance committee under the Elementary Education Acts, 1870 to 1900, and any other Acts, including local Acts, and shall also be responsible for and have the control of all secular instruction in public elementary schools not provided by them, and school boards and school attendance committees shall be abolished. ”

“ And in that control they have security for two things: first, that the committee shall not be suspected of partiality; and secondly, that they shall not be actually guilty of partiality. In the same manner, there is security for the proper connection between the high school and the schools below. But in the school at Norwich—of which I speak because it is now prominent—you have a board of twenty-five men, irresponsible to the people. They select a committee of nine; that committee determines what candidates shall be transferred from the grammar schools to the high school. ”