Mr. NORTON. Yes; we will find in that particular column a slight discrepancy with every State. The reason is this. We assembled both of these tables from the Federal census figures, and when the girl copied the first one she omitted "Orientals," and a few other miscellaneous groups that were listed in separate tables and when we discovered we had omitted them, after correspondence with the Census Bureau, we added these omissions in each State which gives the numbers in the first column of Table 1. Mr. ROBSION. Well, I suggest before the figures go into the record that they be modified; there might be a lack of faith in the figures if it were seen that there were any discrepancies. Mr. NORTON. It is a small number but it should be corrected. Mr. ROBSION. It is about 50,000 in New York. Mr. NORTON. I think the thing to do would be to cut out the last column of Table 2. Mr. ROBSION. I think if you are going to put Table 2 in I would correct the figures and let it go in. Mr. NORTON. I thank you for mentioning it; I will see that it is done. Let us go next to the teacher-training problem. This is probably one of the most important, though it often attracts the least attention. You can not have a strong educational system without strong teachers, and of something over 700,000 teachers in the United States, 354,000 of of them (1920 figures) were inadequately trained. Our definition of inadequate training is less than normal school graduation, or the equivalent. TRAINING OF TEACHERS The following two tables give facts as to the training, experience, and maturity of teachers in the United States: TABLE I. Are the children of your State taught by trained teachers?? This figure is estimated from the report of one division of the State and taken from biennial report for 1919-20, p. 31. The figures in this table do not include the District of Columbia. The data in the above table were taken from the following sources: Figures in column 2 are from U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1922, No. 29, p. 18, col. 11.Figures in colum 3 are with some revisions from National Education Association, Research Bulletin, January, 1923, p. 43, col. 4. Figures in colums 8 and 9 are from Teachers' Salary and Salary Trends in 1923, Report of the Salary Committee of the National Education Association, pp. 100-101. TABLE II.-What experience and maturity have the teachers in the rural schools of your state? 1 The data for this table were taken from the following sources: Columns 2, 3, and 5 from Teachers' Salaries and Salary Trends, 1923, Report of the National Education Association Salary Committee, pp. 100 and 101. Column 6 is obtained by subtracting column 5 from 100 per cent. This is an extremely conservative figure. It means that 54 per cent of our teachers at the present time do not hold certificates that require normal-school graduation. Now, many of them at the present time have certificates that read to the effect that they have normal-school graduation, which they have managed to get hold of, and yet they are not really normalschool graduates. So look upon this as a minimum. If it were possible to get exact facts this figure would doubtless be increased, but there are certainly at least 354,000 teachers to be included in this category. That is made on the basis of study of State reports and a number of other scattered studies, that have been made. THE NATION'S TEACHERS 66 In the table "Inadequately trained" means those teachers who are not graduates of a standard normal school or who have not had equivalent training. Beginners are those who have not had more than one year's teaching experience. Each year practically one in three of rural teachers is teaching for the first time. In short their lack of training is not compensated for by any experience. "No training refers to those teachers who have not had more than two years' schooling beyond elementary school. If teachers who have had no normal-school training were included, as they might well be, the percentage of teachers with "no training" would be greatly increased. The CHAIRMAN. What is your definition of a teacher being adequately trained? |
