Elementary School Standards

Elementary School Standards Instruction Course of Study Supervision Applied to New York City Schools by FRANK M. McMURRY, PH. D. PROFESSOR OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY YONKERS-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK. WORLD BOOK COMPANY, by World book Company. Entered at Stationers London, England. All rights reserved. EDITORS PREFACE THE problems dealt with by Professor McMurry in this book cover one of the most important fields included in the New York City School Inquiry. His task was to arrive at a just estimate of the quality of the teaching, the course of study, and the supervision by the principals in the elementary schools. This task naturally led him to formulate standards of value, whereby the work of the elementary schools could be appraised. Rejecting the usual examinations as inadequate and unsatisfactory for his purpose, Professor McMurry has judged the quality of the teaching, course of study, and super vision by the degree to which all three are controlled by purposes of recognized value in daily living. His formulation of the standards on which his judgments are based and his detailed descriptions of the application of those standards to the actual work of the schools will be useful, we believe, to earnest teachers everywhere. Professor Mc-Murry did not attempt to make these standards all-embracing, but they are so fundamental to satisfactory plans and procedure in elementary school work that, whatever limitations as to scope and variety they may possess, all good elementary schools must conform to them. Further, they point the way to progressive improvement where improvement is desirable. This book is, accordingly, not merely a report made by one of my associates in the New York City School Inquiry it is a contribution to the professional resources of teachers and supervising officers wherever their lot may be cast. Though essentially Professor McMurrys report as submitted to me and by me submitted to the Committee on vii viii Editors, Preface School Inquiry, the report as here printed has been subjected to important revisions in form and, to a slight degree, in substance revisions which were impossible under the conditions which governed the preparation and publication of the draft submitted to the Committee. The book does not attempt to illustrate accurate measurement of educational results. It is scientific only in so far as it brings to bear organized knowledge and insight on an educational problem. Scientific measurement in education is, indeed, as yet too little developed to be applied to more than a very limited portion of the work of the elementary schools. Except for arithmetic and penman ship, standard scores or standard achievements are not available for measuring the quality of the results actually attained by the schools and even for penmanship and arithmetic, the standard measures for each grade are not yet firmly established. Moreover, purposes must be formulated and incorporated into practice before any results to be measured can be expected. Scientific measurement of results will therefore always presuppose clear conception of the purposes to be realized and the formulation of these purposes will always continue to be essential to efficient practice The extent to which these purposes are realized falls within the province of exact measurement but, as has been said, without these purposes there is nothing to measure, and the methods of exact measurement are still in process of evolution. It is worth noting, however, that the conclusions in relation to ability in reasoning and computation in arithmetic arrived at by Professor McMurry have been confirmed by exact measurement, so far as it was possible to apply exact measurement, by Mr. Stuart A. Courtis, who is expected to contribute a later volume to this series, PAUL H. HANUS. HABVABD UNIVERSITY, April, 1913. CONTENTS PAGE EDITORS PREFACE...