114 CIRCULARS OF INFORMATION FOR 1885. the will of local committees, is the most serious defect in our school system. Reform in this particular is most urgently demanded; not that, as a matter of fact, teachers are displaced by wholesale when the annual election comes round, but because they are all liable to displacement by this process. The actual summary dismissals without just cause are not numerous, but even in the best managed city systems they occur with sufficient frequency to inspire too many of the teachers who are spared with a sense of humiliation and insecurity. But the effect produced on the minds of the mass of teachers by unjustifiable removals through the machinery of the annual election -our barbarous school guillotine-is, perhaps, less pernicious and regrettable than the effect resulting from what is sometimes called the "blackballing" process. A teacher is said to be "blackballed" when he has failed to receive a full vote at the election. It is no uncommon thing for the best of masters to be elected by a small vote, for which no possible reason could be assigned except that they had some individual opinions with regard to educational matters. What could be more disheartening to a corps of teachers than such unjust treatment? Capable men hasten to quit a situation which exposes them to such humiliation. To render the permanent tenure effectual, it must be accompanied by a permanent, that is, an irreducible salary, as control of salary is virtually control of tenure. We know what the objector to this plan will say: Your permanent tenure, with its irreducible salary, constitutes without doubt a desirable status for the teacher, providing the rate of salary is not too low. Whatever other tribulation may await the teacher, he has no longer any risks to run; he has no longer to submit to an annual humiliation in the shape of an annual election; his reputation and his living are no longer at the mercy of incompetent or prejudiced school officers; his status is invested with dignity and independence; he can hold up his head like a man and look the whole world in the face. But in all this what have you done but shift the risk from the employé to employer, from the teacher to the public? You have insured the teacher against risk, but what guarantee has the public that the teacher will do his duty when he has no longer the fear of losing his situation to act as a spur to effort? Are not the annual election and the power of summary dismissal necessary means of stimulating teachers to vigorous and sustained effort and of removing those who are delinquent and incompetent; and, besides, is not this permanency of tenure contrary to the spirit of our free institutions and too un-American to find favor with us? To these questions, which embody the substance of all that can be said in favor of annual election and the power of summary dismissal, it may be said in reply: First, that the precarious tenure has not been found necessary for the end in view in any other enlightened country on the globe; and, second, in our own country the annual election is unknown outside of the public school system, so that this odious annual 114 CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS IN THE UNITED STATES. 115 election has no place in the civilized world except in the public schools of the United States. But it is not denied that the public should be guaranteed against risk as well as the teacher. In the adjustment of compensation and service the relation of risks must always be taken into account. In this case the guarantee of the public against risk is perfectly feasible, as experience has satisfactorily proved. This guarantee consists of six distinct provisions: (1) A thorough professional training of teachers in normal schools, suited to their destined functions. This is necessary as the primary guarantee against the appointment of teachers without the requisite qualifications. And it is evident that the State could afford a more liberal expenditure for the education of a teacher who is to serve the public thirty or forty years than for the teacher who is to serve only three or four years. Only a small fraction of the teachers now engaged in the service are graduates of normal schools, there being no one State that has not recoiled before the task of securing to the whole body of teachers a professional education; and this is because of the very great number of teachers which teaching as a temporary employment necessitates. (2) Another guarantee should be provided by a system of examining and certificating teachers by experts wholly under the control of the central authorities; besides, the local certificate, the only one, with few exceptions now issued, does little for the establishment of the standing and reputation of the holder. But a certificate granted by the central authority, and valid throughout the State, would create a professional rank and standing which would elevate the status of the hold ers. (3) As a third condition requisite to the permanent tenure, probationary service must be provided for. The candidate must not only have his certificate, but he must prove his capacity by actual service in teaching before he can claim a definitive appointment. The period of probation should not be less than two years and it might well be three or four. The judgment on the result should be rendered by one or more approved experts. If a further guarantee against failure is deemed expedient, it may be obtained by an examination at the end of probation, bearing especially on the practical work of the school room. (4) As to the choice to be made among candidates thus prepared, the most judicious method appears to be for the superior school authority to nominate three or four candidates, having regard both to seniority and merit, and that the selection from this list should be left to the local committee. (5) Provision for a suitable hierarchical situation for the teacher. Such a situation would comprise a competent supervision and the other means requisite for stimulating the teacher to the best efforts, by recognizing his worth and rewarding his merits; and such a situation would also comprise the necessary machinery for administering just and 115 salutary discipline in cases of delinquency. In France the hierarchical situation is so well contrived that the young man of talent, entering upon his career as primary teacher in the remotest mountain hamlet, may hope to reach, by well earned promotions, the principalship of a metropolitan school or to become director of a normal school or even inspector. "It is the function of a good administration," says the eminent Belgian publicist and educator, Émile de Laveleye, "to seek by fixed rules, which science indicates, to ascertain merit and to class individuals according to their aptitudes; then there would be an end of solicitations, of subserviency, of intrigues, of protections, of favors, of injustices." And this is the paradise for which the teacher prays. He wants to feel that he owes his position to his merit, and not to favor, and to be sure that his efforts will be appreciated and recompensed. It is, perhaps, in vain to hope that the public school teacher's pathway may be strewn with roses; hitherto it has been too much hedged up with briers and thorns: but the supreme misery of his lot is to be judged by incompetents. This would necessarily be mitigated by the better supervision which the permanent tenure would require. (6) A retiring pension is requisite, not only as a security for old age, but as a means of rendering practicable the retirement of the aged and fatigued public servant without reflecting on his reputation or abandoning him to destitution. These six conditions are logically involved in the full and complete application of the principle of fixity of tenure. Moreover, they are at the same time the means of producing an equilibrium of risks and authorities which experience has proved to be indispensable to the most efficient, economical, and harmonious working of a school system. In every point of view this reform in our system seems to me fundamental in its importance; all others are but secondary, subordinate, accessary. It may seem to the timid to be a bold undertaking, but it is not more bold in the present circumstances than the project of State normal schools or the project of a State board of education fifty years ago. Every epoch has its peculiar tasks. This reform I verily believe to be the task of the hour for the friends of educational progress. Public sentiment is now everywhere drifting in this direction. In the powerful movement which has been begun to reform the civil service I see plainly the dawning of a new and better day for the public school and the public school teacher. The press is daily teeming with arguments for this cause, for the principles of a good civil service are essentially the same as the principles of a good educational service. Hence the achievement of the civil service reform will prepare the way for this reform. The spoils system and the annual election are twin barbarisms, and with the abolition of the former the latter must go. But permanent tenure is not to be brought into successful operation by a single legislative act. This radical reform must be reached by a series of steps. Initiatory steps have already been taken in various quarters. It is worthy of mention that, at a late session of the Massachusetts legislature (1874), the chairman of the committee on public service offered to include the teaching service in the provision of the civil service reform bill reported by this committee.1 This reform must begin practically in the cities and larger towns. Teachers have their duty in connection with this task. Everywhere they should pour in their petitions and memorials upon the legislatures, throughout the country, and do their share of the work in creating public opinion which shall demand this reform. To our metropolitan city belongs the credit of taking the lead, and of setting a good example to cities of less importance, in respect to the reform in the tenure of office of teachers. In New York the position of the public school teachers is reasonably secure. This security is provided for in the law creating a department of public instruction for the city and county of New York. In the first place, teachers are elected once for all, presumably to serve during efficiency and good behavior. There is no recurrence of election whatever. The barbarism of annual election is utterly unknown in the system. There are three modes of removing teachers: (1) By the board of education, upon recommendation for cause by the city superintendent, or a majority of the trustees for the ward, or a majority of inspectors for the district; but not without a three-quarters vote. (2) The board of trustees for the ward, by the vote of a majority of the whole number of trustees in office, may remove teachers, other than principals and vice principals, provided the removal is approved in writing by a majority of the inspectors of the district; but the teacher so removed has the right of appeal to the board of education, and may be reinstated if the board so decides. (3) By revocation of license by the city superintendent, for cause affecting morality or competency, and the written concurrence of two of the inspectors of the district in which the teacher is employed, the teacher having the right of appeal to the State superintendent and the revocation taking effect only after the confirmation of the State superintendent. In short, the principle of fixity of tenure is fully recognized in the New York system. There is no such thing as summary dismissal or arbitrary removal. The teacher once appointed is not subject to removal except for cause touching his morality or competence, upon charge of responsible officers and sustained by competent evidence. And thus the fundamental requisite for a good status for the teacher has been provided. On the other hand, in the Boston school system, the oldest in the country and that which has been most commonly ranked with New York as a representative system, the teachers hold their position by a tenure as insecure as it can well be made. In the infancy of the system At the present session of the Massachusetts legislature, January, 1885, a bill has been introduced providing for a more permanent tenure of office for teachers. 118 CIRCULARS OF INFORMATION FOR 1885. the famous Master Cheever was inducted into the office of principal of the Latin School with much pomp and ceremony. He had come to stay; and he did stay until "time took him off," after he had got well into the nineties. He had probably never heard of the absurdity of electing schoolmasters annually; but in an evil day some shortsighted reformer introduced this bungling contrivance of getting rid of incompetent teachers, and, as time has gone on, the condition of teachers in respect to security of position has grown worse instead of better. There is nowhere, either in statutory provision or in the by-laws and regulations ordained by the school board, any recognition of the principle that the teacher has any right to continuance in the service, no matter how unexceptional in conduct or capability. Every principal is liable to be dropped from the service at the end of the year unless he obtains the votes of a majority of the whole number of members of the board, this majority being the legal quorum. Hence, the loss of a single vote would cost the master his place, if there happened to be only a quorum present at the time of voting. The case of the subordinate teachers is still worse. Unless nominated to the board by the majority of their district committees, their reëlection is not even considered by the board. In fact, no teacher is accorded the right of being notified of any intention to drop him from the service, and, when dropped, has no redress, not even the poor satisfaction of being informed for what cause he has been deprived of his means of livelihood. This precariousness of tenure has been aggravated and rendered less endurable by the system of supervision inaugurated by the supervisors, described in another part of this report. Reform of this feature of the system, which has been so discouraging and demoralizing to the teachers, has of late been considerably agitated, and it is to be hoped that the time is not distant when not only in the Boston system, but throughout our city systems generally, teachers will be made secure in their situations during efficiency and good behavior. The cities of Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Newark are reported as having taken the advanced position, by the side of New York, in reforming the tenure of office of teachers. The superintendent of Jersey City, Mr. George H. Barton, writes as follows: Teachers once appointed in this city hold office during the will of the board or during good behavior. One or two principals have held their positions for thirty years. Teachers can only be removed for cause after a fair trial. Superintendent William N. Barringer, of Newark, says: Our teachers are all appointed during good behavior and cannot be dismissed except for good cause. We settle them for life. EXAMINING AND CERTIFICATING OF TEACHERS. The object in view in the examination of teachers is to exclude the incompetent from the teaching service, leaving the door open only to |