equalize the burden among districts is indicated by the variation in the district valuations of from $617 per school child to $75,444 per school child.

Distribution on the census basis has no relation to the effort which counties or districts are actually making in education. It does not encourage school authorities to require school enrollment and attendance, as the greater the number remaining out of school the greater is the amount of State and county money available for those who attend.

The amount now received from the State distributed on a basis which recognizes actual effort, namely, attendance and number of teachers employed, varies among counties from $2.76 to $6.46 for each child in average daily attendance and from $27 to $121 for each teacher employed. Among districts in two counties the State fund varies from $1.79 to $9.24 in one county and from $1.13 to $6.46 in the other per child in average daily attendance; and from $35 to $171 in one county and $13 to $116 in the other per teacher employed.

Distribution of State funds should be on the basis of the number of teachers employed and the aggregate attendance. Aggregate attendance is the total number of days actually attended by all the pupils. It depends, therefore, both on the daily attendance and the total number of days the school was maintained in the year. In making the distribution the State should pay to each county a fixed amount for each teacher employed and apportion the remainder of the State fund on the aggregate attendance. The State fund in 1915-16 amounted to practically $74 per teacher employed in the State. The Wyoming State fund was a little over $200 per teacher employed. Arizona raised approximately $325 per teacher. The California State fund is distributed on the basis suggested and amounts to $250 per teacher. The Colorado State fund should be large enough to pay at least $200 per teacher and leave from onefourth to one-third of the total fund to be apportioned on the basis of aggregate attendance. This would encourage county school authorities to secure good attendance and to maintain longer terms.

Chapter V.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF SCHOOL INSTRUCTION.

The general plan of administration and organization affects directly the efficiency of classroom instruction in so far as it governs the quality of buildings furnished for school purposes and their equipment; length of term and regularity of attendance; the placing and selecting of teachers, their qualifications, tenure, salary, and supervision; and the course of study and textbooks used. Moreover, the consolidated school in the open country is the accepted solution of the problem of rural school efficiency, since the organization of the one-teacher school for purposes of class instruction and grading is not adapted to modern ideals and methods of teaching. The way in which the present method of administration of rural schools influences these matters will be considered in accordance with this classification.

(1) SCHOOL BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT.

All children should have an opportunity for education at public expense, in a schoolhouse reasonably accessible, and in buildings which insure at least convenience, comfort, and healthful conditions. Wherever investigations have been made regarding the health of city and country children a far higher percentage of physical defectiveness is shown among rural than among city children. This fact is arousing new interest in everything affecting the health of children, and particularly in the school-building problem. The following minimum requirements for rural schools are summarized from a recent bulletin distributed by the Bureau of Education:

Country school children should have as sanitary and attractive schools and as intelligent and effective health care as school children in the cities. A oneteacher country school should contain a small entrance hall, a retiring room, a workshop, and a classroom not less than 30 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 12 feet high. There should be an adequate system of ventilation, and unless a furnace or other system of heating is installed, a properly jacketed stove. (No unjacketed stove should be tolerated in any school.) The schoolroom should receive an abundance of light, from the left side or from the left side and the rear. The schoolhouse and surroundings should be kept as clean as a good housekeeper keeps her home. Drinking water should be available for every pupil at any time of day and should come from a safe source. Every rural school should have a sanitary drinking fountain. Individual drinking cups are theoretically and in some conditions all right, but practical experience has

proved that individual cups used more than once are insanitary and unhygienic. Therefore they are not advocated nor approved. Facilities for washing hands should be always available. School seats and desks should be hygienic in type and adjusted at least twice a year to the needs of growing children.

If

Toilets should be sanitary in location, construction, and maintenance. there is no water system, separate toilets should be located at least 50 feet in different directions from the schoolhouse, with the entrances screened.

The bureau's questionnaires brought reports from 1,267 Colorado school buildings, of which 76 per cent were one-room rural schools. Of the total buildings reported 60 per cent were new. The insanitary conditions shown in the table submitted and referred to here can therefore not be ascribed to the age of these buildings. The reports indicate clearly that lighting, heating, ventilating, water supply, and similar considerations necessary to proper sanitation have received very little attention from persons responsible for school buildings.

The conditions as set forth in Table 24 show among other things: Eighty-one per cent of the schools report insufficient or cross lighting some buildings have windows on all four sides; the reports from six counties do not include even one school with any provision for ventilating other than windows and doors; few buildings heated by jacketed stoves, steam, or furnace; an insignificant number of school plants with satisfactory water supply and drinking equipment; cloakrooms and clean interiors are among the necessaries found in fewer than half the total number reporting.

Equipment. The table also shows a serious lack of proper equipment for purposes of instruction. Blackboards, charts, reference and supplementary reading books are the materials most frequently missing. In nine counties no supplementary reading material is supplied. In addition to the equipment actually used in teaching, physical equipment such as shades, pictures, hygienic desks are supplied in very few rural schools.

Playgrounds.-Grounds large enough and otherwise suitable for play purposes are not furnished to rural schools except in rare instances. Even fenced yards are reported in but 30 per cent of the buildings included in the summary, and the equipment which distinguishes a mere fenced prairie from a real playground is reported in but 19 per cent of the replies.

Toilets. The kind and condition of toilets furnished for school children have both a hygienic and moral significance That those providing the facilities furnished in Colorado rural schools ignore the seriousness of the whole matter is apparent from the table. Probably the most serious condition reported exists in the 12 per cent of the schools which have but one toilet on the school grounds.

It is apparent from the above summary and from the tables given in this report that school children in rural districts are badly housed. There are many well-kept, sanitary, and attractive buildings in the

State, and many of the poorest possible quality, with examples of both varieties often existing in adjoining districts. Colorado's greatest need in the matter of rural school buildings seems to be that the State or county should adopt some settled and economical policy of schoolhouse construction which will provide measures of general improvement for present conditions and certain minimum standards for the future. One plan would be the employment of a State school architect in the State department of education to approve the plans of all proposed school buildings. The department should have prepared and available for distribution illustrations, plans, and specifications of standard school buildings.

The legal school age in Colorado is from 6 to 21 years. The real school population, however, includes those from 6 to 18 or 19 years old when high school facilities are furnished and from 6 to 15 or 16 years old when they are not. The compulsory school age is 8 to 14 years if the child has completed the work of the elementary school at the end of this period, but may extend to 16 years if this work is not completed earlier. The law exempts children between these ages under certain conditions. Permits of exemption are issued by and at the discretion of the county and city superintendents. The school boards in the various districts are responsible for the census enumeration, which includes all children of legal school age residing in the districts on the 10th day of February, and which must be filed with the county superintendents on or before the first day of April of each year. The law prescribes it as the duty of the county superintendents to examine and correct these lists from the various districts and to file a certified county enumeration with the State superintendent in June of each year. In addition to this census list the law requires that the county superintendent file an annual report with the State superintendent in September of each year, containing among other things the census enumeration (which should be an exact duplicate of that filed in June), and attendance data taken from the teachers' annual reports. The latter must be filed with the county superintendent before the teachers can draw their salary for the closing month of the school year. In this way the county superintendent has a check on the correctness of reports from the secretaries of the school boards and the teachers and should therefore assume responsi