Corry Area High School - Corrian Yearbook (Corry, PA)

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Educational Monograph It is interesting to know that the school business is the largest business in this country! There are about 26 and one half million children enrolled in public and in private elementary and secondary schools, another million students in normal schools, colleges, and universities, and at least a million students in extension and correspondence courses and in correspondence schools. There are about one million teachers. If to the above are added those who are members of school boards, trustees and other paid employees of the schools, those engaged in school publications, in the manufa ture of school books, apparatus, supplies, furniture and other contents of school buildings, and those engaged in the planning and construction of school plants, it may be shown that a total of 32 millions, or two persons out of every seven in the United States are giving practically full time to the business of the schools. There have been many changes for the better that have taken place the past fifty years in the growth of the school business. In 1876 the school population, that is, children of ages 3 to I 7 years, inclusive, numbered 14 million: to-day there are 30 million! There were enrolled in 1876, 9 million children in public schools; today there are 26 million enrolled. The average daily attendance fifty years ago was 5 million, and it has been estimated for 1926. that this increased to 21 million. ITiere were 249 thousand public school teachers in 1876, and a total of 810 thousand in 1926. School expenditures during this period have increased from 84 million dollars to 1.821 million dollars. The greatest growth is in high school enrollments, which have increased from 184,440 to 4,389,181. In 1876 there were 131 normal or teacher’s training schools employing 1,065 instructors and enrolling 33,912 students. Today there are 382 such schools employing 12,512 instructors and enrolling 245,669 students. The number of graduates has increased from 2,682 per year to 40,484. There were 85 model schools fifty years ago, today there are 196. In 1876 there were 72 colleges and resident graduate students for every 100,000 population. This number increased to 123 in 1896, then to 162 in 1906, to 245 in 1916, and then to 460 in 1926. This means that to-day there are more than six times as many college students in proportion to the population as there were fifty years ago. 5