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CHAPTER XL.

STATISTICS OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

In the institutions of various classes reporting to this office for the scholastic year ending June, 1897, there were 16,255,093 pupils enrolled. Of this number 584,904, or more than 34 per cent, were secondary students, i. e., students who had passed beyond the eight grades of the common school course and were pursuing studies usually taught in the four years high-school courses. This was a gain of 25,901 in the number of secondary students over the preceding year, or more than 44 per cent. The secondary students were distributed among eight classes of institutions, as follows:

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The secondary students in public high schools, and in private high schools, academies, and seminaries numbered 517,066, or more than 88 per cent of the total number of secondary students enumerated in the above table. It is a well-known fact that there are in the elementary schools of nearly all the States many students pursuing secondary studies because high schools are not accessible. Could these scattering students be enumerated, it is not improbable that the aggregate of secondary students in the United States would reach a figure considerably above 600,000. It should be stated here that the 77,746 students enrolled in commercial schools and business colleges are not included in this table, although many of the branches taught in these institutions are equivalent to high-school studies; but it is obvious that students who spend only three or four months in a commercial school should not be given the standing of students who enroll for the year in the secondary school.

This chapter is devoted almost exclusively to the statistics of the 7,209 public and private high schools reporting to this office for the scholastic year 1896-97. The following table shows the growth of this class of schools for a period covering the past eight years:

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The increase in the total number of secondary students in public and private high schools in eight years has been more than 73 per cent, the increase in the number in public high schools being nearly 102 per cent, while the increase in the private high schools and academies was only 13 per cent. The relative progress of public and private high schools for the past eight years is shown in the following table which gives the proportion of schools, teachers, and students in each of the two classes:

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In 1890 about 68 per cent of the secondary students in public and private high schools and academies belonged to the public high schools, and nearly 32 per cent to the private institutions; in 1897 the proportion belonging to the public high schools had increased to over 79 per cent, while less than 21 per cent belonged to the private schools.

This Bureau began to collect the statistics of private high schools, academies, and seminaries in 1871, and of city high schools in 1876. It was not until 1889-90 that an attempt was made to include all the public high schools of the country. The following table shows the relation of the number of public and private high-school students to the population each year for twenty-six years:

Number of secondary students in public and private high schools.

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a Previous to 1890 only the pupils in public city high schools are given. From 1890 onward all public high schools are included.

.539

468, 446

.681

106, 654

.151

.573

487, 147

.690

107, 633

.151

517, 066

.724

Prior to 1890 the number of students reported by a large number of the private high schools included the whole number in attendance, the elementary pupils as well as the secondary students. For the past eight years the two classes have been reported separately, and as the number of students pursuing each secondary study is also given it has not been difficult to exclude from the enumeration all pupils below the high-school grades. Taking the reports from 1890 to 1837 as a basis, the number of secondary students in private high schools from 1871 to 1889 has been carefully estimated for each year, and the corrected figures are given in the above table.

PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS.

It has been the practice in this office for a number of years to examine separately the statistics of public high schools and of private high schools, academies, and seminaries, and finally to combine the results in a statistical review of secondary schools. In this chapter tables 1 to 15, inclusive, are summaries of the statistics of public high schools, tables 16 to 29 relate exclusively to private high schools and academies, while tables 30 to 38 combine the statistics of public and private high schools. Tables 39 and 40 show the distribution of secondary students by States in the various classes of institutions.

This office received reports from 5,109 public high schools for the scholastic year ending June, 1897, a gain of 135 schools over the preceding year. Only 914 of these schools are reported as independent, while 4,195 belong to city or village systems of public schools. Of the latter number 627 are in cities which have 8,000 population The 914 independent public high schools are generally outside the cities or villages.

or over.

It is shown in Table 1 that there were 16,809 teachers instructing the secondary students in the public high schools, the number of men being 7,658 and the number of women 9,151. The teachers whose time was wholly employed in instructing elementary pupils in many of the schools are not here included.

The number of secondary students was 409,433, a gain of 28,940 over the previous year. There were 173,445 male students, or 42.36 per cent of the whole number, aud 235,988 females, or 57.64 per cent of the total. More than half the secondary students, or 210,538, were in the States of the North Central Division, where there were 2,781 public high schools. The North Atlantic Division had 126,399 secondary students, while the three remaining divisions had 72,496. The State of New York alone had 38,957 secondary students, Ohio 37,958, Illinois 31,909, Massachusetts 31,360, Michigan 25,745, Iowa 24,626, Pennsylvania 21,014. In the colored high schools of the two Southern divisions and in the public high schools of the other divisions there were 5,477 colored secondary students. The elementary students in lower grades attached to the high schools, i. e, all below the secondary grades, numbered 138,061 for the United States-67,981 males and 70,080 females.

STUDENTS AND COURSES OF STUDY.

The number of students reported by the principals as known to be preparing for college was 49,850, or about 12 per cent of the total number of secondary students. Of this number 27,115 were preparing for the college classical course and 22,735 for college scientific courses, as shown in Table 2. The following table is a synopsis showing the number and per cent of students in certain courses and studies.

Students in certain courses and studies in public high schools.

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The above table shows that while the per cent of male students preparing for college was about 15, the number of female students preparing for college was 10 per cent of the total number of female students. The number of graduates from the public high schools in 1897 was 50,042, or over 12 per cent of the number of secondary students. There were 18,261 male graduates, or about 10 per cent of the male students, and 31,781 female graduates, or 13 per cent of the female students. Of the total number graduating 14,641 had declared their intention of going to college, i. e., a little more than 29 per cent of the graduates were college preparatory students. More than 36 per cent of the male graduates had prepared for college and exactly 25 per cent of the female graduates.

The last column of Table 2 shows that there were 8,661 public high school students receiving instruction in military tactics in 1896–97.

The number of students pursuing each of the leading high-school studies is given in Tables 3 to 8, inclusive. The above synopsis gives the total number in each study and the per cent to the total number. Thus there were 198,014 pursuing Latin, or 48.36 per cent of the whole number of secondary students. The number of boys studying Latin was 78,643, or 45.34 per cent of the whole number of boys in the public high schools, while the number of girls studying this language was 119,371, or 50.58 per cent of the total number of female secondary students.

Latin was taught in 4,228 of the 5,109 public high schools and Greek in only 930, as may be seen from Table 3. It is shown in succeeding tables that French was taught in 748 schools, German in 1,366, algebra in 5,061, geometry in 4,499, trigonometry in 750, astronomy in 1,211, physics in 4,284, chemistry in 1,792, physical geography in 4,142, geology in 1,168, physiology in 4,016, psychology in 840, rhetoric in 4,408, and history other than that of the United States in 4,326 schools.

Table 9 gives the proportion of male and female students in the public high schools of each State, as well as the per cent of college preparatory students and the per cent of graduates to the whole number of secondary students in each State. Tables 10 and 11 give the per cent of students in each study to the total number in the public high schools in each State.

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