the value, and the use of these data; and to tell of some definite results of their use achieved and anticipated.

I know of no single adequate measure of the efficiency of a school, either absolute or relative. I know of no combination of measures by which the exact superiority of one school over another can be expressed in a single term. Several very important products or results of schools' work can be definitely measured, however; the efficiency of schools in these respects can be definitely compared; the conditions, the processes, and means which brought about these measurable results can be studied, and, so far as lies in the power of the school, those conditions, processes, and means which show the largest measure of justification in results can be adopted. I refer to such results as the percentage of children of each year of age in the school district that the school enrolls; the average number of days' attendance secured annually from each child; the average length of time required for each child to do a given definite unit of work; the percentage of children of each age who are allowed to complete their schooling, with the average educational equipment of each; the percentage of children who are inspired to continue their education in higher schools; and the quality of the education that the school affords. This last, the quality of education afforded, is as important as it is difficult to measure. Definite examinations of pupils' knowledge of subjects are not without value, but are open to many serious and well-founded objections.

With conditions as they are in Newton, we have, not a perfect nor a complete, but an exceedingly valuable comparative measure of the quality of education afforded by the several grammar schools. This measure is found in the qualitative success-that is in the standing in subjects studiedof the pupils sent by the grammar schools to the high schools. It has long been a dominant aim of every Newton grammar school to send the largest possible percentage of its pupils into some of the numerous and widely varied high-school courses-and every school is succeeding in this, none sending less than 80, some sending almost 100 per cent, of their pupils to high school. What is the average success of the representatives of the several grammar schools in their first year's work in the high school? Chart Number I answers this question for each of the first three quarters of the school year 1911-12, and for the four years ending with the year 1911-12. This chart shows the relative success of the representatives of each school in all subjects, and in the single subject of English, which is pursued by all firstyear high-school pupils-indeed, with rare exceptions by all high-school pupils.

It is unnecessary to explain in detail how these respective quality measures-represented graphically-of the work of pupils of each grammar school are secured. Only comparative, no absolute, value is claimed for them. Of what practical use are they? They serve as a most powerful

stimulus to analysis and study-study of the conditions and means, the expenditures of time, effort, and money, in the several schools that yield

CHART I.-Showing comparative success of the product of Newton grammar schools as measured by Newton high schools

NOTE-The circles appearing in this and in following charts are to be disregarded. In the large wall charts from which these small charts were photographed, these circles contained the exact numerical values of the bars in which they appear; in these small charts the figures are reduced beyond the point of recognition.

such varying results, to the end that every school may adopt those plans that are proving most effective. They stimulate study-intensely practical study-and wholesome rivalry, especially of the very people on whom the success of each school's representatives most depends-principal, teachers, and pupils.

Just by way of illustration, let us make a few comparisons of the relative success of the products of the grammar schools in the light of some of the conditions involved. As the chart shows, the average quality of the work of pupils from school Number 9 surpasses that of every other school, both in English and in all subjects, in every one of the first three quarters of the year 1911-12, and also in the average for four years.

No school has the distinction of standing at the bottom of the scale as consistently as Number 9 stands at the top. Number 11, altho standing fairly well in English and in all subjects during the three quarters of 1911-12, shows the lowest average standing in all subjects for the four years. In this general average for four years, Number 9 appears superior to Number 11 by more than 17 per cent. The records show that in Number 9, altho next to the smallest of all the grammar schools, with a total average membership in all eight grades of only 126, the per pupil cost for instruction averaged for a period of five years ending with 1911-12, but 3 per cent higher than in Number 11, altho the latter was next to the largest of all the grammar schools, with an average membership of 817. Moreover, the value of the plants occupied by these two schools is inversely as the success of their respective products in high school; the plant of Number 9 represents an investment of $131.00 per pupil, based on average membership, while that of Number II represents an investment of $411.00 per pupil reckoned on the same basis.

What is going to be done, what is being done, on the basis of such indisputable measurements and records as these? I have no time to tell more than this, that the quality of Number 11's work is improving and is going to improve still more, while that of Number 9 is by no means retrograding.

Elaborate courses of study on paper, showing with mathematical accuracy the numbers of periods per week and the number of years devoted to each subject, give no adequate conception of the actual educational employment of the secondary-school youth of a community at any given time. If one week's work of every pupil now in the three Newton secondary schools could be recorded successively by a properly sensitized photographic plate, the composite picture that might be developed from this record would show the pursuit of the various subjects in the proportions graphically indicated on chart Number 2. Resolving into one hundred equal parts the education that the Newton composite secondary-school pupil is receiving just at this time, we find that one-tenth of one part is Greek, while seventeen parts are English; the remaining eighty-two and

nine-tenths parts are made up, in the proportions indicated, of the seventeen subjects, from pattern-making to mathematics, that are recorded between Greek and English.

SUBJECT

GREEK

PATTERN MAKI

VOCAL MUSIC

ELECTRICITY

PRINTING

CABINET MKG

ART
GERMAN

MECH.DRAW.

PHYS. TR.
MACHINE SHOP

HHLD ARTS

LATIN

HISTORY

SCIENCE

FRENCH

COMMERCIAL

MATH ENGLISH

CHART II.-Ingredients of the education of a "composite" pupil in the Newton secondary schools

Is the Newton composite secondary-school pupil being adequately prepared to meet the composite demands of that society which education should fit him to serve? Some help, at least, in answering this question

may be found by studying this composite photograph, which should be complemented by a composite of the needs of social service, using this term in its broadest sense.

Academic discussion of educational values is as futile as it is fascinating. Which is more valuable, a course in Latin or a course in the machine shop? Which is more valuable, an acre of land or a loaf of bread? There are, there can be, no permanent, no absolute and universal answers to such questions as these; but there are, and there must be, temporary, relative, and local assignments of value to everything, material or spiritual, that man desires. So while we educational practitioners have been waiting on the educational theorists for an evaluation of the various subjects of actual or possible school curricula, we have been determining for our own schools definitely and minutely the relative values of every such subject. And we have done this, for the most part, without knowing it! The school administrator simply cannot avoid assigning educational values every time he determines the expenditure of a dollar.

It may give us a shock-but it will be a wholesome one-to confront ourselves with the relative values that we have thus unconsciously assigned to various subjects. Chart Number 3 shows graphically the relative value assigned today to every subject taught in the Newton High School. It has been determined, wisely or unwisely, thoughtlessly or intelligently, that in that school just now 5.9 pupil-recitations in Greek are of the same value as 23.8 pupil-recitations in French; that 12 pupil-recitations in science are equivalent in value to 19.2 pupil-recitations in English; and that it takes 41.7 pupil-recitations in vocal music to equal the value of 13.9 pupilrecitations in art.

Thus confronted, do we feel like denying the equivalency of these values -we cannot deny our responsibility for fixing them as they are? That is a wholesome feeling, if it leads to a wiser assignment of values in future. Greater wisdom in these assignments will come, not by reference to any supposedly fixed and inherent values in these subjects themselves, but from a study of local conditions and needs. I know nothing about the absolute value of a recitation in Greek as compared with a recitation in French or in English. I am convinced, however, by very concrete and quite local considerations, that when the obligations of the present year expire, we ought to purchase no more Greek instruction at the rate of 5.9 pupilrecitations for a dollar. The price must go down, or we shall invest in something else.

Charts Numbers 4 and 5 show the relative values now assigned to the various subjects taught in the Newton Technical and the Newton Vocational schools respectively.

Whether we desire to do it or not, we express our relative valuations of different subjects under given conditions by the percentage of our available funds that we expend for each, just as the housewife controlling a limited