6,000

4,500

1,300

2,800 100 4,000

4,500

3,000

8,000

Baltimore teachers are quite
dissatisfied with the pres-
ent system.

3,500 An effort is being made to
revise present salary
schedule.

Washington teachers are the only ones in the United States who pay a Federal income tax.

2 Women.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1920.

PAY OF ELEMENTARY TEACHERS.

STATEMENT OF MISS CORA McCARTHY.

Miss MCCARTHY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to leave this brief with you. I think it would aid matters a great deal.

Mr. DAVIS. Do you want it put in the record?

Miss MCCARTHY. I would like to have it inserted in the record, Mr. Davis, if you please.

Mr. DAVIS. Very well, we will have it put in the record. (The brief referred to is as follows:)

GRADE TEACHERS UNION BRIEF FOR ADEQUATE SALARIES FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS.

Over the past few years there has come the far cry, "What is the matter with our schools?" The teachers have heard that cry and our answer is "salaries."

SALARY FUNDAMENTAL IN HIGH STANDARD OF EDUCATION.

Our answer is salaries because we feel that salary is fundamental in establishing and maintaining high standards of education. It is fundmental for two reasons: First, it determines the kind of talent attracted to the work; and, second, it regulates their efficiency while in the work.

Adequate salaries will attract best talent. In order to induce promising young men and women to enter teaching and thereby furnish the community an adequate supply of competent, well trained teachers, there must be a higher salary for trained teachers and a reward for higher professional standards.

Existing salaries paid to teachers can be said to almost place a penalty upon preparation, since there is no opportunity for an adequate return upon the investment of time and money necessary to the securing of that prepara. tion.

INCREASED SALARY WILL MAKE TEACHERS MORE EFFICIENT.

How will adequate salary aid the teacher's efficiency? The present salary conditions seriously deplete the efficiency of teachers. The physical and mental strain caused by the effort to maintain high professional standards while obliged to either engage in other gainful occupations to supplant an impossibly low salary, or to assume personal and domestic duties which will reduce the outlay of actual money, can only result in seriously subnormal physical and mental health for the teacher.

The teacher, to be a teacher, requires more than food and lodging. She needs the freedom from financial stress which makes possible a sense of physical well-being. This can only be obtained from comfortable and appropriate living conditions. She also needs constant and comprehensive study of the ever-enlarging scope of her professional work. To that end she must be able to have access to professional magazines, books, and study courses. Beyond her professional equipment the teacher must, if she is to fulfill her duty as character builder for her pupils, have opportunities for the living of a broad, cultured life. To attain a wideness of vision and interpretation, she must include in her life the reading of good books and magazines, the hearing of good music and lectures, and she must have social intercourse with worth-while people.

Think what you are demanding of your schools! You call them the melting pot. It is evident we need one, and it is evident that we have no other. You demand that we take the children of all races and classes and turn out good Americans, appreciating American ideals, understanding American principles, and loving American institutions. The imperative need for this task is real men, real women; men and women who measure up to those in the first rank of medicine, law, engineering, and business. You would not trust your eyes to a cheap oculist, your business to a cheap lawyer, your health

to a cheap doctor. How can you afford to trust your children's education to cheap teachers? A 50 per cent pay can not secure a 100 per cent efficiency. Low-class salaries can not secure high-class talent.

We have passed laws requiring that all children between the ages of 8 and 14 attend school. Is it not our duty to see to it that that time is not wasted? Should we not guarantee to them the best in educaions? This can only be done by placing them in the care of men and women of ability and training. Such men and women can only be secured by an adequate salary-a salary that will enable them to live on a comfortable standard and insure security in later years.

ELEMENTARY GRADES BACKBONE OF THE SYSTEM.

It is the elementary grades that cover the period of compulsory education. Here the largest number of children complete their school life. Figures taken from the school enrollment of the Washington schools for the year 1917-18 show that of the total enrollment 87.95 per cent of the pupils in the entire system were in the e`ementary schools. If so large a proportion of the pupils do not reach high school, the reason for paying such salaries to elementary schoolteachers as shall enable them to be the highest type of specialist in the service is obvious.

The elementary school-teachers feel that as the important responsibility of laying sound educational foundations is theirs, their salaries should be commensurate with the service they render to the community.

LARGE TURNOVER OF TEACHERS DUE TO LOW SALARIES.

The effect of low salaries upon the efficiency of the school system from another point of view, we need only ask you to witness the recent war crisis and the tremendous turnover of teachers which it caused, almost wrecking school systems throughout the country.

NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION INVESTIGATION.

A recent investigation of the National Education Association shows more than 100,000 teaching positions in the public schools of the United States are either vacant or filled by teachers below standard, and the attendance at normal schools and teacher-training schools has decreased 20 per cent in the last three years.

Letters were sent out by the association in September to every county and district superintendent in the United States, asking for certain definite information. Signed statements were sent in by more than 1,700 superinendents, from every State, representing 238,573 teaching positions. These report an actual shortage of 14,685 teachers, or slightly less than 10 per cent. It is estimated that there are 650,000 teaching positions in the public schools of the United States, and if these figures hold good for the entire country there are 39,000 vacancies and 65,000 teachers below standard.

These same superintendents report that 52,798 teachers dropped out during the past year, a loss of over 22 per cent. On this basis the total number for the entire country would be 143,000.

Reports received by the National Education Association from normal-school presidents show that the attendance in these teacher-training institutions has fallen off alarmingly. The total attendance in 78 normal schools and teachertraining schools located in 35 different States for the year 1916 was 33,051. In 1919 the attendance in these same schools in 1916 was 10,295, and in 1919 8,274. The total number in the graduating classes of 1920 in these 78 schools is 7,119. These figures show a decrease of over 30 per cent in four years in the finished product of these schools.

LOW SALARIES HAVE FAILED TO ATTRACT BEST TALENT.

No doubt some will argue that the war is over and that teachers are already returning to the schools-that with fewer business openings more will enter teaching-grant this if you will, but are the present salaries going to attract the best of our youth with talent? Several years even before the war there was a decided drop in the type of girl entering the normal schools according to testi

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mony of normal-school principals and teachers, and for years the number of men choosing it as a profession has steadily decreased due to the low salaries offered. We submit the following salary schedule to show you that Washington is still far behind many first-class cities in salaries paid its teachers.

You see, gentlemen, from this table that Washington elementary teachers are not only receiving a lower minimum salary but a vastly lower yearly increment and maximum salary. Since it is difficult to change the yearly increment under the present organic act under which the schools operate, our only hope for an adequate salary for Washington teachers lies in getting a higher basic salary. We therefore respectfully request that you replace the estimates for elementary teachers as submitted by the board of education, namely, a $1,500 minimum salary.

Mr. DAVIS. Now we will hear what you have to say. Miss MCCARTHY. I would like to say that we are here, gentlemen, not because we are particularly interested in the economic pressure that the present incumbents of the teaching positions are feeling, but because we feel that this matter of salary is a very fundamental thing in the standardization of the Washington school system. We say it is fundamental for two reasons; it regulates the kind of talent that comes into the system, and it determines the efficiency of that talent when it is once in. At present the salaries are not attracting young men and young women of the highest caliber. It is placing a penalty upon teacher training and education for teacher positions, and we can not expect to attract the kind of talent in the future that we have attracted in the past, unless we can raise the salaries.

Mr. DAVIS. How about those that you have already attracted and who are here?

Miss MCCARTHY. We have lost a great many of our best, and a great many who have stayed have stayed because they did not have to get out, they were not absolutely forced, from the bread and butter side of the proposition, to get out, and others, because of home ties, could not get out. I know of several teachers who have had very much better offers of positions in other places who were held for personal reasons.

As to the question of efficiency, you may say that the present salaries will buy the three necessities, food, clothing, and shelter, but a teacher needs more than food, clothing, and shelter. She is more than a teacher of the three R's; she is the character builder of the children of the next generation, she is the citizen maker of the