In Massachusetts the public high school fought its way successfully against the academy much earlier than was the case in most States. The following table presents data showing the status of the academy and the high school in Massachusetts, where the high school first developed, and in New York, where the academy gained its firmest foothold.

TABLE LXXIX. GROWTH OF THE HIGH SCHOOL AND OF THE ACADEMY IN MASSACHUSETTS AND IN NEW YORK STATE*

66. The high-school movement in the United States. With a few exceptions the high schools of this country owe their basis in aim, theory, and practice to the high school first created and earliest developed in Massachusetts. For the first fifteen or twenty years after the beginning of the movement progress was slow. Previous to 1840 not more than eighteen high schools had been established in Massachusetts and probably a less number outside that State. Within the next two decades (1840-1860) the movement spread rather rapidly, especially in Massachusetts, Ohio, and New York. Next to Massachusetts, Ohio seems to have led

in the establishment of high schools, and the growth of the high school in that State is of particular interest. The movement there began with the establishment of the Central High Schools in Cleveland and Columbus in 1846. For the period up to 1860 the State Commissioner reported as follows: 1

There were few, if any, High Schools in the State fifteen years ago: and not more than twenty when our general school law was enacted in 1853. Since 1855 they have increased from 91 to 161, being an average increase of 12 per annum. During that time the teachers in these schools have increased from 196 to 319 and the pupils from 7522 to 13,183.

Numerous estimates have been made of the number of public high schools established and maintained in various parts of the country for the period from the founding of the English Classical (High) School in Boston up to the year 1889-90 when the Reports of the United States Commissioner of Education began to give some data. None of those estimates appears to be very reliable. Commissioner Harris estimated the number of high schools in operation in the United States in 1870 at about 160 and those in operation in 1880 as about 800.2 Those figures are undoubtedly a gross underestimate, but how much so it would be difficult to say in the present state of our knowledge. Dexter has analysed the data given in the Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1902 to determine the number and distribution of the 3,179 public high schools reporting to the Department of Education the dates of their establishment. His table is reproduced on the following page.

1 Seventh Annual Report of the Ohio State Commissioner of Common Schools (1860), p. 45. Cf. also Inglis, A. J., ор. cit., pp. 156-57.

2 Harris, W. T., "The Growth of the Public High Schools in the United States," Proceedings of the National Education Association (1901), p. 174.

TABLE LXXX. ESTABLISHMENT OF PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS BY DECADES IN THE VARIOUS DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTRY *

* Dexter, E. G., A History of Education in the United States, pp. 172–73. Cf. also Inglis, A. J., op. cit., p. 155.

Although these figures are without exactness, they are to be considered as an underestimate rather than as too great and indicate the rapidity of the development of the high school in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The same criticism applies to the figures given in Table LXXXI illustrating the development of the high school up to 1915. The nearer we come to the present the more reliable the figures become.

With all due allowance for the inaccuracies in the data available and the difficulties of interpreting conditions, we may be justified in saying that the period from 1821 to about 1870 represents the period of the beginning of the high school movement for the country at large, the period of about 1870 to 1890 the period of growth and development, and the period from about 1890 to the present the period of the dominance of the public high school in the field of secondary education.

TABLE LXXXI. GROWTH OF THE PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL,

*Figures taken from Report of the United States Commissioner of Education (1916), vol. II, p. 449.

67. The public high school and the academy. The development of the academy and its dominance in the field of secondary education in this country until well into the last half, or even the last quarter, of the nineteenth century have been outlined earlier in this chapter. That secondary schools established and controlled by private individuals or corporations, more or less supported by public funds, threatened to become the controlling type of secondary school in the United States is obvious from the data previously presented. This tendency the public high school was forced to combat and for more than half a century the outcome of the public high-school movement was dubious. However, by the middle of the last quarter of the nineteenth century we find the high school well in the lead and its ultimate victory over the academy and private high school well assured. The situation since that time is illustrated by the figures in Table LXXXII.

With all due allowance for the incompleteness and inaccuracy of the returns made to the Federal Bureau of Education (especially for the earlier years), the growing influence of the public high school and its dominance over the private

TABLE LXXXII. THE RELATIVE PROGRESS OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOLS, 1889-1915

*

* Report of the United States Commissioner of Education (1916), vol. п, p. 449.

secondary school is evident. There must always be some place for the private secondary school, and it is doubtful that the present status will ever greatly change. An extension of public supervision over privately controlled schools is probably the next step rather than any form of repression or complete control on the part of the State. Since the public school must always determine its policy in terms of the larger group, some small proportion of children will always receive better educational opportunities in the smaller private school than in the public system. This fact, together with the facts that the complete exclusion of religion from the public school leads to the establishment of sectarian schools, and that educational experimentation is commonly more easily conducted in the private school, will doubtless encourage the continuance of non-public secondary schools.

68. State systems of secondary education. In the United States there exists no Federal power or administrative machinery, such as is found in some countries, whereby the centralized control or supervision of secondary schools can