This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: .classes. Graded and city school districts should be required by law to have a school day of not less than five and a half or six hours.

The work cannot be done in shorter time. SUMMARY Thus, the conditions under which rural schools work preclude satisfactory results. Even when other conditions have been improved--when the teachers are better trained and better supervised, and better facilities have been provided--children cannot be satisfactorily taught until the school term is extended to nine months, until rural school attendance is greatly improved, and until a simplified program, adapted to rural conditions, is prescribed. Nor will results ever be satisfactory in many graded school districts and cities, until there is better attendance and a longer school day. VII. PUPIL PROGRESS AND INSTRUCTION UP TO this point we have been engaged in describing the schools of Kentucky. Let us now consider their efficiency. There are two common ways of measuring the efficiency of schools: First, by ascertaining how many of the enrolled pupils complete the course; second, by ascertaining through tests and examinations how much the pupils know and what they can do at the end of the complete elementary school course.

We shall use both methods in order to appraise the public schools of Kentucky. GRADES COMPLETED To find how long Kentucky children remain in school and how far they advance in the course of instruction, information with respect to ages of pupils and the grades in which they were studying was obtained from 47 cities, 222 graded districts, and 9 counties. These returns indicate that almost all the pupils remain in school until they are fourteen years of age. Thereafter pupils drop out rapidly and by the time they are fifteen nearly onethird.