Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1901 — ILLINOIS’ PUBLIC SCHOOLS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ILLINOIS’ PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

State Superintendent Bnyllas Giv • Some Interesting Facta. Alfred Bayliss, the Illinois State Superintendent of Public Instruction, has published a little pamphlet which gitca

some startling facts about the condition of the public school system .under- his direction, There are 1,588,000 persons of school hge in the State. Of this number 9G0,000 are enrolled in the public schools. The schools are divided into two

classes, graded and ungraded. A graded school is one which has two or more teachers. An ungraded school has but one teacher. In Illinois 84 per cent of all the schools are ungraded. The average number of days per year which the pupils iu the graded schools attend is 143. In the ungraded schools the average number of days is only BQ. During 1900 the total cost of the public schools of the Stute was $18,200,000, of which amount $11,400,000 was paid to teachers. Forty-seven per cent of all the teachers in the State were employed in the ungraded schools, but they received, only 24 per cent of the money paid for teachers’ salaries. There are 2,000 public school premises in the State -which are absolutely treeless, 5,000 which are without libraries, 435 in which the total enrollment during the year was ten or fewer, and 78 in which it was less than six. In one case a teacher applied to the superintendent for advice as to how she should draw her salary, in view of the fact that she had been appointed to teach a school which was without a single pnpil of any kind. There are 321 high schools in Illinois. Ten counties have no high school. Less than 40,000 of the 900,000 enrolled were in the high schools in 1900.

SUPT. BAYLISS.