STATISTICS OF CITIES. GENTLEMEN-In compliance with law, I have the honor of submitting to you and to the people of the State through you, my fourth Annual Report, which covers the school year ending August 31, 1881. It is also the thirty-third issued by this Department, and possesses the special interest of exhibiting fully the educational condition of the State at the close of a third of a century under the operations of the present free school system. During the twelve years in which Wisconsin was a Territory previous to 1848, no State institutions of learning were organized, several private or denominational academies and colleges were incorporated, and less than 2,000 public schools were established. These last named were maintained by lease of the sixteenth section in each township, by local taxation of property, and by rate bills; and were managed solely under the supervision of district and town officers. Since that time, the wise provisions of the State Constitution, which relate to popular education, have directed our citizens in securing a marvelous growth in all grades of schools. The large funds for the support of the public schools, the State University, and the Normal Schools, have been created; these State Institutions, together with the State Reformatory and Charitable Schools, have performed most vigorous work and assumed a permanent position; all the private colleges have attained Introductory Statement. a high rank and exerted a most beneficent influence; the public schools have been placed under the control of State and county officers; the valuation of school-houses alone has increased from about $150,000 to over $1,500,000; several hundred graded and high schools have been added to the nearly 5,500 elementary ones, in all of which instruction is required to be given "free and without charge for tuition;" the attendance of children upon these has augmented at least six-fold; and better methods of school organization and teaching have everywhere been adopted. No other single branch of business in charge of the State has arrived at that stage where it is attended yearly with so great expenditures of money, guides the labors of so many persons, embraces such valuable and far-reaching results, and makes such rapid progress under the reforming and invigorating spirit and thought of this generation. A survey of the educational movements of the State for the past year, shows that prominent improvements have been secured in the following points: 1. A steady and healthful advancement in all grades of schools and methods of school work. This fact is exhibited, in part, under the complete summaries of the statistics which are herewith given. 2. A more manifest expression of the spirit of harmony and earnest zeal in the management and teaching of the schools. 3. A more general and decided recognition of the prominent defects in our public school system, and a more apparent willingness to remedy these defects. 4. A slight growth of sentiment in some sections, favorable to employing teachers of better qualifications in the public schools, and to retaining them longer in their positions. 5. In spite of the serious hinderances of the past year, an increase in the enrollment of pupils in all the schools, including the higher institutions of learning. There is a steady growth in the interest of the people in securing a larger and more uniform attendance upon the schools. Statistical Summaries. 6. A wider dissemination of the most reliable information in respect to hygienic laws as applied to the construction of schoolhouses, the oversight of school grounds, and the care of children while in school. 7. A marked progress in the methods of classifying and instructing the pupils in the ungraded country schools, as reached by the introduction of the graded system for these schools, and by the use of other instrumentalities employed in connection with it. STATISTICAL SUMMARIES. The returns are here usually arranged, as in the tables at the close of this Annual Report, so as to show the condition of the public and private schools in both the sixty-three counties and the twenty-eight independent cities. It will be observed that one has been added, the past year, to each of these lists of the counties and cities. I. NUMBER OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS. There has been an actual increase in the number of the schools in the counties. The decrease shown arises from the different methods of reporting. Last year each department in the schools of some counties was returned as a school; this year all the departments of a school in a single building are regarded as constituting a single school. IV. NUMBER OF UNGRADED SCHOOLS. The decrease in the counties is not real, and is occasioned by the same cause mentioned in the foregoing subdivision. V. NUMBER OF GRADED SCHOOLS. |