Newton Schools history, part 6: Progressive education – 1900 to 1930

In 1904, Newton hired a progressive superintendent, Frank Spaulding who believed public schools should “provide educational opportunities adapted to the individual needs of every boy and girl from four to eighteen years of age.” He sought class sizes of no more than 25 pupils so teachers could do individual work instead of mass work and receive competitive teacher salaries with merit pay. “After two to three years’ experience in our schools, teachers should receive salaries determined by merit, by worth to the schools, rather than by length of service or any other consideration.” His annual reports frequently complained of ‘superior’ teachers leaving Newton for higher salaries. By 1906, 10% of teachers received merit pay for ‘superior’ work. 

Superintendent Spaulding was concerned that two out of three pupils dropped out before high school graduation, most between the 6th and 8th grade, and became idle or trapped in low-wage jobs. He felt part of the problem was a sense of failure in students who were repeatedly held back, and he began placing students into high school without a grammar school diploma, which required a minimum of a C in all subjects. 

“Every boy or girl of high school age belongs in the high school regardless of the completion of a grammar school course. It is the function of the high school to welcome every such boy and girl and to adapt subject-matter, methods, and organization to the needs of such boys and girls. The only conditions of admission … to be imposed upon the young person of high school age are that such young person be educable and that he try according to his ability.” 

Harvard University studied the 77 students who entered Newton High School without a grammar school diploma between 1906 and 1909. The study found that 28.6% (22) of these students had graduated from high school, compared with 79% of the other students. After 1909, students without a grammar school diploma were sent to the new technical high school, and by 1930, they comprised 23% of that school’s student body.

Superintendent Spaulding believed in scientific management. He used “pupil-recitations per-minute (answers to questions) to gauge the relative efficiency of teachers across subjects” and found the most expensive was “Greek recitations at a rate of 5.9 for a dollar” of teacher salary. His final annual report was subtitled “Shall School Expenses be Reduced or Shall the Present Educational Policy be Maintained?” It examined potential cost savings: larger class sizes (despite his goal of 25 per class, sizes averaged 34 and ranged from 18 to 51), dropping subjects, reducing administrative staff, and eliminating kindergarten, evening, or summer school. He concluded that Greek lessons could be dropped without harming the educational program. He then explained in great detail how costs had changed. For example, the attendance officer had a $100 increase in salary, but when analyzed on a cost-per-pupil basis, there was “a net actual reduction of two cents.” The School Committee requested a 9% budget increase; and the City gave a 4.5% increase. 

When Superintendent Spaulding left in 1914, Newton had one of the highest rates of high school attendance (21.5% of the total student population, compared to 14% statewide) and the fourth-highest per-pupil expenditures in the state ($51.14).

Massachusetts Teachers Association grows in strength

The State continued to pass laws that increased the cost and mandate of public education, driven in part by a reformulated Massachusetts Teachers’ Association (MTA). The MTA subsumed a federation of local teachers unions and changed its focus from pedagogy to lobbying for better pay, job security, and pensions. Members were encouraged to be politically active, and State laws protecting teachers were strengthened. School districts could not ask teachers about their politics or religion; a pension system was instituted; a minimum salary was set; and after three years of employment, a teacher could not be fired without 30 days’ notice and a hearing before the school committee with a two-thirds vote to approve the dismissal. 

Other new laws required communities to provide playgrounds; to provide transportation for students living more than two miles from school; to educate physically and mentally disabled children, and illiterate adults over 14; to have a physician for every school; to conduct student hearing and vision tests; and to display an American flag in every classroom. The Bible was still read daily, and corporal punishment was allowed, but it had to be approved by supervisors (Newton listed 156 cases of corporal punishment among 8,117 students in 1914).

Newton went beyond State requirements. By 1930, Newton had six classes for 85 mentally retarded children, one teacher who visited seven physically disabled children at their homes, a lip-reading teacher who spent an hour a week with 94 children and 13 adults, and a sight-saving teacher for 13 children. The schools had nurses, dentists, and physicians. Doctors were required to make a daily inspection of each school to reduce the spread of contagious diseases (like the 1918 Spanish Flu), to give each child a physical, and to make house calls to students out of school for more than 3 days. Newton had free summer schools offering ‘entertaining’ subjects, such as sewing, cooking, woodworking, drama, and dancing – and no books.

Tracking into Vocational/Technical Education 

Vocational/Technical Education (Voc/Tech) began in 1888 with the Vacation Industrial School in Thompsonville run by the Social Science Club. It taught 35 girls how to sew and is believed to be the first free summer school in Massachusetts. It quickly expanded to instruction in cooking, carpentry, basketweaving, and other practical skills for hundreds of boys and girls. In 1903, the City provided free space for the vacation school and, in 1908, took charge of the program. Other social charities across Newton provided not only vocational training, but also child care, meals, medical and dental services, and even housing and employment services for parents. Newton Public Schools supported and consolidated many of these social services at the Stearns School in Nonantum.

Religiously affiliated social services were prohibited from receiving public funds, such as the Catholic Church’s working home for up to 600 orphaned or abandoned boys of any race, creed, or color. The boys could work at the City-owned poor farm next door in what is now Nahanton Park.  

The rise of industrialization and the decline of apprenticeships led educators and “businessmen” to lobby for workforce education as a state economic concern, and Massachusetts began funding local voc/tech education in 1906. Germany’s technical prowess in World War I motivated the Federal Government to fund voc/tech for students over 14 years old in 1916. Both sets of funding came with curricular demands and oversight, which segregated full-time voc/tech high school students from other high school students.

A 1906 school committee report discussed the concern that students might be tracked by social class if Newton built a voc/tech high school. The committee concluded that under one roof, the classical students looked down “upon their more sensible classmates” pursuing a voc/tech education. They felt class distinctions would be forgotten in a building where all students were on the same track, and a three-story technical high school opened in 1909 beside the classical high school, ‘delaying the gratification’ of the south side of the city for a high school. 

High school students were placed into college preparatory, business, general studies, or voc/tech track. The classical high school was filled with donated artwork from Europe. Two formidable Romanesque figures, one male, one female, stood on either side of the main entrance. Students painted their toenails with red polish “to the wrath of the building custodian.”[1] The technical high school had workshops and a foundry for boys to learn carpentry, automotive, printing, and other trades. The girls had a household arts program, initially intended to raise the status and pay of domestic workers, but, without limits on the supply of workers through unionization or certification requirements, this did not happen, and the program evolved into home economics for homemakers.[2] The high schools had newspapers, debate teams, orchestras, bands, glee and drama clubs, and athletic teams winning championships: football in 1921, hockey in 1924, and baseball in 1928. Secret societies were banned.  

In 1919, with inflation at 25% after the end of World War I, Newton teachers took their salary demands to the public with a pamphlet detailing individual teachers’ living expenses and how most had taken on second jobs or loans. The State was aware of the situation, and in 1920, money from the new state income tax was returned to local communities to partially reimburse the salaries of educators (Chapter 70 funding). Because the reimbursement rate was based on staffing numbers, education, and experience, and not the number of students or local tax rate, this increased inequality with wealthy communities, like Brookline, receiving more per pupil than poor communities, like Revere. 

In 1921, Newton had 26 school buildings and was once again bursting at the seams. A Special Commission on School Building looked at acquiring ‘comparatively inexpensive’ portable school buildings, creating a split-day schedule, or building junior high schools. A high school in south Newton was rejected because it would not relieve pressure on the grammar schools. The committee recommended building a junior high school immediately in Nonantum-Newtonville and as soon as possible in Auburndale-West Newton, plus portable schoolhouses for the Davis School. They believed that raising taxes would drive “desirable newcomers” away and recommended reducing citywide maintenance spending. Committee member George Angier disagreed, saying:

“I believe that poor school accommodations, poor streets, poor sewers, and poor sidewalks will do more to keep the class of citizens we want in Newton away, than a few dollars increase in the tax rate.” 

Junior high schools were a new concept designed to fix “the weakest and most unsatisfactory feature of the existing public school system” by “differentiated curricula and the use of shops, laboratories, an auditorium, a gymnasium, a library and other special rooms” to start students “on the career for which his capacity best fitted him.” There were three tracks — book, business, and manual (voc/tech) — for students who were “conspicuously” failing in school.

In 1930, Newton had among the highest per-pupil expenditures in the State ($120). The school budget was $1,243,555.27, with $4,928.77 from the Federal Government (0.4%) and $81,838.05 from the State (6.5%). There were 415 teachers and 11,170 pupils. The population had doubled in size since 1900 to 65,276. Thirty percent of high school graduates went on to college. Boston University accepted the most (18 men and 19 women), MIT was second with 23 men, Harvard accepted five men, and Howard one. 

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1. Francis J Foster, A History of the Newton Schools, (1973, Newton: Jackson Homestead) 30. [back]
2. Cristina Viviana Groeger, The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston (2021, Cambridge: Harvard University Press) 69. [back]