Forty Teachers Failed the Exam. The County Superintendent Called It a Disgraceful Outrage.
A dozen working King County teachers are about to be fired because they can't pass tests in higher mathematics and science they never teach — and the man who oversees them says the fault lies with the law, not the women.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
SEATTLE, Nov. 28. — About a dozen first-class teachers of King county now engaged in the work will lose their schools because they failed in the recent examinations, and in consequence cannot have certificates renewed. This unfortunate result is characterized by County Superintendent Hartranft as "a disgraceful outrage." He says:
"It is simply disgraceful that successful teachers in the primary departments should be deprived of their schools and put out of their profession because they are unable to answer a sufficient percentage of questions propounded to them in higher branches which they are never required to teach. They could pass better examinations in the work of their own departments than the examining board or the officials who prepare the questions. The officers are not to blame. It is the system created by a law which should have been modified years ago.
"Worst of all, these women who failed passed these same examinations when they were fresh from school themselves. No memory can hold everything forever, and after several years spent in teaching the primary branches these teachers have simply become rusty upon technical subjects which they once understood. They never have occasion to teach them in their schools, and their technical knowledge of the subjects fades from their minds. There is no sense in expecting teachers in the lower grades to carry high school learning in their heads when they never use it."
Forty applicants failed in the examinations of week before last, out of 140 who undertook the test. Prof. Hartranft believes that a large majority of these are competent teachers and he says most of them have taught successfully. But the amazing paradox is presented of active teachers being put out of business in the primary department because they do not carry heads full of higher mathematics and natural science.
“There is no sense in expecting teachers in the lower grades to carry high school learning in their heads when they never use it.”
Then as now, the people most likely to be pushed out of a classroom were experienced women in the early grades, judged on credentials rather than on the teaching in front of them. Washington still argues over how to certify teachers and how to keep the good ones once they are hired — the same tension between a standard and a shortage that Superintendent Hartranft named in 1903.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.