education funding – LDS Thought

In 1870 the Utah Territory Superintendent of Public Schools Robert L. Cambell wrote,

The universal interrogatory by school trustees from every part of the Territory, who are attending to their duties, is: Can you send us a qualified teacher! (Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1870, p. 328).

Because very little money for public schools came from taxes Utah’s educators were under constant stress to meet the educational demands of the territory. Teachers pay came primarily from pro-rated tuition fees. Few schools in the territory were completely tax supported and the tax that was levied was primarily intended for construction and maintenance of school buildings. Continue reading “Utah’s Teachers and Students, 1870 to 1899”

Yes, I’m back after a long hiatus. I finally finished my Ph.D. (physics), so I hope I’ll be able to start blogging on a semi-regular basis. For the next few months I’ll be posting on education in 19th century Utah. Actually from 1870 to 1900. The data for this and upcoming posts came from the annual Report of the Commissioner of Education (abbr. COE). I’ve spent over a year collecting data and I’ve developed a method to “normalize” the data so that state by state comparisons are on a more similar scale. Owing to the fact that from state to state the legal school age differed, to make comparisons I needed to estimate the number of school age children between 5 and 18 for each state. For my age correction method see Age Corrections for Education Data for discussion and methodology.

Also, the end notes have a lot of information so you might want to check those out too. Continue reading “Education Funding in early Utah, 1870-1899”