Statement By Commissioner Of Education Earl McGrath, Published in Occupational Trends

STATEMENT* American education, I am convinced, fices its most critical year in 1949-50. Basic to education of any quality are classrooms, teachers, and the tools to teach, yet the Nation is badly in need of all three. Ne must find ways to provide them if our schools, commonly termed the bulwark of democracy, are to meet society's needs. Thousands of children across the Nation will attend make- shift classrooms this year. The education of many boys and girls will be short changed because of overcrowding and half sessions required to accommodate the largest enrollments in educational history. This year for the first time large numbers of children born during the high birth-rate years of World Wer II are attending kindergarten and first grade. Elementary school enrollments will rise a million a year for several years. To provide satisfactory housing for the present and projected number of boys and girls in our public elementary and secondary schools, we must provide approximately half 8. million new classrooms and releted facilities. When we realize that the number of new classrooms needed is equal to half as many as we now have, we can see the seriousness of * By Eorl J. McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C. - published in Occupetional Trends, September, 1949.