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SCHOOL SHORTAGES

Too Many Students

The baby boom after World War II traumatized the education system during the 1950s. School enrollment had been more or less un-changed from year to year from the 1930s until 1952, when the first wave of baby boomers hit. Every year thereafter elementary school population increased by 1.5 to 2 million students, and between 1950 and 1960 the number of students in elementary school had increased by 50 percent. Concerns over the supply of teachers and school buildings to educate those students began well before 1952. In February 1950 the U.S. Office of Education warned in its annual report that the nation's educational system had "shocking disorder and ineffectiveness." The report estimated that $10 billion would be needed to improve and build school buildings and increase the teacher supply; by 1951 estimates had increased to $14 billion. The nation needed to build approximately 270,000 new classrooms to meet enrollment increases.

Threatened Standards

As educators and government strived to increase the amount of money appropriated for schools, the U.S. Office of Education reported that expenditures for towns of more than twenty-five hundred dropped six dollars per pupil per year in 1950-1951. Commissioner of Education Earl J. McGrath called the drop "shocking" and stated "we cannot afford a further reduction in education standards."

Construction Needs

Several times a year during the decade Office of Education or NEA reports underscored the shortage of classrooms and schools compared to the rising enrollments of students. As each report came out, local and state governments requested more aid from the federal government, signaling a dramatic shift in the control over American schools. Attempts to attach strings to education dollars, most often to promote federal funding of parochial schools or integration, caused legislation designed to address the problem to fail. For example, in 1956 Representative Adam Clayton Powell attached an amendment to a construction bill (HR 7535) that called for the allocation of aid only to states that complied with the Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas decision in the integration of schools. That amendment caused the defeat of a measure that would have allocated __BODY__.6 billion over four years for construction.

Continued Overcrowding

As of 1953 the nation had allocated over $350 million for the construction of schools. In each subsequent year at least $150 million more was earmarked for construction; between 1950 and 1960 the value of construction for educational buildings (in 1957-1959 dollars) rose from __BODY__,133 billion to $2,818 billion. Even so, by the end of the decade many children still attended overcrowded, deteriorating schools. Some school districts were forced to split the school day into two sessions in order to find the space to instruct the growing classes. In 1956 it was estimated that S16 billion would be needed by 1959 to meet the growing enrollments. In 1957 a __BODY__.5 billion education construction bill failed in Congress. Federal legislators openly expressed the hope that funding school construction would become a responsibility born by state and local governments. Federal spending bills began calling for "matching funds" from state and local governments, an ironic twist considering education had been solely in the domain of state and local governments until the 1930s. The federal grants to state and local governments peaked in 1955 with 9.6 percent of all grants going to education compared to 3.7 percent in 1950 and 6 percent in 1959.

War Needs

Not only did restrictions on funding affect building construction, but steel shortages due to strikes throughout the decade hindered the process. Allocations for school construction could not meet the demand for new buildings. The NEA and other agencies worked to increase the steel allocations, but, especially during the Korean War, steel had destinations other than the classrooms.

One-Room Schoolhouses

Existing school structures posed still other problems. In 1951 Commissioner McGrath reported "one out of every five schoolhouses now in use throughout the United States should be abandoned or extensively remodeled because they are fire hazards, obsolete, or health risks." Twenty-five percent of elementary school students attended schools with no in-door toilet facilities. As class sizes soared, up to fifty students jammed into single rooms with poor ventilation. There were still 39,061 one-room, one-teacher schools operating in 1955.