In April, 1930, two hundred men and women were assembled in the nation's capital to consider ways by which the secondary schools of the United States might better serve all our young people. The Progressive Education Association, which had stimulated great change in elementary education, was asking in this annual convention, How can the high school improve its service to American Youth?

In that group were gray-haired principals and teachers who had worked long years with boys and girls, young teachers recently out of college, eager to learn how to help their students more effectively, parents deeply concerned that their sons and daughters should have experiences in high school that would develop their powers and equip them to assist in the rebuilding of our already profoundly disturbed national life. In the course of the two-day discussion many proposals for improvement of the work of our secondary schools were made and generally approved. But almost every suggestion was met with the statement, "Yes, that should be done in our high schools, but it can't be done without risking students' chances of being admitted to college. If the student doesn't follow the pattern of subjects and units prescribed by the colleges, he probably will not be accepted." Under these conditions not many schools were willing to depart very far from the conventional high school curriculum. They could not take chances on having their candidates rejected by the colleges.

The meeting was about to end in a sense of futility and frustration. However, someone with courage and vision proposed that the Progressive Education Association should be asked to establish a Commission of the Education of School and College to explore possibilities of better co-ordination of school and college work and to seek all agreement which would provide freedom for secondary schools to attempt fundamental reconstruction.

The Commission was established the following autumn, October, 1930. Mr. Burton Fowler, then president of the Association, asked the writer to become chairman. Everyone invited to serve on the Commission was known to be concerned with the revision of the work of the secondary school and eager to find some way to remove the obstacle of rigid college prescriptions. Of the twenty-six members chosen, some had been active in the Washington meeting of the previous spring. Others were high school and college teachers; high school principals; college deans, presidents, and admission officers; evaluation specialists; educational philosophers; and journalists.¹ This group met from time to time, each member at his own expense, over a period of about two years. Although almost every educational interest and point of view was represented, all members agreed that secondary education in the United States needed experimental study and comprehensive re-examination in the light of fuller knowledge of the learning process and of the needs of young people in our society.

All members of the Commission were conscious of the amazing development of our secondary schools in the first three decades of the century. They realized that the number of boys and girls in high school had grown from less than one million to almost ten millions; that about 70 per cent of all American youth of high school age are in school; that billions had been invested by states, cities, towns, counties, and townships in imposing buildings and modern equipment; that these communities were gladly taxing themselves to pay the salaries of nearly 300,000 high school teachers; and that the faith of the American people in education remained unshaken.

Many in this group had shared in these thirty exciting years of American education. They had seen the limited curriculum consisting chiefly of history, foreign languages, mathematics, science, and English extended to include the social studies, commercial subjects, the arts, home economics, shop work, and other courses of many kinds. They bad participated in changing the content of traditional subjects and methods of teaching them. They had encouraged the development of student activities in speech, dramatics, music, athletics, publications, and a score of other fields. They had helped make the high school all orderly place of good feeling between teachers and pupils---a place to which most pupils went gladly because of pleasant association with others and interest in the general life of the school. They had seen the high school diploma become the magic key to doors of social and economic preferment.

These representative educators were vividly aware of the great achievements of our high schools. They shared the people's pride in them, but they were not satisfied. They were conscious of defects and determined, if possible, to correct them. They knew that of six who enter the high school only three graduate; of the three who graduate, only one goes on to college. For five out of six , then, high school is the end of formal schooling. For these five as well as for the one, the secondary school years can become a profoundly significant experience, said these educators.

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