1.3 K-12 leadership and the educational administration curriculum  (Page 2/14)

The supervision and administration of education in the early 1800’s was professionally unskilled; anextension of the men who governed within the local community. There was a job to be done and supervision of the local school fell tosomeone in the community. A description of the Agent for District #10 in Waterboro, Maine circa 1820 is provided by Knights andWaterhouse (2006) and offers a glimpse into the practical role of administrator:

1. In the beginning of the organized school system, each district had one officer called the School Agent. Eachtown had a Superintending School Committee composed of not less than 3 persons. Each county had one school officer. The countyofficers constituted the Board of Education of the State.

2. The district agents were elected annually by the voters in an open town meeting, or by the districts in theirseparate capacities.

3.It was the duty of the district Agent to: call district meetings, see that the school house was kept in repair, furnish fuel and utensils for the school, employ teachers, and return annually to the assessors in the town, a list of scholars in the town and district.

4. If there was not a suitable school in the district, or if the spring rains or the winter snow was too heavy to keep the schoolopen, it was up to the agent to provide a room—usually in his own home, where school could be kept. For this he was paid $50.00 ayear. By 1891 wages for the Agent had increased to $110.00 per year. The agent system remained in effect until about 1894. (p.8)

Just as the one room school was an evolutionary step in the American system of education, the role ofAgent evolved into the educational leader, and then into principal and finally superintendent. There was knowledge to be gained aboutrunning a school, information to be stored, and a collection of skills, behaviors, attitudes, and professional qualities that, whencombined in the right mix, addressed the needs of a community, its children, and the slowly evolving and expanding educationalorganization.

There was no classically trained educational leader (like the classically trained teachers of Latin) tosupervise the one room school. An interest in education and experience in practical matters were applied to the local school ascommunity members emerged from their fields, stores, and factories to use native common sense to organize the school for learning.Prince (1901) identified a statute passed by Massachusetts in 1789 as “the first legal recognition of any function of supervisionbeyond the employment and examination of teachers” when towns were granted the authority to employ “a special committee to look afterthe schools” (p. 150). It took another thirty-seven years to require some form of supervision by committee when a law passed in1826 extended the provision from granting to requiring every community in Massachusetts to form a supervisory committee tohandle the affairs of the local school (p. 150). Today’s superintendent and principal are the evolutionary descendants ofthe agent and supervisor who volunteered to handle the duties of keeping the school running and functional.