The junior high school, or, as it is sometimes called, the "inter mediate school," is one manifestation of a fundamental realign ment which has been affecting educational organization in the United States. This particular phase of the realignment has been concerned primarily with the later years of the seven-year and eight-year elementary schools and typically, although not univer sally, the first year of the four-year high school, the usual junior high school being a two-grade or three-grade division of the school system.
The results of the influences of reorganization at work began to make themselves most apparent five to ten years after the open ing of the loth century, but there were evidences of reorganization having something in common with this movement before that time. The earliest were in Berkeley and Los Angeles in California. The movement made rapid gains from 1912 until 1916, and excepting for the period of the World War, has continued its growth at an accelerated rate since that time. Studies of the extent of the movement have shown that by 1923 fully three fourths of school systems in cities with populations exceeding oo,000 either had junior high schools in operation or had been committed to junior high school reorganization. Smaller cities have also been effecting this reorganization. Data made available by the U.S. bureau of education show that in 1925 there was a total of 2,548 "non-four-year" high schools, these including as predominant types 879 "segregated" junior high schools, that is, junior high school units not housed with other units in the system, and 1,389 "junior-senior" high schools, that is, high schools com prising both junior and senior units. The movement would have made even greater gains were it not necessary in many communi ties to wait for new buildings. Even with this obstacle the junior high school reorganization will be before long a common feature of school systems in the United States and will in all probability develop still farther.
The features more commonly incorporated in the junior high school plan may be considered under the following sections : (1) Although the junior high school often includes only two grades (that is, the seventh and eighth in systems formerly having eight grades in the elementary school and four in the high school), the trend of preference has been toward the three-grade unit, in cluding the seventh, eighth and ninth grades. This is because a
two-grade unit is too short to provide much leeway for fundamen tal change and because it often leaves the four-year high school without modification.
(2) The curriculum or programme of studies is frequently ac knowledged to be the most important feature of the junior high school. Typically, besides requiring certain subjects of all pupils, it allows some choice, sometimes in seventh grade, but more often in eighth and ninth grades, to make up the remainder of the pupils' work. The work required of all is often referred to as the "core," the elective portions being drawn from the industrial arts, the home arts, elementary commercial subjects and foreign languages. In the better schools the curriculum in both required and elective work represents a vigorous effort to enrich the training programme in these grades of the junior high school as contrasted with that in the corresponding grades of the conventional organization.
(3) Grouping by ability, which aims to place pupils of more nearly equal ability in the same class groups, is advocated. (4) The most common feature of junior high schools is departmentalization, that is, the assignment of subjects to teachers so as to permit at least some measure of specialization, in contrast with the un specialized teaching formerly universal in upper grammar grades.
(5) The junior high school has also been a vehicle for innova tions in teaching methods, such as directed or supervised study (in which the pupil prepares his assignments in whole or in part under supervision of the teacher of the subject), the project and problem methods and individualized instruction.
One of the most remarkable developments in American educa tion has been the rapid expansion, since 189o, of public secondary schools. The increase has affected both the numbers of schools and the numbers of pupils enrolled. Of the latter there were in 1926 about three and three quarter millions, excluding pupils in junior high schools. The proportionate increase has been far in excess of the gain in the population. Between 1890 and 192o the percentage of those enrolled in public high schools of all the popu lation of normal ages for the four-year high school (14 to 17 years, inclusive) increased from 3.8 to 24.o. Influxes of pupils since 192c) have resulted in a percentage much larger than this. The propor tion is far in excess of that for any other large nation.