1. William McAndrew made numerous reforms within Chicago Public Schools, including establishing middle schools, implementing standardized testing, expanding vocational training, enacting rigid requirements and supervision of teachers, and championing the creation of a mandatory retirement age.
In Chicago, William McAndrew attracted significant criticism for what detractors characterized as an autocratic leadership style, as well as national renown and praise for a number of his successes as a school administrator.
William McAndrew was the subject of hyperbolic political attacks by William Hale Thompson during Thompson's campaign in the 1927 Chicago mayoral election.
The board suspended William McAndrew from acting as superintendent pending the result of the hearing and eventually found him guilty of various charges, but the Superior Court of Cook County would later void this ruling.
Later in his life, William McAndrew was an editor of both the Educational Review and School and Society, and continued this work until his death.
William McAndrew was born on August 20,1863, in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
William McAndrew's parents were both Scottish immigrants to the United States.
McAndrew's father, William McAndrew, was a furniture maker, and his mother, Helen Walker McAndrew, was an obstetrician, and the first female physician in Michigan.
William McAndrew was their second-born son, and had an older brother named Thomas.
William McAndrew's parents were political liberals and were involved in local reform activism.
William McAndrew graduated from the local Ypsilanti elementary school and from Ypsilanti High School.
William McAndrew studied at Michigan State Normal School before entering the University of Michigan, where he graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1886 with a Bachelor of Arts from the university's literary department.
William McAndrew later returned to Michigan State Normal School to receive his Master of Education in 1916.
In 1888, William McAndrew moved to Chicago and became one of the first five teachers at the new Hyde Park High School.
William McAndrew was promoted as the school's principal the following year.
William McAndrew's firing was due to his refusing to certify a fraudulent diploma that falsely declared that a book publisher's son had successfully completed a course of study in botany that he had actually failed.
Thereafter, William McAndrew momentarily left field of education and, in July 1891, became an advertising manager and district passenger agent in Saint Paul, Minnesota, for the Great Northern Railway.
William McAndrew served as the principal of the Pratt Institute High School in Brooklyn, New York for a decade.
William McAndrew served as president of the School Masters' Association of New York.
William McAndrew was involved in founding the Washington Irving High School, a girls-only school in Manhattan, and served as its inaugural principal for the twelve years following its establishment in 1902.
In 1912, William McAndrew was recommended as a prospective candidate for the position of Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools, with former president of the University of Michigan James Burrill Angell supporting his candidacy.
The Detroit Board of Education anticipated that William McAndrew, being from outside the city, could be uninvolved as superintendent in the city's political tumult.
At the meeting where the Detroit Board of Education had voted to select William McAndrew, they voted to keep the superintendent's annual salary at the $6,000 that Martindale had been earning.
However, by August 2,1912, William McAndrew had informed the board that he changed his mind about accepting the position.
On October 28,1914, William McAndrew was promoted to one of eight seats on the Board of Associate Superintendents of the New York City Board of Education.
William McAndrew's support was reported to have come more strongly from Manhattan members of the board.
However, William McAndrew was reported to have received a number of Brooklyn members' votes, which put him over the top on the final ballot.
William McAndrew served on the board until he assumed his role in Chicago in January 1924.
William McAndrew became a well-known author, both authoring a series of popular magazine articles and writing articles for scholarly publications such as the Educational Review and The World's Work.
William McAndrew is the most original genius in the public school system of New York City.
In 1917, William McAndrew's was characterized by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as being energetic and unpredictable in his approach as an educator, with the newspaper describing William McAndrew as, "a live wire" in the field of education.
When it was asked as an open question, William McAndrew placed second with eight votes, placing only behind Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Charles Chadsey, who received eleven votes.
William McAndrew has spoken frequently and two public effect on the public platform.
McAndrew was mentioned as a prospective replacement for outgoing New York state deputy commissioner of education Thomas E Finegan, but McAndrew was ultimately not chosen for this position.
In 1918, William McAndrew was one of many names mentioned as a potential choice to be the new New York City public school superintendent.
William McAndrew has been a tower of strength for the school system.
William McAndrew has had much difficult work and has always done it loyally and efficiently.
William McAndrew was appointed superintendent of Chicago Public Schools on January 9,1924.
William McAndrew agreed to take the job after being reassured by the Chicago Board of Education that they would "clean up" the administration of the city's schools.
William McAndrew was elected to a four-year tenure with the annual salary of the superintendent newly raised from $12,000 to $15,000, making him, perhaps, the highest-paid educator in the United States at the time.
William McAndrew's appointment received the support of the Bureau of Public Efficiency, the Public Education Association, and CTF.
William McAndrew would hold the title of superintendent of Chicago Public Schools from 1924 through 1927.
William McAndrew developed a combative relationship with the school districts' teachers.
William McAndrew saw teachers as a threat to his authority, and largely disregarded their concerns over his changes.
William McAndrew encouraged school principals to be more strict in their administration.
William McAndrew opposed efforts by teachers, politicians, and businessmen to impose educational policy.
William McAndrew was more interested in seeking the advice of businessmen than that of parents or teacher's unions, particularly when it came to advice for improving efficiency.
William McAndrew began by requiring school board staff to wear uniforms, prohibited teachers from attending meetings during school hours, decreased the number of holidays, and imposed time checks for all Chicago Board of Education employees.
William McAndrew stressed the importance of business efficiency, imposing greater supervision over teachers, including fixed criteria which did not make any variances for the size of classrooms or the backgrounds of the pupils.
William McAndrew extended the number of supervisory staff in Chicago Public Schools.
However, Stillwell softened his portrayal, conceding that William McAndrew was "an autocrat with good educational ideas".
Early into his tenure in 1924, William McAndrew fought to stop teachers' councils from holding meetings during school hours.
William McAndrew proposed a change to the rules allowing him to organize the meetings of teachers as he liked.
William McAndrew presented a plan to the board to replace the teachers' councils with a council of organizations that would advise the superintendent by request only.
At the time that William McAndrew took office as superintendent, the teachers of Chicago received lesser salaries than teachers in other major cities.
William McAndrew appointed a large committee of approximately 100 members who spent six months creating salary increase schedules, and their report was submitted to members of the Chicago Board of Education on March 6,1925.
The union accused William McAndrew of using the pay increase scheme as a veiled attempted to break apart all of the teachers unions.
In 1925, McAndrew supported a bill introduced by Lindblom High School teacher and Illinois state representative Walter R Miller that required the immediate retirement of public school teachers over 75 years old, and after five years, reduce the mandatory retirement age to 70.
Four months into his tenure, William McAndrew submitted his first annual report to the Board of Education.
William McAndrew supported the expansion of vocational training programs in the city.
William McAndrew proposed increasing the use of research, test data, and teacher observations and ratings to enhance teaching, and to increase the focus on moral, religious, and physical education.
William McAndrew's report called into question the value of teaching the Latin language and classical studies, as they were seen as at odds with his advocacy for a practical studies curriculum.
All of these combined efforts allowed William McAndrew to receive the support and backing of the city's business community.
William McAndrew went ahead with his plan for middle schools, and the city's first middle schools opened in September 1924.
William McAndrew unsuccessfully proposed running the new middle schools on the platoon system.
William McAndrew believed that the platoon system was a cost-effective means of running schools.
William McAndrew attracted national attention and praise as superintendent, becoming one of the best-known educators in the United States.
William McAndrew is keenly sought as a speaker and has been heard at national and state meetings of an educational nature.
William McAndrew was elected head of the National Education Association's Department of Superintendence on February 27,1924.
William McAndrew was succeeded in this role by Frank Ballou on February 25,1925.
William McAndrew attracted continued criticism and opposition from Chicago Federation of Labor and its president John Fitzpatrick.
Brieske took issue with William McAndrew, who was seen to be from New York City, declaring that local men should hold local offices in Chicago instead of transplants.
Thompson's attacks on William McAndrew were a major factor in his successful campaign.
Back in January 1926, William McAndrew wrote an article critical of Archibald Willard's The Spirit of '76, calling it an inaccurate picture of war.
Thompson criticized William McAndrew for allowing the use of unpatriotic textbooks, which he claimed were full of "treason tainted histories".
At the time, the group demanded that William McAndrew remove from the school curriculum a list of books they alleged were "pro-British".
William McAndrew blamed Dever and Democratic political boss George E Brennan for hiring McAndrew.
William McAndrew printed copies of this letter in school print shops and had the Women's City Club distribute them to each of the school system's school principals.
William McAndrew showed his support for Dever at a public dinner on his behalf hosted by the Women's City Club.
William McAndrew responded to the query, listing the members of the board that voted in favor of his appointment, and provided a greater description of the circumstances of the out of context quote being used against him.
William McAndrew saw the resolution as an attempt by Thompson to return patronage to the education system.
William McAndrew appeared as a witness, testifying in favor of an injunction against the board, highlighting the fact that Todd had signed his name without his knowledge.
William McAndrew refused to resign, which would have allowed him to avoid an administrative hearing.
William McAndrew was subjected to a total of 27 hearings with more than 100 witnesses, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of testimony.
William McAndrew lacked the support of unionized teachers during the hearing, as they opposed the strict rules he had put in place for teachers.
William McAndrew's attorneys joined him in refusing to attend the hearings.
In December 1929, less than two years after the original administrative hearings against William McAndrew began, Judge Hugo Pam of the Superior Court of Cook County voided the decision by the Board of Education.
Pam ruled that William McAndrew was not insubordinate, and that the school board lacked the authority to hear the case for charges stemming from the allegations of pro-British propaganda, describing them as "improper".
The South Bend Tribune, at this time, described William McAndrew as having been, "perhaps the ablest superintendent of schools," that Chicago had ever had.
William McAndrew generally is remembered not as an autocrat but a reform-minded superintendent "persecuted" by Big Bill Thompson, who forced his dismissal in 1928 after a show trial.
In 1925, William McAndrew succeeded Frank Pierrepont Graves as the editor of the Educational Review.
William McAndrew would continue to serve as editor of this publication until his death, including as an editor after it was renamed School and Society following a 1928 merger.
In January 1928, William McAndrew was hired as editor of histories for The Century Company.
On October 5,1928, several months after William McAndrew left the Chicago superintendency, he was again appointed the chairman of the National Education Association's Department of Superintendence.
On November 9,1928, William McAndrew was made a life member of the National Education Association.
William McAndrew's health deteriorated during the last year of his life.
William McAndrew was buried in his birthplace and hometown of Ypsilanti, Michigan.
William McAndrew placed great emphasis on efficiency in the operation of schools.
William McAndrew was a proponent of a more civics-focused curriculum.
William McAndrew criticized the portrayal of figures such as George Washington in history texts used in books, complaining that these texts removed the more human personality flaws of subjects in order to further elevate their portrayal of heroism.
William McAndrew was married in Dover, Maine, on June 28,1894, to Susan Irvine Gurney.
William McAndrew was involved in designing and painting her husband's murals.