The Cleveland Foundation-commissioned survey of the city’s public schools provided a blueprint for sweeping reforms of an antiquated system unable to meet the educational needs of a flood of immigrant children. Two-thirds of the student population dropped out before the legally permissible age, the survey revealed. Interest in its recommendations for school improvement was intense. Members of the public packed a series of meetings at which overviews of the survey’s 25 reports were presented, and 90,000 copies of individual reports were sold here and internationally to persons concerned about public education reform.

Faced with an overwhelming consensus about the need for dramatic change, the school board hastened to recruit a new superintendent able to implement the survey’s proposals. As of 1923, when the foundation conducted a follow-up assessment of the survey’s impact, 74 of the 100 principal recommendations had been carried out or were in process. (See examples of these reforms.) The results justified the survey’s expense, which had been budgeted at $50,000. More important, the Cleveland Foundation’s qualification to provide bold civic leadership had been demonstrated. As foundation founder Fred Goff had said at the outset, “The schools are the very thing we ought to tackle. Nobody else dares do it.”