author
May Ayres
1888–1953
A writer and education researcher, she helped shape early 20th-century thinking about school health, facilities, and reading measurement. Her work blends practical reform with a strong interest in how schools could better support children's well-being.
1 Audiobook
Health Work in the Public Schools
by Leonard Porter Ayres, May Ayres
About the author
Born in 1888, May Ayres Burgess was an American author and researcher whose books focused on education, school health, and testing. She is known for writing The Measurement of Silent Reading and for co-authoring works such as Healthful Schools and Health Work in the Public Schools.
Her writing shows a strong practical concern for how schools were built, managed, and measured. Rather than treating education as only a matter of lessons and textbooks, she wrote about the physical and health conditions that shape children's daily lives at school.
May Ayres Burgess died in 1953. Though not widely known today, her books remain part of the historical record of progressive-era efforts to make schools healthier, more efficient, and more responsive to students' needs.