board, however, is that it is made up of very busy persons whose full time is taken up with the important duties of the responsible executive positions which they fill and who, in consequence, can give but meagre attention to the business of the board. The present board is tolerable but not over satisfactory in its organization, while its relation to the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the administration of education is wholly erroneous.

From the point of view of the student of administration in general it appears almost self-evident that the functions of administrative boards are properly selective and supervisory. Actual administration, however, should belong to the officials selected by the board for this purpose. Such boards choose their expert servants, watch over them, mitigate the rigors of their professionalism, and stand between them and political pressure. Just as it is necessary to have on a modern automobile a "shock absorber to minimize the jars of its operation, so it is necessary to have between the professional experts and the people a lay bufferfor example, a board which insures the proper selection and supervision of the expert, protecting him against the unintelligent judgment of the masses and the masses against expert narrowness of view. No expert is thoroughly sane. He is, inevitably, obsessed with megalomania as to the importance and wisdom of his own activities. His service needs to be tempered by lay judgment. In the best-known forms of administration, provision has been made for a combination of lay and professional service. In Germany laymen and experts serve side by side on the various boards and committees which administer the several units of local government. The lay members are always in a majority numerically, thus giving them potential control. President Lowell in his "Government of England" ascribes the merit of English administration largely to the characteristic union of lay, political, and responsible officers with professional, non-political officers responsible only to their nominal lay superiors. In the United States this system has been applied with almost uniformly excellent results to the local administration of education. Where it has gone wrong it has been because one party or other to the combination did not know its place. Boards of education sometimes try to run the schools, and superintendents or principals sometimes try to control the politics of the board. It has been applied with success to state administration of education in several instances, notably Massachusetts and New York.

From the above it is no great logical leap to the conclusion that we should have a State Board of Education, the principal duties of which should be to select and supervise the Superintendent of

Public Instruction. The "educational" work now done by the board would pass to the superintendent and the other experts in his office. The members of the board should receive no pay except the necessary expenses incident to attendance on meetings. They should, of course, be men and women of superior education and capacity. It is impossible, however, to frame an educational qualification on any rational basis, and the character of the board would have to be left to the appointing authority. It should be appointed by the governor. Election by the legislature is by no means a satisfactory method, and this is especially true where no traditions as to the character of the persons to be chosen are yet established. The governor's responsibility for a bad appointment would be clearer, and his motive to make good appointments consequently more effective. The term should be a long one and the members of the board should retire in rotation, so that no one governor could obtain political control of it. The term should be at least seven years, and the board might well consist of seven members thus making the desirable odd number, one retiring on the first Monday in January of each year. The long term takes away from the governor every last motive to abuse his power of appointment. He could not hope, except by accident, to appoint during his term a majority of the board. Since he could not help himself politically by controlling its power and patronage, he would, naturally, aim to secure such credit as he might by good appoint

ments.

Such are the main outlines of a suitable organization of our state administration of education. The next step is the consideration of the practical measures to be taken to secure it. [The article now points out the usual constitutional difficulties, and the changes necessary.] . . . If, therefore, the board is to have the long term so necessary to freedom from political domination, it must be secured by constitutional amendment.

Every lover of efficient administration should unite in urging upon our lawmakers a statute and constitutional amendment embodying a proper plan for the administrative organization of education. We must prepare to surrender our differences on numerous points of detail for the sake of securing the essentials of the reform. It is the part of those who know to present a united front and a clearly defined program to the possible slapdashery of enthusiastic ignorance.

2. Advantages of a State Board of Education

[From the Final Report Illinois Educational Commission, 1909, pp. 50-54.]

The educational systems of the various states, like the bodies of law under which they are operated, have grown up in a more or less haphazard manner to meet the most imperative needs of rapidly increasing populations and rapidly changing conditions. At the beginning the schooling of children was left wholly to the initiative of the local communities, and rightly so for the reason that differences in social and industrial conditions, the customs, predilections and ideals of the people made the educational needs of a state essentially diverse. Moreover, a central body of any kind was too remote to act effectively as a stimulating and regulating agency. Not only were the support and management of schools a matter of merely local concern, but it was often left to each community to say whether it should have any school at all. All this was justifiable under the conditions then existing. But conditions have changed. Close interrelations of the various communities in all the states of the Union have been developed with great rapidity. The development of system in the educational work of the states, however, did not always keep pace with them. Industrial and social conditions, customs and ideals, the population itself, have become practically homogeneous. A central body to exercise supervision over the schools of a state is not now remote either in time or in space. Education has become distinctly a state function. The doctrine that the taxable property of the entire state should educate the children of the state has been generally accepted. Complete state educational systems are, therefore, needed, and a state board of education with liberal powers, and opportunity for discretion in matters of detail, is an indispensable part of such system.

One of the greatest advantages to be derived from a state board of education is systematic organization of the educational forces of the state. System means economy, the elimination of waste, immediate action to meet unexpected emergencies, orderly progress. The development of system characterizes all progress, particularly all industrial progress. Business men are quick to see the advantages of it, as is illustrated by any progressive and successful industrial corporation.

Now the educational work of a state is, in one of its aspects, a business proposition. In Illinois, for instance, there are a million pupils to be instructed, 13,000 buildings erected for that purpose,

28,000 teachers employed, all involving an expenditure of $32,000,000. If this vast business were put in the hands of business men they would instinctively begin immediately to introduce system in order to eliminate the present waste of education, and thus increase the ratio of educational results to educational expenditure. They would probably create not only an executive head of the business to insure swift action, but also a board of directors to give counsel, and to lay down rules within which this activity should be exercised.

A state board of education for the state corresponds in a way to the board of directors in an industrial corporation. The superintendent of public instruction is usually the executive head. The analogy is not perfect, but it is sufficiently close to suggest some of the advantages of a state board, and some of the possibilities of increasing the efficiency of our school systems by making them still more systematic. The superintendent needs the board of education for some of the same reasons that the executive officer of an industrial corporation needs a board of directors. He needs it for the same reason that the president needs his cabinet, and as the needs of the head of an industry are in reality the needs of the stock holders, the needs of the president those of the people, so also are the needs of a superintendent of public instruction for a state board of education in the final analysis the needs of the

state.

nature.

This need will be the more conspicuous if we consider the duties that devolve upon a state superintendent who is unassisted by a board of any kind. The school law of Illinois, for instance, imposes upon the superintendent and confers upon him nine different powers. Some of these duties and powers are of the most general It is clear that a board of education might relieve him of some of these duties, as well as assist him by counsel. Such a board would be of invaluable assistance to him in impressing upon the people of the State the ideas which he wishes to become dominant and effective in school organization and administrative and especially to aid in supporting the policies which he endeavors to carry into effect. In a word, a State Board of Education properly constituted should increase incalculably the efficiency of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

In addition to the advantages just described a State Board of Education should give to the school system an expansiveness that is highly desirable and that could hardly exist without it. With some discretion in matters of administrative detail it would enable the system to adjust itself more or less automatically to the changing educational needs and conditions of a growing commonwealth.

The law should define the direction of expansion and the limits within which it may take place, but it might well leave to the system some room to burgeon out without the necessity of additional legislation. If the board is essentially a rule-making body, the discretion allowed to it, while confined within safe limits, would yet afford a certain liberty of movement and freedom of adjustment which naturally belong to all things that are alive.

Again, an efficient state board is valuable to the state if it does -nothing more than serve as a continuous body for the study of school problems and the dissemination of knowledge throughout the state concerning educational conditions and educational progress. The Massachusetts board has been conspicuously helpful in this respect. Its earlier reports especially not only carried information to the people of Massachusetts, but were republished by the legislatures of other states, by the British Parliament, and by the German government.

OBJECTIONS

The history of school legislation in every state shows that movements in the direction of a more complete educational system usually meet with opposition. The effort to place the schools of the county under the supervision of a county superintendent of schools, and the effort to put all of the schools of the state under the supervision of a state school officer have evoked many objections. It was said that such efforts were a reflection on the existing school authorities, that they contemplated a dangerous centralization of power, that they involved the creation of new offices of doubtful utility to absorb more of the people's money, that the schools were already highly efficient. Why not let well enough alone? Such were the objections raised by the ultra-conservative. They are now seen to have been without foundation, or to have risen from a misconception of the nature and function of these offices, or a misunderstanding of the true relation of the schools of a community to the general well being of the state; and county and state supervision of schools has become a well established policy. The same objections are heard again, however, when it is proposed to create a State Board of Education.

The main objection to the creation of a State Board of Education is that it involves an undesirable, if not dangerous, centralization of power. To this it may be said that, in this case, the fear arises partly from a failure to distinguish between a true centralization of power and an organization of functions or duties. When a superintendent of public instruction is provided for, he is usually