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.

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 nature. . . . 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

clothed with great power. But the special activities necessarily connected with the full exercise of this power are distributed among various agencies. To gather them up, organize and unify them under a central board should not be regarded as a centralization of power as usually implied by that expression.

The second objection is that a board of education may be so constituted as to be or to become a political body with selfish or partisan ends and with no deep and abiding interest in educational problems or the welfare of the schools. This is a real danger, but it may be avoided by the adoption of a wise method of constituting a board. The experience of the various states seems to point to the selection of the members of the State Board of Education by appointment as the least objectionable. . . . Only one state board of education in the country is elected by popular vote, and this is a board whose powers and duties are relatively few and simple. Constitution by appointment is, therefore, in harmony with the practice of other states as well as in accordance with the conclusions reached from a purely rational consideration of the subject.

We may say, then, in concluding the discussion of the State Board of Education, that such a body should increase the efficiency of a school system by introducing greater economy, and by increasing its responsiveness to newly arising conditions and needs; that it involves no dangerous centralization of power, that, if properly constituted, it would be an agency by means of which the entire State could avail itself, without any considerable additional expense, of the wisdom of disinterested and high-minded citizens in devising educational policies, in guarding the schools from ill-advised, ill-considered or hostile legislation, and in assisting the chief school officer of the State to perform more efficiently the duties imposed upon him by law, but which under present circumstances are too often such as no single officer can adequately perform. The indications afforded by the development of educational administration are that state boards of education are to occupy an increasingly important relation to the educational activities of the various states.

3. The Reorganization of the Agencies for Administration

The fundamental principles underlying good state educational organization are well stated in a recent report made at the request of the Educational Commission of the State of Vermont.

[From Study of Education in Vermont, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Bul. 7, 1914, pp. 148-152.]

A study of the chief historical stages in the educational evolution of the state for the past one hundred years furnishes justification for the statement that Vermont has never completely assumed a definite constructive responsibility for the progressive development of the public school system; has never clearly regarded this system as an institution and instrumentality of the commonwealth. This may be accounted as a natural result of a combination of influences. Among these are the sturdiness and independence of local communities under the characteristic New England scheme of government, the comparative isolation of the several principal geographic sections of the state from one another, and the absence of any dominating city centres of population.

This absence of a positive state policy explains in large measure the lack of a proper state machinery for the administration, supervision, and inspection of the common schools and other public educational institutions.

The establishment of the first State Board of Commissioners for Common Schools in 1827 and its abolition in 1833; the creation of the office of State Superintendent of Common Schools in 1845; the refusal of the General Assembly to appoint a State Superintendent in 1851 and the resulting absence of any state supervision for the following five years; the creation of a State Board of Education in 1856, which continued until 1874, when the office of the State Superintendent was reëstablished; the creation of another State Board of Education in 1908 as the successor of a Board of Normal School Commissioners created in 1898; and the passage by the legislature of 1912-13 of the act creating the present State Board of Education with its partial and ambiguous authority over the several parts of the educational system, make clear the lack of a well-planned, continuous educational policy.

A casual examination of the general scheme of the state's government of the system of education, and of the constitution and powers and duties of the several boards and officers composing this educational government, reveals immediately a situation favorable to discontinuity of organization and to waste in operation. A marked general tendency of the past two decades has been the development throughout our American states of the type of school government whereby an increasing authority and responsibility are centred in state boards and officers. This tendency is undoubtedly a consequence of the wider recognition of the fundamental social policy that public education, in order to provide an