cation of licenses, was extended to those hereafter granted by the State Superintendent, with the right of appeal to that officer by the defendant.

1

The experience in respect to the subject of licensing teachers may be briefly summarized as follows: Prior to 1852, complete decentralization, with the authority vested in district and township trustees (1824-1834) and later in the county examiners (18341852); 1 complete centralization in the hands of the State Superintendent and his deputies (1852-1853); a compromise, effected by giving this authority to county officers (examiners, 1853-1873, and county superintendents, 1873-1902), with the right to grant licenses retained by the State Superintendent until 1865. Since that date there has been a gradual extension of the powers of the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent until they have become the controlling authorities in this matter.

In 1907 a further step in advance was made by a law which constituted the State Board of Education a State Training-School Board, gave it power to accredit colleges and normal schools in the state and to outline courses for the training of teachers, and provided that all new teachers must have taken a course of not less than twelve weeks in professional work as a prerequisite for certification. A minimum salary law also graded salaries on the basis of certification and training.

II. THE CERTIFICATION OF TEACHERS IN THE UNITED STATES; DEFECTS AND REMEDIES

[Being pp. 73-77 of the monograph on The Certification of Teachers, issued as Part II of the Fifth Yearbook of the National Society for the Scientific Study of Education, 1906.]

In the study we have made of present conditions, perhaps the two most significant weaknesses revealed in our systems of certification were the low standards and the great lack of uniformity. To raise and to standardize our certification requirements ought to be the main lines of future progress.

The amount of common knowledge which we as a people have is increasing so rapidly, our elementary-school curriculum is being enriched so fast, and the general intelligence of our people is becoming of such a standard that the teacher with a meagre intellectual equipment should no longer have a place in our educa1 There were numerous exceptions in favor of district trustees and patrons. 2 This power was seldom used.

tional system. Yet Table III in Chapter iii shows clearly that, for the twenty-eight states tabulated, it is possible to secure a third-grade teacher's certificate in 90 per cent. of the number with no educational test beyond the common-school branches; and for the thirty-seven states tabulated it is possible to secure a first-grade certificate, in two-thirds of these states, without giving evidence of knowing anything about a single high-school subject except algebra, and in two-fifths of the states without knowing even this. These low-standard certificates are wholly out of place to-day, and ought to be eliminated at the earliest possible moment.1

The great diversity in our requirements and our unwillingness to recognize equivalents are two of our marked educational characteristics. So great is the diversity that a good teacher to-day is unnecessarily hampered in his ability to move about, not only from state to state, but also from county to county, and often from county to city and from one city to another. Many of these restrictions are not warranted by any educational standards, but are more of the nature of a protective tariff levied on foreign capacity and in favor of home production. This makes the local examination system, with its accompanying barriers, in the nature of a protected industry, and this is not in the interests of good education. The strict county system too often perpetuates the rule of the weak by shielding them from the competition of the strong. All barriers to competency are wrong.

That these barriers exist has been pointed out frequently in previous chapters, and need only be summarized here. In fourteen states there is no admission to the teaching profession except on examination. In eleven of these states forty or more subjects are required to secure the highest certificate granted, and all must be secured on examination. In fourteen states no recognition is given to diplomas from normal schools or other institutions of learning within the state. The graduates of such institutions are placed on a par with the " graduates" of the country school. In nineteen states absolutely no recognition is given to any form of credential from another state. Only eleven states recognize normalschool diplomas from other states; seventeen recognize college or university diplomas from outside the state; and eighteen recognize a life-diploma or state professional certificate from elsewhere. In a number of our states there is no recognition of certificates from one county to another within the state. Many of these barriers are indefensible, while the defense of others can be eliminated with ease by raising and standardizing requirements.

1 There have been some changes in the line of progress since this was written, in 1906, but the conditions described remain in large part true even now.

The great diversity of our requirements may be seen from Table III in chapter iii, and Table V in chapter v. We ought to work toward greater uniformity by the establishment of educational prerequisites, common requirements or norms within subjects, options and equivalents as between subjects, and the entire abolition of certain other subjects from the list of tests. We need to do in the examinations for teachers' certificates what the colleges have done in the matter of entrance requirements, viz., unify as much as possible and then accept evidences of education, equivalent subjects, and equivalent certificates, so far as they go, leaving the candidate to supply the balance by an examination instead of requiring him to pass on the entire list. This could be done by agreements between the states.

The low standards are also apparent in the requirements for life certificates. This is evident from Table V, pp. 54-55. While a state life-diploma ought to be of such a standard that it would be accepted willingly anywhere in the United States, many of the low-standard life-diplomas now granted certainly ought not to be recognized from state to state. A life certificate ought to be led up to by a series of graded certificates, each demanding higher and higher standards; and the state life certificate, the culmination of a teacher's certificating career, should be given only to those whose education and professional standing single them out as the state's most capable teachers. In a number of our states, on the contrary, a life-diploma is obtainable on the single basis of a definite number of months of teaching experience, and hence involves no educational standards of any consequence and really stands for nothing.

Each state must, of course, be allowed to set its own standards, and it cannot be expected to accept certificates or diplomas from states having a distinctly lower standard. This should be recognized and accepted, and reciprocity should not be expected. Instead of being "uppish" about it and striking back by way of retaliation, as certain states do because their credentials are not accredited by some more progressive state, they should on the contrary welcome a teacher from such a state because of his better training and what he may bring.

It is possible, though, for most of our states to determine the value of credentials from elsewhere, and to recognize them as far as they apply. The work of California in this respect is most commendable. This state has a published list of accredited universities and normal schools throughout the United States and Canada, and a list of accredited state diplomas. Anyone possessing any of these credentials may be certificated in any county in

the state, without examination, and on the same terms as the holders of similar local documents. A fundamental principle in California is that the certification door should always be open for competency, from whatever quarter it may come.

In almost every state, too, these low-standard certificates are good for teaching in any part of the school system in which the holder can secure employment. This should not be allowed to continue, but separate certificates should be erected for special fields of work. In the case of high-school teachers this is especially important. Teachers in all branches of the service should be required to know more than they are expected to teach, and the importance of this for high-school teachers cannot be overemphasized. In the field of supervision we have scarcely made a beginning in the preparation and selection of a body of educational leaders, and we are tied to present practices by a political string. In our lack of leadership we partake of a common weakness of democracy that of emphasizing the importance of the masses and forgetting the leader who must lead and direct them. The soldier, the lawyer, the doctor, and the engineer have cast aside the apprenticeship and the successful-practitioner methods, but the educator has not as yet evolved that far in his thinking. Our pedagogical departments and the organized body of our pedagogical knowledge are too recent to have reached the point of general use and application. We are in education where the army and the navy were before the establishment of West Point and Annapolis, and where the engineer, the doctor, and the lawyer were a generation ago, before the development of modern professional schools for the training of leaders in these fields. Yet leaders must be trained for work in education, as in these other professional fields, if we are to make any great and worthy progress in the future.

In the matter of examinations there is great need of our decreasing the emphasis we now place on the written test. We could greatly improve our certificating systems by erecting certain educational prerequisites and accepting evidence of education in lieu of at least part of the examinations. As fast as can be done, the periodical written examination ought to be diminished in importance as a means of recruiting our teaching force. We ought to insist more and more on securing the educated and trained teacher instead of the raw recruit. Not only should the number of examinations be decreased, but teachers of training or of long and satisfactory experience ought to be relieved of the necessity of frequent tests. There is no valid excuse, for example, for compelling a graduate of a state normal school to pass a county examination before she can teach. If her normal-school diploma does not stand for better

education and better professional preparation than the county examination represents, and if she is not superior to the untrained product of the county examination method, then it is time either to renovate the normal schools of the state and put in a corps of teachers who can produce a better output, or to abolish them entirely and save an unnecessary expense.

The securing of the educated and trained teacher instead of the raw recruit is, however, an economic problem as well as an educational one, though this economic problem has an educational aspect as well. There never can be high educational standards for teachers in states which are organized on the district system, and which apportion their money on the very objectionable census basis and which raise but a small general tax, until there is a radical reform in the methods of raising school revenue and of apportioning funds after they have been raised. In the ultimate analysis there are but three primary problems in education. The first is how properly to finance a school system. The second is how to secure a trained teaching force for it. The third is how to supervise it and to produce leaders for its management and improvement. The financial problem always underlies the other two.

III. POWER TO GRANT, RENEW, SUSPEND, AND REVOKE CERTIFICATES TO TEACH

[From the Final Report of the Illinois Educational Commission, 1909, pp. 163-70.]

The certificating power does not necessarily imply the power to examine the candidate to test his scholarship. In the plan proposed this function is assigned to the State Board of Education. The examination questions should be prepared by the State Board of Education, or under its direction, should be uniform throughout the State, and all examination papers should be graded by it or under its direction. This is one of the most important features of the proposed certificating plan. The arguments that may be adduced in support of it are many and, we think, incontrovertible. In the first place it guarantees complete fairness in examinations. The questions for all applicants are identical. No personal considerations affect the grading of papers. Every candidate stands squarely on his own merits so far as his scholarship is concerned. If he fails he cannot blame anyone but himself. Thus county superintendents will be relieved of unfavorable criticism by applicants and friends of applicants who are rejected on the grounds