Excerpt from Recent Centralizing Tendencies in State Educational Administration Although popular education, since the earliest days of New England history, has been fondly cherished as one of the chief characteristics and safe-guards of our American polity, and although public schools early became quite gen erally diffused, especially throughout the North, yet at the opening of the present century it could scarcely be said that any of the States had what could be dignified hy'the term a public school system. Almost everywhere throughout the country the establishment and continued maintenance of free public schools depended chiefly upon local initiative and local public sentiment, while so far from there being any effective control and supervision of the schools, this factor was almost entirely wanting in every State. What little control and supervision existed was local, and took in no larger area than the township or county, and with the general establishment of the so-called district system was ushered in an era of the most extreme decentralization conceivable, during which a multitude of petty local boards and direct ors ruled supreme in their infinitesimal districts. Each district was a law'unto itself; of uniformity and system there was none. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.