Page:History of Public School Education in Arizona.djvu/142

136 The standardization of schools is being advanced and schoolhouses are being erected, larger and better than those of earlier decades and well suited to the needs of the day. Industrial and vocational education is recognized and provided for in special institutions, in the university, the normal schools, and also in the high schools. The State, after a long preliminary period in which uniformity of textbooks was provided by law but not always enforced in practice, has come to realize the desirability of providing all books at State expense, and a pension system is being tried. Many of these lines of endeavor are still in the trial period, but they indicate the trend of the times.

As yet there has not been attained in Arizona the centralization needed to place on the State department of education the responsibility for providing equal opportunities. As recently pointed out by the survey of the United States Bureau of Education the board itself should be reorganized and its power increased; all politics should be eliminated in both county and State affairs; the powers of the county board should be increased also with a reorganization of the methods of apportionment and an extension of expert supervision of rural schools.

When these and similar measures have been carried out there will not be lacking the centralized administration necessary to attain State-wide progress “without unnecessary delay and expense.”

 