We Americans might avoid a vast amount of leakage and unnecessary expenditure by improved organization of our educational institutions. A unified system of education, manned by competent officials with some authority, might easily raise the standard of efficiency of our schools several grades, and at the same time reduce the proportional cost. President Hall has given optimistic expression along this line. He writes:--"The time is not far off when we shall coordinate all educational agencies for all classes of children of school age.... All... institutions for the care and betterment of the bodies, minds or morals of children should correlate their work so that eventually it may all become so consolidated that each child can be placed in that position in the whole great system which will do most and best for it at each stage and so that changes from one to the other can be made whenever it becomes for the welfare of the child.... Diversities of agencies, aims and method should increase; and incorrigibles, defectives, homeless, neglected, backward children and the rest should each have special provision; but integration should keep pace with this differentiation."[27] Were our public schools, reformatories, schools for defectives, etc., etc., all combined into one system they might perform their offices more effectively than they do now. Instead of permitting each to run along independent of the rest, they should be made to supplement each other. Again, it is a matter of common knowledge that in our own country high school graduation, qualifications for teaching positions in the several grades of school work, college entrance requirements, college degrees, etc., are without uniform standardization. At present even a college degree has meaning only when the work and equipment of the institution granting it have been carefully estimated; state teachers' certificates may or may not be valid in other states; and reciprocity among the states in recognizing certificates is not in operation generally. While state certificates are not always demanded, some of the states are now requiring that all teachers in the high schools must be college graduates. In all too many instances the only effectual prerequisite to obtaining a position as teacher in the schools--primary or secondary--is the vote of the school directors. The gradation of educational activity according to a fixed basis and the raising of standards in academic and pedagogical preparation and in personal fitness for teaching positions would make the schools vastly greater factors in the country's progress and do the nation an inestimable service.