The visiting teacher is akin to the school nurse, and yet distinct in function. This new office is one of the latest creations in educational experimentation, though not based on novel ideas of education, since the sympathetic teacher has always sought to go beyond her pupils to outside influences that retarded or encouraged development. The visiting teacher comes as an aid to the regular teacher solely for educational purposes. Like the school nurse she makes the child the pivotal point on which she focuses her own experience and training. Like the nurse she may recommend that a child be placed under the care of a psychologist, a physician, a more expert teacher, a kindergartner, or that a social agency be called upon to assist in improving the sanitary, health, or financial features of the home environment. Her point of view, however, is ultimately increased intelligence, whereas the school nurse’s primary aim is health. While the functions of these two public servants are distinct, therefore, there is very often need of perfect coöperation, for health may underlie education in some cases and, in others, poverty may underlie both health and education. In her report on Visiting Teachers for the Public Education Association of New York, Mary Flexner records the very high ratio of 45 per cent. of the cases covered by visiting nurses for the year 1911–1912 as being “cases” because home poverty retarded the development of the child. In explanation of the term poverty, Miss Flexner says: “This term is interpreted broadly to include all cases in which ‘economic pressure’ makes of the child an illegal wage-earner or a household drudge and forces the family to adopt such a low standard of living that there is neither proper space for the child to study nor proper food to give it the stimulus to do so.” Miss Flexner further shows that 57 per cent. of the cases showed lack of family appreciation of what are the needs of a normal or an abnormal growing child. A summary of the action taken in all the cases is a most vital part of the report. The work of the visiting teacher began in New York City in 1906 when two settlements managed by women, Hartley House and Greenwich House, placed two visiting teachers in the field. Richmond Hill House and the College Settlement, where women also are the headworkers, were at the same time coöperating with this committee. The Public Education Association became interested at once and added to the number of such teachers. Other agencies soon began to join in the support of these teachers until, in 1913 after three years’ effort, two visiting teachers were placed upon the city’s payroll for ungraded classes. The Home and School Peace League of Philadelphia has aroused interest in visiting teachers in that city until several are now supported privately for this work and are used to a considerable extent by the Bureau of Compulsory Education to carry out the preventive work in its charge.