The minor population basis assumes that the amount of money a district must spend for education depends upon the number of persons under 21 years of age living within the district. In reality, the cost of maintaining a school or schools depends first and chiefly upon the number of teachers provided, the salaries paid, the length of school term, and last of all, upon the number of pupils for whom educational facilities are actually provided.

School costs in one-room rural schools, other than salary costs, may be so nearly uniform that it makes little difference whether a district contains ten or twenty pupils. In both cases one teacher must be hired, and the expense of heating, insuring, and otherwise maintaining the school will be approximately the same.

A just method of apportioning state aid and one which will tend towards equalization must take these matters into consideration. It must, moreover, proportion its aid to the length of the school year, to the ability of the district as represented by wealth per child or wealth per teacher, and to the effort put forth by the district as represented by the rate of school tax levied. The minor population method of apportioning state school moneys grants the same amount of aid to a district, whether it maintains a poor school for three months or a good school for nine, whether it provides an adequate or an inadequate number of teachers, and whether school facilities are up to a reasonable standard or whether they are far below. The extent to which this method fails to even out district inequalities and to take into consideration differences in ability and effort has been shown in Table XXXII. Figure 5 shows graphically how it fails equally to proportion aid to effort.

Bearing in mind that the largest item of school costs in any community is the salaries paid to teachers, we see at once the inadequacy and unsatisfactoriness of the Illinois method of distributing state aid. Gallatin County, which has a valuation of only $35,890 per teacher, levies an average district tax of 24 mills, yet receives from the state only $140 per teacher; whereas Cook County, which is four times as able as Gallatin to produce school revenue, and which levies a tax more than 8 mills less than Gallatin, receives from the state $211 per teacher, $71 more than is received by Gallatin. Knox County, which has a valuation per teacher of $79,560, levies a tax of nearly 18 mills, produces thereby only $1507 per teacher, but receives from the state only $45.96 per teacher; whereas Logan County, which levies a tax of approximately the same rate, receives from the state more than $107 per teacher. Were we to compare other counties with respect to total expenditure per teacher, valuation, district tax, and state apportionment per teacher, we would discover equally impressive evidences of the total lack of any relationship between ability, effort, and aid under the present Illinois system of school finance. These inequalities in ability and state aid are set forth in Figure 6.

CAUSES OF EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITIES

Preceding paragraphs have set forth the inequalities in the educational opportunities provided by the state of Illinois for her prospective citizens— chiefly inequalities in length of school term, in the quality of instruction, and in educational facilities provided. Back of, and productive of, these inequalities of educational opportunity lie inequalities in ability, in effort, and in state aid. These, also, have been portrayed. That the school revenues provided within the state of Illinois are totally insufficient to furnish adequately trained teachers and consequently to equalize educational opportunities is easily evident. Yet another cause of inequalities, and one which is back of, and basic to, all those thus far named is the district system.

We have seen that in the year 1922, the state of Illinois contained no less than 11,879 school districts. (See above Chapter I, Table I.) It has also been pointed out that approximately 92 per cent of all school revenues produced were furnished by the school districts. (See above Chapter IV, Table XVIII.)

The evils of the district system and the hopelessness of endeavoring to equalize educational opportunity and school burdens, as long as the district is maintained as the chief and dominant source of school revenue, have been pointed out by every leading authority on the organization and support of public schools for the last one hundred years. These leaders have been unanimous in their condemnation of the district system. Nevertheless, one state after another has clung to the district system with a tenacity which can be understood only by those familiar with the motives and conceptions which dominate the electorate. An obvious remedy to this situation is the adoption of a policy which will substitute for the district a unit embracing a larger portion of wealth. Illinois has recognized the soundness of this principle by establishing township high school districts, non-high school districts, community consolidated districts, and community high school districts. One of the chief incentives to establish such districts has been the recognition that the larger unit, by spreading out the burden of school support over a larger area, will not only produce more revenue, but will equalize the tax rate for all the territory included. The unit which has perhaps been more often suggested than any other as a substitute for the school district is the county. The county unit would be larger than any of the units thus far created in Illinois. Let us consider briefly the possibilities of finding a solution for Illinois' difficulties by the adoption of the county as a major source of school revenue.

TABLE XXXIII

ILLINOIS COUNTIES GROUPED, SHOWING THE INEQUALITIES IN THE WEALTH UPON WHICH THE CHILDREN MUST DEPEND FOR THEIR EDUCATION

3.26

TOTAL.

1200.6

99.95

Equalizing Educational Opportunity in Illinois. Report from the State Senate, Secretary's Office, Springfield, Illinois, 1923, p. 1. Computed from Statistical Report of the Illinois Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1921, p. 22, Table 5, column 4.

THE COUNTY AS AN EQUALIZER OF SCHOOL BURDENS

The superiority of the county over the district as a local unit of organization and support for public schools has been set forth elsewhere by the writer of the present monograph, and therefore needs no consideration here." Nevertheless, it is evident from the facts already presented that the counties of Illinois are most unequal in wealth, and consequently most unequal in their ability to provide school revenue. Consequently, however much Illinois might equalize school revenues, school burdens, and educational opportunities by abolishing school districts and establishing the county as the local unit of school support and organization, flagrant and disastrous inequalities will continue as long as any type of local units, even though they be counties, are depended upon for the major portion of the school revenue. The truth of this assertion becomes evident when we compare the 102 counties of. Illinois on the basis of their ability to provide school revenue. Such a comparison is presented in Figure 7.

This figure shows the 102 counties of Illinois arranged in 17 groups. The first of the columns at the left indicates the number of counties included in each of the 17 groups; the second column, the number of children enumerated within the group; the third, the per cent which the number included in the second column is of the total number enumerated within the state. The fourth column shows the typical valuation (i.e., median) per teacher for the counties in the group. This typical valuation for each group is represented by a horizontal bar. Table XXXIII presents these data together with the names of the counties included in each group.

Figure 7 and Table XXXIII reveal the fact that the richest county in the state is more than four times as able to provide school revenue as are the six counties included in the poorest (i.e., the seventeenth) group. The ten counties included in the fourth group are nearly twice as able to produce school revenue as the five counties included in the thirteenth group.

From Figure 7 and Table XXXIII we see that 43 per cent of the children enumerated in Illinois live in one county, Cook, where the wealth back of each teacher is over $150,000, whereas 26 per cent (Groups IX to XVII) live in counties where the wealth back of each teacher is less than $80,000. No further comparison is necessary to show the inadvisability of attempting to derive equal revenues from units so unequal in wealth as are the counties of Illinois. The abolition of the district and the establishment in its place of the county as the local unit, although a most important step in the right direction, will never solve the problem. Little approach

See F. H. Swift, Studies in Public School Finance-the East, pp. 101-2; F. H. Swift and Frances K. del Plaine, Public School Finance in Minnesota, summary of a report prepared for the Minnesota Education Committee, pp. 30, 41-42.