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In not a few cases the problem of financing schools has in recent years become especially acute. Communities are in many cases at the limit now permitted by state laws controlling the levying of taxes. The maintenance of schools even at their present level is very difficult, and all the time there is the urgent push within the system for enlargements and improvements. Other communities which see the rapid increase in school expenditures, even while they are willing to tax themselves more for schools, are asking for clear evidence that school work is being done efficiently.

Such an attitude appears, for example, in a resolution passed by the citizens of Portland, Oregon, at a regular annual meeting of the voters held December 27, 1912:

Whereas, the average daily attendance at the public schools of this district has increased from 10,387 in 1902 to 23,712 in 1912, and the annual disbursements have increased during the same period from $420,879.61 to $2,490,477.28; and whereas, it is of the utmost importance that the public schools should be kept at the highest point of efficiency.

It is hereby declared to be the sense of this meeting that a full and complete survey be made of the public school system of this district.19

Many other examples could be given of school inquiries which have grown out of the demand for either better administration of finances or more efficient training. In 1910 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of New York ordered a survey of the schools of that city because the Board did not believe itself to be in possession of adequate information on which to base appropriations for education and because, to use the words of the resolution,

It is the sense of this Board that efficient and progressive administration of the schools ... is indispensable to the welfare and progress of the city and that generous appropriations ... are desirable in so far as assurance and evidence can be given that such appropriations will be expended for purposes and in a manner to promote the efficiency and welfare of the schools and to increase the value and effect of the instruction given therein.20

Such quotations show the intimate relation between finance and teaching, between the attitude of the community toward expenditures and the modern demand for a scientifically conducted school system.