quipment can be
provided. While the isolated rural school can never take the place of
the consolidated school, while it should always be looked upon as only
temporarily occupying a place later to be filled by a more efficient
type of school, it can after all be rendered much more efficient than it
is at present. And since the one-room school will without doubt for
years to come be required as a supplement of the consolidated school,
it should receive the same careful thought and effort toward its
improvement that is being accorded the school of better type.

_Financial support of the rural school_

The rural school has never had adequate financial support. There has
been good reason for this in many regions of the country where farm
property was low in value, the land sparsely settled and not all
improved, or else covered by heavy mortgages. As these conditions have
gradually disappeared and the agricultural population become more
prosperous, the school has in some degree shared the general prosperity.
But not fully. A smaller proportion of the margin of wealth above living
necessities is going into rural education now than in the earlier days
of less prosperity. While the farmer has vastly "improved" his farm, he
has improved his school but little. While he has been adding modern
machinery and adopting scientific methods in caring for his grain and
stock, his children have not had the advantage of an increasingly
efficient school.

The poverty of the rural school finds its explanation in two facts: (1)
the relatively low value of the taxable property of the rural as
compared with the town or city district, and (2) the lower rate of local
school tax paid in country than in urban districts. The first of these
disadvantages of the rural district cannot be remedied; but for the
second, there seems to be no valid economic reason.

The approximate difference in the local school-tax rate paid in urban
and rural districts is shown in the following instances, which might be
duplicated from other States:--

In Kansas, the local school tax paid in 1910 by towns and cities was
above eighty per cent more than that paid by country districts. In
Missouri, the current report of the State Superintendent shows towns and
cities seventy-five per cent higher than the country. In Minnesota,
towns and cities average nearly three times the rate paid by rural
districts. In Ohio, towns and cities are more than ten per cent higher
than r