_Sixth._--The chief executive officer of the department of instruction should be given a long term, and may be appointed by the board. If the board is constituted of two branches, he should be nominated by the business executive and confirmed by the legislative branch. Once appointed, he should be independent. He should appoint all authorized assistants and teachers from an eligible list, to be constituted as provided by law. He should assign to duties and discontinue services for cause at his discretion. He should determine all matters relating to instruction. He should be charged with the responsibility of developing a professional and enthusiastic teaching force and of making all the teaching scientific and forceful. He must perfect the organization of his department, and make and carry out plans to accomplish this. If he cannot do this in a reasonable time, he should be superseded by one who can.
The government of a vast city school system comes to have an autonomy which is largely its own, and almost independent of direction or restraint. The volume of business which this government transacts is represented only by millions of dollars; it calls not only for the highest sagacity and the ripest experience, but also for much special information relating to school property and school affairs. Even more important than this is the fact that this government controls and determines the educational policy of the city and carries on the instruction of tens or hundreds of thousands of children, and this instruction is of little value, and perhaps vicious, unless it is professional and scientific. This government is representative. All citizens are compelled to support it, and all have large interests which it is bound to promote. Every parent has rights which it is the duty of this school government to protect and enforce. When government exacts our support of public education, when it comes into our homes and takes our children into its custody and instructs them according to its will, we acquire a right which is as exalted as any right of property, or of person, or of conscience can be, and that is the right to know that the environment is healthful, that the management is kindly and ennobling, and that the instruction is rational and scientific. It is needless to say to what extent these interests are impeded or blocked, or how commonly these rights of citizenship and of parentage are denied or defied, or how helpless the individual is who seeks their enforcement, under the system of school government which has heretofore obtained in some of the great cities of the country. This is not surprising. It is only the logical result of the rapid growth of cities, of a marvelous advance in knowledge of what is needed in the schools, of the antagonism of selfish interests, by which all public administration, and particularly school administration, is encompassed, and of the lack of plan and system, the confusion of powers, the absence of individual responsibility, in the government of a system of schools. By the census of 1890 there are seven cities in the United States each with a population greater than any one of sixteen states. The aggregate population of twelve cities exceeds the aggregate population of twenty states. Government for education certainly requires as strong and responsible an organization as government for any other purpose. These great centres of population, with their vast and complex educational problems, have passed the stage when government by the time-honored commission will suffice. No popular government ever determined the policy and administered the affairs of such large bodies of people successfully, ever transacted such a vast volume of business satisfactorily, ever promoted high and beneficent ends, ever afforded protection to the rights of each individual of the great multitude, unless in its plan of organization there was an organic separation of executive, legislative, and judicial functions and powers.