ONE of the most uncertain, and often unsatisfactory, services in the whole field of child welfare is that of correctional education, at once the most difficult and least successful of all community attempts in behalf of the welfare of young persons. Occupying a place somewhere between the boarding-school and the prison and inheriting some of the undesirable characteristics of both, the correctional school is likely to oscillate in its policy between the two poles of restraint and punishment, on the one hand, and understanding and training, on the other. The development of a policy and the carrying-through of a program are made doubly difficult in many instances by virtue of the limitations placed upon the schools by their founders, or by the unsuitable laws enacted for their operation, or by situations that make the securing of adequately trained, continuing personnel in the school very difficult. Still further, the limited educability of many of the young persons committed makes for confusion and uncertainty of program inside the schools and increases the difficulties in the general planning of the work by boards of directors of private institutions and members of departments in the public service.