PERCENTAGE OF CLASSROOM UNITS CHART XI.-Distribution of classroom units according to levels of expenditure NEBRASKA CURRENT EXPENDITURE PER CLASSROOM UNIT $500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 5,000 5,500 PERCENTAGE OF CLASSROOM UNITS CHART XII.-Distribution of classroom units according to levels of expenditure 100% SOUTH DAKOTA CURRENT EXPENDITURE PER CLASSROOM UNIT $500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 5,000 5,500 CHART XIII.—Distribution of classroom units according to levels of expenditure VIRGINIA CURRENT EXPENDITURE PER CLASSROOM UNIT $500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 5,000 5,500 100% 90 80 70 PERCENTAGE OF CLASSROOM UNITS CHART XIV.-Distribution of classroom units according to level of expenditure UNITED STATES CURRENT EXPENDITURE PER CLASSROOM UNIT $500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 5,000 5,500 6,000 PERCENTAGE OF CLASSROOM UNITS PERCENT OF CHILDREN Dr. NORTON. Sometimes it is because the laws are not very good and more often because the laws are not financed and what it comes down to is this: Suppose you were a State superintendent of public instruction in a State that barely had enough money just to keep open the schools that already had children. How much energy and money would you have left to go out and get other children to put in schools that did not exist, that you did not have money to buy, or if you put them in you wouldn't have any money to pay teachers to teach them. That is really what it boils down to. The same situation I was talking about shows up when you consider individual States. Let's take the extreme cases again, charts XV and XVI, for New York and Mississippi. Mississippi, here, is the same profile I showed you before. There is broad, adequate or fairly adequate support for education here in New York, but look at the difference in the length of the line of children not in school at all. Ages 5 to 17, that means some 5-year-olds are not in school, and some begin dropping out along 16 or 17. That accounts for a sizable portion of those in New York State. Anyway, it is only 10 percent or 11 percent of the children who are not in school at all in this age range, whereas in Mississippi it is 26 percent; so not only are the children who are in school rankly discriminated against, but there is even a greater discrimination in not getting children in school at all. Mr. SCHWABE. Is that discrepancy due in part to truancy being greater in Mississippi than New York? Dr. NORTON. I doubt it. It is according to what your definition of truancy is. It is certainly due to the fact that there are factors that operate so that compulsory attendance laws are not enforced to the same extent in Mississippi. I doubt if you would call it truancy. There are districts in which there are no schools. Is a child truant when he is not in school when there is no school? You see that is what we have. You see the same things show up over and over again. Compare -the distance of the line of nonschool children in California and Arkansas. (Charts XVII and XVIII.) This next chart or two show how comparatively easy from a financial point of view, in terms of cost, it would be to put a decent floor, or minimum of support under education. Another way of saying it is, we could eliminate the worst slum school districts of this country for a few hundred million dollars. This chart shows, for the United States, that in the particular year these data were collected, $316,000,000 would have permitted a minimum of $1,600 per classroom and there would have been no school district in the country of the $100, $300, or $500 classroom class. There would have been none less than $1,600. (Chart XIX.) That is not munificence. That would be $1,200 for a teacher and the remainder for the other costs. Nobody would claim that as extravagance, and yet, that for half of the children in the United States would represent a substantial improvement in their educational opportunity and for literally millions of children would represent an enormous increase in the effectiveness of their educational opportunity. Let us look at some of the States in the same regard. What does it take to establish a decent minimum? Suppose we wanted to estab |