up within each school district for each occupational program by sex, ethnic group. age, grade level, grade point average, disadvantaged or handicapped and purpose, which is exploratory, preparatory or supplemental, with the earnings and student evaluation of their training included in the following.

In program data we need to know the programs that are offered in each school district and for each program. The kind of instruction, whether institutional, cooperative or work experience, the sources of funds, grade level, clock hours of instruction, direct and indirect expenditures.

Under profesional personnel data we need to know the numbers of teachers and vocational education personnel, including preservice and inservice teacher trainees in each occupational program by category, grade level, age, sex, years of work experience in the teaching field, recentness of work experience, educational preparation, years of teaching, State certification and perhaps and if possible competency rating in the teaching field. Another area of data needed, employment market demand, hopefully could be supplied by the U.S. Department of Labor. But it has to be supplied by vocational education, occupational codes for each community in the State.

Mr. Chairman, I have heard only last week that the Bureau of Labor statistics has developed a complete employment market demand data listing for 23 States, listing the employment demand by both the DOD code and the U.S. office occupational codes. This is what we need. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says it will be available for all 50 States and the District of Columbia.

Chairman PERKINS. Let me thank you. I don't want to cut you short. We have got to move ahead here this morning. Congressman Quie was instrumental in getting Project Baseline under way to make a study of everything that transpired in the way of new ideas and old ideas and the way the program has operated in the past, where we are going in the future. I imagine your report discusses all of those. It has been made a part of the record. Certainly all of us will study that report.

I want to call at this time on Mr. McHenry, senior program planning specialist, Pennsylvania Vocational Management Informations Systems.

We will put your statement in the record and you may summarize it.

[Prepared statement of Mr. McHenry follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF LOWERY E. MCHENRY, SENIOR PROGRAM PLANNING SPECIALIST, PENNSYLVANIA VOCATIONAL MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS Mr. Perkins and members of the Subcommittee on Education: My name is Lowery McHenry. I am head of the Planning Section in the Bureau of Vocational Education, Pennsylvania Department of Education. One of my responsibilities for the last five years has been the coordination of the development of the Pennsylvania Vocational Education Management Information System (VEMIS).

On behalf of our State Secretary of Education, Mr. John C. Pittenger, I am pleased to have the opportunity to present the following information concerning Pennsylvania's Vocational Education Management Information System.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SYSTEM

Historical development

Prior to 1970, Pennsylvania-like most other states-struggled with the United States Office of Education annual report requirements by use of a manual data reporting system. State supervisors of the various fields of vocational education found it necessary to devote much of their time and effort to the many clerical tasks associated with data-gathering activities-form development, preparation of forms and instructions, distribution, clerical editing of returned forms, mailing of non-respondent reminder letters, preparation and distribution of preliminary and final reports, and reaction to special report requests. These individual field reports were then merged into a comprehensive state report on all vocational programs. As a result, little time may have been available for state-wide management of vocational education program development and operation. Enrollment duplications within program areas and between program areas were extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine. Moreover, data were gathered in aggregate form, and after the initial reports were prepared and the forms were filed, they were of only limited further use. Special requests for program data not anticipated at the time the forms were developed either remained unanswered or created extreme burdens on state and local staff by necessitating additional data-gathering activity. Occasionally, special requests could be filled from data contained on the original forms, but this too, usually required considerable activity-pulling thousands of forms from the files and compiling the data to conform to that specific request. This same scene was recreated many times throughout the year as greater demands were placed on accountability for vocational education programs, services, and activities.

With the enactment of the 1968 Amendments to the Vocational Education Act of 1963, the subsequent increase in report requirements, and the need for more meaningful state-wide program planning, it became apparent that vocational education information requirements far exceed our capabilities. Congress, state legislatures, state boards, administrators, and the public were becoming cognizant of the hundreds of area vocational-technical schools quietly springing up throughout the nation. During the prior ten years, more than 70 such schools had been constructed in Pennsylvania alone. Enrollments had increased over 400 percent, and the number of different curriculum offerings had tripled as expenditures climbed toward the $200 million mark.

People started asking questions-provocative questions, important questions, critical questions. To what extent should emphasis be placed on labor market needs in planning new vocational programs? What standards, if any, should be imposed on existing and new programs? What really happens to graduates after they complete their training? What should be the criteria for admission to vocational programs? What is the capacity utilization of our present facilities? What is the profile of our pupils and teachers in terms of race, sex, geographic mobility, competence, age groupings, earnings, turnover, etc.?

For many of these questions we had no answers, and for others we had only poor guesses. If we were to free key personnel from being inundated by clerical tasks and to improve significantly our data collection and processing activities, it became apparent that we must turn to automation. In 1970 our State Director of Vocational Education, Dr. John W. Struck, approved the development of Vocational Education Management Information System, or VEMIS, as it is popularly known throughout Pennsylvania and the Nation.

Organization and design

Figure 1 describes the current organizational structure of VEMIS. The system is being developed under the general direction of the State Director. The Coordinator of VEMIS activities in the Division of Administrative and Planning Servces, Lowery E. McHenry, is directly responsible for the continuing operation of the system which functions through a cooperative arrangement with the Education Systems Research Institute (ERI) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Max U. Eniger, President of ESRI, is responsible for the basic design and development of the system. He and his staff of analysts, programmers and technicians have provided invaluable technical assistance in the development and current operation of VEMIS.

Technical assistance relating to specific system application and policy is provided by advisory committees representing the various educational levels and institutions incorporated in the system. The members of the secondary advisory committee include state vocational education staff in the Bureau of Vocational Education; regional office chiefs; representatives from cooperating state agencies such as the Research Coordinating Unit, the Division of Statistics, the Management Information Services Bureau, the Office of Planning in Higher Education, and local administrators. The Coordinator of VEMIS activities is also sensitive to suggestions from the State Advisory Council, the State Board, the Commissioner, field consultants, and others.

The manpower conversion equation

The master plan for a comprehensive manpower development management information system has its theoretical starting point in the manpower conversion equation shown in Figure 2. The model identifies seven major channels or sources for converting undeveloped/underdeveloped manpower resources into developed (skilled) manpower resources. They are:

1. Public Secondary Vocational Education;

2. Public Non-College Adult/Postsecondary Vocational Education;

3. Public College-Level Postsecondary Vocational Education;

4. Business/Industry Personnel Training and Development;

5. Private/Proprietary School Occupational Education;

6. Department of Labor/Office of Economic Opportunity Programs;

7. Approved/Non-Approved Apprenticeship Training Programs.

The foregoing do not include all sources of skilled manpower develoment in Pennsylvania. Of lesser imortance from a quantitative (output) standpoint are: 8. Private College Two-Year Vocational Education Programs;

9. Correctional Institution Occupational Skill Programs;
10. Occupational Skill Programs in Institutions for Handicapped.

The theoretical starting point of the VEMIS system is the Manpower Conversion Equation shown in Figure 2. VEMIS is not merely a system for collecting and reporting information about vocational education. It is a management information system relating to a body of goals and objectives for vocational education. The model shows undeveloped manpower resources-people without marketable occupational skills-as input into channels of manpower conversion or development. The model also illustrates that substantial numbers of our steadily increasing undeveloped manpower resources bypass the major sources of manpower development. Some remain essentially an undeveloped manpower resource for the working lives, holding down unskilled or low-level, semiskilled jobs when employed. Others return to the start position and enter one of the major sources of manpower resources in a later period of their life. Often their occupational skill development comes through on-the-job training and/or business and industry training programs.

The model shows two kinds of output from these major areas of manpower resources: (1) skilled manpower resources, i.e., persons who have successfully completed their occupational education or training programs, and (2) undeveloped manpower resources, i.e., persons who have dropped out of their occupational education programs or completed their programs without mastering the necessary occupational skill. Hence, they are still an undeveloped manpower resources. Notice, however, that some recycle into one of the major manpower development sources.

On the far side of the equation, the labor market is represented by two broad categories, skilled manpower occupations and unskilled manpower occupations. For our purposes the many shades of grey between these two extremes are irrelevant. We know that the demand for skilled manpower is increasing, and that for unskilled manpower, it is decreasing. The model indicates that the output of skilled manpower is absorbed into the skilled occupations of the labor market and that the unskilled manpower naturally feeds into the unskilled occupations. As we have found, however, the real world does not necessarily conform to the ideal of the theoretical model. Sometimes, skilled persons end up in unskilled occupations.

Notice, too, that the model is an equation which states that the primary objective of the collective manpower development system is to recruit and convert undeveloped manpower resources into skilled manpower resources in sufficient kinds and numbers to meet the labor market requirements of the expanding Pennsylvania economy. In short, the objective is to balance supply and demand for skilled manpower. The achievement of a balance implies that for every newly developed, skilled manpower resource there would be an available job opening, and that for every job opening for an occupationally skilled person, there would be an available and qualified person. A serious imbalance could mean an excessive supply of certain kinds of skilled manpower, an undersupply of certain kinds of skilled manpower, or a combination of both.

The theoretical model clearly relates the problem of manpower development to (1) the national policy of full employment, (2) the existing and projected manpower requirements of an expanding and technologically changing economy, (3) the existing and projected supply of undeveloped manpower resources, and (4) the public and private sources of skilled manpower development. Primary system objectives

The basic challenge is to manage the collective system, within the constraints of our political institutions, so as to achieve a realistic balance between output (or supply) and labor market requirements (or demand) for skilled manpower. At the present time, there is no single governmental agency that is organized to accept the management challenge for the collective system. It is vocational education's role, then, to develop and implement the management information system for state and local manpower development through the following objectives:

1. Supply of undeveloped/underdeveloped manpower.-The model clearly implies that those who do not go on to higher education or develop a marketable skill in one of the manpower conversion channels will have increasing difficulty finding and holding jobs in future labor markets characterized by a steady decline for unskilled manpower. Such persons are predictably chronic unemployed/underemployed, and as such, will be a burden on the resources of the Commonwealth. By implication, then, the following is a major objective of Vocational Education.

To increase the percentage of non-college bound youth enrolled in vocational programs at the secondary and postsecondary level, consistent with the projected requirements of the Pennsylvania labor markets in the coming years. To increase the percentage of special need (handicapped and disadvantaged), non-college bound youth enrolled in vocational programs at the secondary and/ or postsecondary level, consistent with the projected requirements of the Pennsylvania labor markets in the coming years.

2. Opportunities for manpower skill development.-It is a logical implication of the manpower conversion model that the collective system must keep in step with the labor market requirements by providing the opportunities to learn those occupational skills that are required by the projected labor markets. If the opportunities are not there, the output (supply) will not be there. While we can't influence, much less control, the occupational skill development oppor