Mrs. GREEN. What other information was available besides your circulated questionnaires to Governors, legislators, chief State school officers, State associations, school administrators and school boards, CPA's, State school board members, State teachers' associations, and Federal officials. What group's recommendation led you to your conclusion?

Mr. KARSH. I say it varied-all of the other groups-and it is hard to generalize specifically the recommendation or the level.

Mrs. GREEN. What are some of the other groups?

Mr. KARSH. You already mentioned some. As you did mention them. you included other than educational groups as such. We did also survey all of the chairmen of the educational committees in every State in the Union, both House and Senate, and we did survey the Governors. We did survey, not all, but most of them.

Mr. PIERCE. I think what the Congresswoman is after is: Was there a difference between educational organizations and their viewpoints or were there other viewpoints of Governors and legislators, and did they recommend less than 32 percent, or what was our reason for not buying the 32 percent?

As I understand it, on the survey basis, we did not get the predominance of recommendation of large percentages from the politically oriented people as we did from the educationally oriented people. Mr. KARSH. Yes; that is true.

Mrs. GREEN. For the State legislators, I believe the mean percentage was 31 percent. It is true that some legislators recommended nothing. but others went as high as 75 percent. The median was 32 percent. So your political people as well as your school people seemed to conclude that one-third of the support should come from the Federal Govern

ment.

Mr. KARSH. But, Mrs. Green, the funds we had anticipated would accrue for educational purposes would come from other than a fixed Federal percentage. It would be as a basis of choice. It could reach 33 percent-it certainly could-but funds available for education would come from other than a direct educational grant.

Mrs. GREEN. Well, the responses which I am citing are the result of your statement "The Federal share of the cost of public schools should be increased or decreased until the Federal contribution reaches an optimum of a percent of the total cost."

Mr. KARSH. That is true.

Mrs. GREEN. I am saying, then, the mean amount was 32 percent. Mr. KARSH. I am not denying that but, in the context of that question, the responses were specifically education grant funds and, in the final recommendations of the Commission, it was grants for education plus funds that would accrue to education through other programs. Mrs. GREEN. That is not the way it went but, it seems to me, you ignored the results of the questionnaires that the Commission sent out and arrived at something else entirely. How do you reconcile the recommendations here and the administration's recommendations for revenue sharing?

Mr. KARSH. The recommendations in the report that is essentially an endorsement rather than a recommendation for generalI am sorry. You did say, "general revenue sharing"?

Mrs. GREEN. No; I said, "revenue sharing"; the administration wants revenue sharing which would provide more Federal funds for education, as I understand it.

Mr. KARSH. Well, certainly for general revenue sharing, we did speak to that in terms of its bringing an additional amount of money to education which we assumed would accrue roughly-or, we didn't assume but on the basis that the funds going to education from those States and local sources would essentially bring additional money to education, and we did endorse that, but it was an endorsement.

On the special education revenue sharing, again we endorsed that approach, and we said that both of these programs would benefit education.

Mrs. GREEN. But the States were to pick up somewhere around $14 billion of the cost on this when all reports state they are taxed to their limits now.

The basis of revenue sharing is: They are broke and need funds.

Mr. PIERCE. Well, they would be getting those funds essentially, as the last report indicates, from all sources, either recommended directly by the Commission or endorsed by the Commission, somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 billion annually, which is considerably more than going out now for elementary and secondary education.

Mr. HAWKINS. Thank you, Mrs. Green.

Thank you, Mr. Pierce and Mr. Karsh. I think your statements have been very constructive and most enlightening.

That concludes the hearing, and the next meeting will be Tuesday, April 18, in room 2261.

(Whereupon, the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene on Tuesday, April 18, 1972.)

FINANCING OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY

EDUCATION

TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1972

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

GENERAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION,
OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2261, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Roman C. Pucinski (chairman of the subcommittee), presiding.

Present: Representatives Pucinski, Meeds, Quie, and Bell.

Staff members present: John F. Jennings, counsel; and Cindy Banzer, minority legislative assistant.

Mr. PUCINSKI. The subcommittee will come to order.

We will resume our hearings before the General Subcommittee on Education regarding the financing of elementary and secondary education. There are a number of bills pending before the committee, submitted both by the administration and by the various members, and I am very pleased that we have with us today Mr. Roe Johns, project director of the National Educational Finance Project, and Mr. Kern Alexander, associate project director, here to give us their findings on the future direction for school financing.

We will print as an Appendix A to these hearings chapters 8 and 10 of volume 5 of your report. Those chapters are the most important part of your report as far as these hearings are concerned.

Mr. Johns, I am most anxious to hear your testimony. I understand you are also going to show us slides. Mr. Johns and Mr. Alexander, you can proceed in any manner you wish.

STATEMENT OF ROE JOHNS, PROJECT DIRECTOR, NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL FINANCE PROJECT, ACCOMPANIED BY KERN ALEXANDER, ASSOCIATE PROJECT DIRECTOR, AND K. FORBIS JORDAN, FINANCE SPECIALIST, NATIONAL EDUCATION FINANCE PROJECT, AND PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION ADMINISTRATION, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Mr. JOHNS. I will just move up a little closer to you. Being a college professor, I like to be near my class.

Mr. PUCINSKI. You are like my minister; he likes to keep close to the people, too.

Mr. JOHNS. You keep awake and can't nap if I am close to you. The National Education Finance Project, to give you a brief background, was funded by the U.S. Office of Education for approxi

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mately $2 million. It was started in June 1968, and it will be continued in operation through the middle of July under our present grant-I hope it will be continued a little longer, because our work is not yet finished.

I want to say that although the Office of Education funded this project, they in no sense directed the project or controlled its recommendations or edited them in any sense. We published our findings. our research, the way we found it, and the Office of Education does not necessarily support or oppose what we recommend. They funded it and simply requested us to study problems of school financing and report findings. It was just that simple a direction.

The study was made with some 38 professors, expert in school finance and economics employed by 20 different universities scattered throughout the Nation.

Mr. BELL. How long ago did you start?

Mr. JOHNS. June 1968.

The general project design was as follows: We first wanted to look at the dimensions of educational needs in the United States, that is who are we trying to educate, and what will be needed financially to meet educational needs between now and 1980.

We next examined the economic factors affecting education, the effect of education on the national economy, educational needs, and program costs of the different programs needed for different pupil populations for instance, the culturally disadvantaged and exceptional education, vocational education, and general and basic education. We also examined the status of current finance programs, both State and Federal. We evaluated these programs and then made recommendations on alternative methods of financing.

You have in your hands volume 5 and a popular summary entitled "Future Directions for School Financing." Our findings were actually reported in five volumes published by the central office and five unnumbered volumes, then 10 satellite volumes-actually 20 volumes in the total, complete report.

But we pulled together the essence of our report in that little popular summary "Future Directions for School Financing." The more complete summary of our report is contained in volume 5 entitled "Alternative Programs for School Financing."

There were a number of the satellite projects, or studies, which we subcontracted to professors in various institutions over the United States. Some of the institutions involved were: the University of Cali fornia at Los Angeles, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Wisconsin; University of Michigan, Univer sity of Minnesota, Chicago University, University of Colorado, Univer sity of Indiana, Illinois University, Columbia University, University of the State of New York at Albany, North Carolina University, Uni versity of Tennessee, University of Florida, and so on. I have no named all of them, but you get a notion of the national scope of thes studies.

If you think I could control the recommendations these 38 professor from different universities, you have another think coming. We asked them to do research and to report their findings. There was no censor ing on the part of the central staff of the satellite projects. We aske each researcher to report what he found.