tion of high level officials of Catholic education if greater effectiveness and efficiency are to characterize future working relationships between the two systems at the local level. Particularly for medium and small LEA's which are located at a considerable distance from the diocesan school office, there is a pressing need for an official designation of the proper representative of Catholic education in the community.

In this study of the relationships between local administrators of the public and nonpublic schools, the superintendent of schools and the LEA title I coordinator were the public school officials who were most frequently involved, but depending on the option exercised by the LEA, the non-public-school representative ranged from the diocesan superintendent to the principal of a Catholic elementary or secondary school located in the local target area. The summarization of the relationships between educators at such diverse levels of authority is difficult because of the limited character of the generalizations which may be formulated. Nonetheless, the reports submitted by the field survey coordinators support the conclusion that the effectiveness of contacts between public and non-public-school personnel within an LEA appears to be more a function of the personalities involved than of any other factor. The quality of the relationship between administrators of the two sectors does not appear to be systematically related to either the size of the LEA or to its regional location.

The nature of these relationships varied from close mutual involvement in the planning of projects to the extremely superficial approach in which LEA's merely mailed announcements of their approved projects to private school administrators. Other ways in which non-publicschool representatives were involved in title I activities included: assisting public school officials in identifying children who were eligible for participation, providing information about the needs of educationally deprived children in their schools, working out the details of the procedures for implementing the involvement of non-public-school pupils, suggesting projects which were favored by local private school educators, and merely being asked to provide a written endorsement of a project proposal which had been unilaterally developed by the

LEA.

The field survey coordinators reported in almost all of the LEA's studied that contact between officials of the two school systems was almost nonexistent prior to title I. Typically it was a case of each sector going its own way, with no interest in cooperation, but generally with respect for each other's educational programs. LEA officials appeared to have some knowledge of the problems facing the Catholic schools in the community: limited financial support, large class sizes, noncertified teachers, lack of ancillary services, and restricted curriculum offerings. The advent of title I has had the effect of bringing administrators of the two systems into some kind of contact. In most cases they have had personal contact, discussed title I involvement, and come to some understanding of each other's positions.

The most frequent dissatisfaction expressed by non-public-school officials pertained to what they saw as substantial differences between the thrust of projects as they were approved and implemented and the character of the projects which had been discussed and presumably agreed upon in preliminary meetings with LEA personnel. In one community, for example, a proposal for a remedial reading project, which

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had been jointly planned and would be available to non-public-school children, was scrapped by the LEA and a proposal involving the purchase of mobile equipment was substituted, and later approved by the SEA.

While many LEA's provided opportunities for some degree of involvement in discussing plans for projects by the representatives of private schools, in no instance were they involved in the preparation of the project evaluation reports. In a small number of cases a copy of the completed evaluation was sent to the non-public-school contact. But in most of the LEA's not even this courtesy was extended. Some non-public-school administrators appeared to be unaware of the requirement of the evaluation aspect of the project. A general impression created by the reports of the field survey coordinators is that, while LEA personnel were better informed about the guidelines and rules and regulations pertaining to title I than their counterparts from the private sector, both were hampered during fiscal year 1966 by substantial ignorance of precisely what arrangements could and could not be supported legally. Misunderstandings on both sides gave rise to animosities and antagonisms in a small number of cases. However, the church-state issue did not appear to be a factor of any great significance in the relationships between public and private school administrators.

2. Extent of involvement (LEA)

The percentage of the total participants in title I projects who were children in nonpublic schools ranged-for the 10 large LEA'sfrom 23.5 percent to 1.78 percent. For the medium size LEA's the highest percentage of non-public-school participants was 20.71, and two of the LEA's had no private-school children in the projects. The data for the small LEA's extend from a high of 41.94 percent to 0 percent. The median percentages for the three categories are 6.50 percent for large LEA's, 2.67 percent for medium LEA's, and 13.39 percent for small LEA's. The identification of the factors which have produced these striking differences between the three classes of LEA's is not possible in the present study, but this is an aspect of title I implementation which should be examined intensively in an investigation carried out during the second phase of this project. It should be recalled that the data in table 64 indicated the existence of a significant positive relationship, in small LEA's, between the percent of non-public-school participants and the ratio of the total number of eligible children to the total number of participants. The mean eligible: participant ratios for large, medium, and small LEA's were 1: 1.54, 1:1.70, and 1: 1.32, which rank the three types of LEA's in exactly the reverse order of their ranks for percentage of nonpublic-school participants. LEA's in which the number of eligible children approximates the number of participants tend to have a higher percentage of private-school children in title I projects than do LEA's in which participants substantially outnumber the count of eligible children.

The most important factor which acted to hold down the enrollment of private-school children in title I projects was the scheduling of the activities at times and places which made it difficult, if not impossible, for eligible children from these schools to be present. In communities where academic year projects were housed exclusively in

public schools, where all activities were carried out during regular school hours, where private schools were located at a considerable distance from the project location, and where free busing was not available to children in nonpublic schools, a most effective barrier to participation was clearly present. LEA projects which provided services on private-school premises, or which were conducted after school hours, on Saturdays, or during the summer provided a more realistic opportunity for private-school children to share in the project benefits. As a general rule the greater possibility of participation was matched by the larger numbers of non-public-school students listed as participating in evaluation reports.

A factor which served to bring substantially noncomparable benefits to eligible private-school children was the appreciable number of projects in which funds were used exclusively to hire additional publicschool teachers in order to reduce teacher-pupil ratios, to conduct inservice training programs for teachers (with private-school teachers ruled ineligible for participation), to improve the administrative services within a public-school system, to purchase special equipment which in some cases was never or only infrequently made available for use by teachers in private schools, and to employ teacher aides who were assigned only to public-school classrooms. While this aspect of title I projects will be examined in greater detail in the following section of this chapter, it is appropriate at this point to indicate that in large LEA's projects falling in this category accounted for 41.5 percent of the title I supported activities during fiscal year 1966, for 31.4 percent of the funded projects in medium LEA's, and 17.2 percent in small LEA's.

The foregoing figures suggest the question: Was the focus of title I projects during fiscal year 1966 determined by a study of the educational needs of eligible children in both public and private schools, or by the perceptions of LEA administrators of those facets of the local public school where they, rather than all eligible children, could gain from title I?

The centrality of the LEA, as intended by the legislation, is apparent in the cases included in this survey. Not only were many projects of such a nature as to have no significant impact on children attending private schools, but also a prevalent mode of operation consisted of focusing project activities on the needs of public-school children and then assuming that the program would be equally geared to the needs of educationally and economically deprived children in private schools. The dominant approach of LEA officials appears to have been to design projects which met their perception of the needs of the public education sector, and to then attempt to accommodate private-school students who had corresponding needs. While legally defensible, a problem with this approach was that available space on public-school grounds was so limited that quotas for non-public-school students were established by some LEA's. In such circumstances it seems clear that the requirement of substantial comparability of benefits provided for eligible children in both school systems was not met.

Independently of the percentage of title I participants who came from private schools, an important weakness evident in practically all LEA's is the failure to provide officials of the private schools from which the children came with data pertaining to their experiences and

progress. This is indicative of the fact that the viewpoint of shared responsibility and of cooperative effort in eliminating the status of educational deprivation for private-school pupils has not characteristically been accepted or internalized by LEA officials.

While it is not possible in the present study to estimate the number of eligible children who may be victimized by it, an aspect of title I implementation which appears to warrant more careful consideration by LEA officials is the plight of private-school students who reside in a target area but whose school happens to be located beyond the bounds of the defined target area. The problem here is that eligible children attending private schools not located in a target area are being denied the help they need and would presumably receive if the school of their choice had happened to be located within the limits of the area used to establish eligibility for title I funds. The USOE guidelines for title I state:

If there are educationally deprived children who reside in the applicant's district but attend a private school located in the district of another local educational agency and if there is no practicable way for the applicant to provide opportunities for their participation in the project, the applicant may wish to consider entering into a cooperative agreement with the other local educational agency. Under such a cooperative agreement, the local educational agencies could jointly provide educational opportunities geared to the needs of the educationally deprived children in both districts who are enrolled in that private school.

In none of the communities included in this survey was there evidence of any attempt at cooperative agreements among LEA's in order to provide title I benefits for eligible children who attend private schools outside the boundary of the LEA in which the child resides.

In summary, the extent of the participation of eligible privateschool children in the benefits of title I programs in a particular LEA is a function of three factors: (1) State constitutional provisions affecting such matters as free busing of private-school children and the rulings of attorneys general on points where ESEA authorized activities may conflict with the intent of the State constitution or with decisions of State courts; (2) the readiness of private-school officials to insist on benefits for their students comparable to those provided for public-school participants; and (3) the philosophy of the LEA as reflected in the preparation of project applications with varying degrees of feasibility of participation and varying levels of emphasis on children's needs-both considered from the point of view of the eligible child in a private school. The evidence for fiscal year 1966 from 30 LEA's reveals glaring differences with respect to each factor and leads to the conclusion that the achievement of the goal of comparable title I benefits for all eligible children in a State, regardless of the type of school they attend, will require greater devotion to that concept and more ingenious methods of implementation than were prevalent during the first year of ESEA.

3. Character of projects, fiscal year 1966

Table 65 presents a summary of the general thrust of 146 title I projects which were sponsored by the 30 LEA's in this study during fiscal year 1966. In order to facilitate the comparison of project emphasis, data are presented separately for the three categories of LEA size, and for the total sample of 30 cases.

As shown in the table, the highest percentage of title I projects approved for large LEA's was for activities related to reading. These were almost exclusively remedial in character and pertained to children at the elemenetary-school level. Programs of this type were also the most frequent projects for medium and small LEA's.

TABLE 65.-FREQUENCY AND PERCENT OF PROJECT TYPES FOR LARGE, MEDIUM, AND SMALL LEA'S

It is of interest to note that for small LEA's programs designed to improve reading skills were proportionately more than three times as common as in large LEA's.

In the large LEA's the two next most common types of title I projects involved the purchase of mobile equipment (12.2 percent of approved applications), and in-service training programs for publicschool teachers (also 12.2 percent). As has been cited earlier, the benefit from such projects accruing to private school children is almost nil. For medium LEA's projects in the field of special education ranked second (13.5 percent), and applications for the purchase of equipment, for the hiring of additional public school teachers, and for improving guidance and counseling services each accounted for an additional 11.4 percent of approved projects.

In the small LEA's the rank order of activities specified in approved project applications, after the modal emphasis on reading programs, was: Improvement of performance in academic subjects other than reading, 13.8 percent; special education, 10.3 percent; and health services, 10.3 percent. The focus of projects in small LEA's appears to be more directly and immediately oriented to student benefit than in the large and medium LEA's.

D. Conclusion

The study of the 30 cases presented in this report reveals a wide range of differences in almost every aspect that has been considered. It is clear that operations in fiscal year 1966 were hampered by the short period of time which LEA's had at their disposal in planning projects. It is evident that complex and sensitive legal issues had to be resolved before projects could become operational in many States. Neither public nor private school officials were adequately prepared