mittee of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. It has also examined the evaluation made by the Middle States Committee and the correspondence in 1962 between the college and the National Council for Accreditation of Teachers Education, which culminated in NCATE's withdrawal of accreditation.

The Committee has been forced to the conclusion that the needs of the District for teacher training cannot be satisfied by the D.C. Teachers College. The case is clear on more than one count: the restricted outlook, scope and resources of the institution; the gross inadequacy of its physical facilities; and its demonstrated inability to command the support by which it might have remedied its cumulative weaknesses. These points are discussed in order.

(a) Informed persons who have studied teacher education tend to agree that it goes forward best in strong multipurpose institutions where those preparing to teach are in association and competition with those preparing for other professions and where they encounter able minds in the sciences, the humanities and other scholarly fields both among the faculty and among the students. The Committee concurs in this view. Applying its standard to the institution that now exists in the District exclusively to prepare teachers, it finds that institution inadequate. The business of preparing young people for careers in teaching or counseling in our public schools in now recognized as having outgrown such a single-purpose institution. Only the college or university committed to the liberal arts and sciences can provide the rich and exciting environment needed by the prospective teacher. Professional training is most effectively done by concentration in the fifth year after a full exposure of 4 years of liberal education.

During the 1930's, the old normal school was supplanted in concept and form by the 4-year teachers college. So, in turn, the teachers college has grown obsolete as a still more generous concept and form for teacher education has been developed. Today nearly all the former teachers colleges have not only dropped the term "teachers" from their names, but have expanded their outlook and scope to become general institutions of liberal arts and sciences. That the D.C. Teachers College has long sought authorization to join this almost universal movement is to its credit; the fact that it

has failed, largely for reasons beyond its control, has left it unable to fulfill properly even the narrowly specialized function to which it is limited.

(b) As far back as 1949, when the District's segregated school system provided two teachers colleges-Wilson and Minor-in separate buildings, a study by the Strayer Committee led to the following comment in its official report:

If the District is to provide its youth with teacher education opportunities comparable to those furnished by the public institutions of the 14 States that have populations smaller than that of the District, it will be necessary to expend at least $10 million upon new plant facilities and to contemplate increasing current operating costs by 300 or 400 percent.

In 1955 the two colleges became one institution-D.C. Teachers College-but the physical plant continues to be the same two buildings, a mile apart. Virtually nothing in the way of capital improvements has been done. The third floors of both buildings have been condemned because of fire hazards, and hence are unusable. Neither has a campus, and both are located in crowded neighborhoods that make expansion virtually impossible. Although the Middle States Association in 1961 commended the college "for the excellent progress which it has made in all aspects of the library since 1958," the library is overcrowded; the Middle States evaluation report concluded that "immediate plans for expansion in the present building are necessary.

The same evaluation report noted that "although the science laboratories have been tremendously improved through the purchase of new equipment, the laboratories themselves are small and equipped with outmoded furniture." Research facilities for faculty and advanced students are lacking; laboratory facilities for language work are grossly deficient; and studio facilities for art work are scarcely better. Quoting once more from the Middle States Report:

The physical education and recreation facilities are extremely poor. There are no athletic fields, swimming facilities, handball courts, squash courts, or special rooms for corrective exercises, modern dance, bowling, etc. In addition there are no out

door recreation areas except three tennis courts, and the gymnasia are undersize and obviously built in another era. With such facilities it is doubtful that the college should have a physical education major. In fairness it should be said that the Report acknowledged that "on the basis of performance," as a result of imaginative planning of the faculty, "the physical education program is one of the strengths of the college." This may prove that bricks can be made for a time without straw; in the long run, however, there simply must be straw if there are to be bricks of consistently high quality.

(c) Many American communities have found it difficult to obtain the funds required to meet the insistent demands for improving and expanding their educational facilities. The District has been no exception; indeed, its dependence for appropriations upon the Congress rather than upon its own local authorities has made its task more complex. Attempts to secure adequate financing of its single public institution of higher education are further complicated by the fact that the same body that bears the responsibility for the elementary and secondary public schools has been obliged to carry the responsibility for the D.C. Teachers College as well. It is scarcely surprising to find, in these circumstances, that the Board of Education has felt obliged to give priority to school needs that simply could not be deferred. The inevitable effect on the physical plant of the college has been noted in some detail, but its efforts to strengthen itself have been frustrated in other ways as well. The final result is a fatal impairment of its standing.

The formal qualifications of the present faculty of the college are still impressive: Of the 55 members of the faculty and administrative officers listed in the most recent catalog, 28 (including all those with the rank of full professor or associate professor) hold a doctor's degree, and all the rest master's degrees. Nonetheless, the multiple problems of the college make the task of filling vacancies in the staff as they occur a grave one; a deterioration in caliber of personnel is inevitable.

The student body, despite heroic efforts by the college to raise admissions standards and maintain a high level of academic work, cannot be called first-rate. The Middle States Association noted that the 1959 freshman class "scored

significantly below the national median on the Iowa English Placement Test." In 1962, entrance requirements were raised sharply. As a result, according to estimates of the school authorities, at least 100 formerly acceptable students were denied admission, and the full-time enrollment of freshmen dropped from 274 in 1962 to 159 in 1963, a drop of 42 percent in a single year. The college simply does not appeal to the ablest students from the District schools or elsewhere (only 3 of the 613 students enrolled full time in the fall of 1963 were nonresidents of the District). Indeed, between 1958 and 1963, at a time when the need for teachers was increasing both nationally and within the District, the number of graduates from the college declined from 123 to 69-a decrease of 44 percent.

All this was reflected in the announcement in 1962 by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education that it was withdrawing accreditation from the college because "the prospects of improving the facilities, maintaining a competent faculty and attracting an able student body were not good enough to justify [its continuation].”

It goes without saying that it would be unthinkable to eliminate the D.C. Teachers College without substituting an institution having resources more adequate to the responsibilities entailed. Not only is it the one publicly supported college available to District residents, but it is also a major resource of the District's public schools. About 75 percent of the graduates of the college enter teaching—about 85 percent of them in the District. As of a year ago, one-third of the entire public school teaching staff-1,673 teachers were graduates of D.C. Teachers College or its predecessors. Over the years, it has also been a major, though inadequate, resource for inservice training and professional courses for the public school teachers.

Second. The other need to which the recommendation of the Committee is responsive is not simply the obvious disadvantage suffered by District residents in comparison with those of the 50 States, to all of whom publicly supported colleges or universities are available. This disadvantage, of course, affects every District high school graduate. But, more significantly, the Committee's analysis indicates that there are a substantial number of students who graduate from high schools in the District for whom the effect of this

discrimination is not just a higher price for further education, but a complete deprivation and denial of opportunity. These are the high school graduates who are demonstrably able to profit by a general college education, but who cannot do so because of its cost. The achievements of these students are comparable to those of students who can and do go on to a 4-year college, either in one of the local universities or elsewhere.

That there are many such students is certain; just how many is discussed later in this report. They particularly deserve an opportunity for a post-high school education equal to that available to their fellow high school students throughout the United States.

2. The Nature and Purposes of the College of Arts and Sciences

The college of liberal arts and sciences which the Committee recommends should therefore be designed to meet the needs of District students for liberal education, while emphasizing also preparation for classroom teaching and training of special educational personnel, including counselors for the elementary and secondary schools and for the community college. It should grant both baccalaureate and master's degrees in academic and teaching fields, particularly since only the master's degree will qualify a graduate for permanent appointment in the District's secondary schools.

It will be important, however, that the college of arts and sciences recognize its responsibility to provide entirely new opportunities for higher education for young people of the District who do not aspire to a teaching career. In this area, the Committee believes that the college of arts and sciences should concentrate its attention at the outset on offering a strong core of basic liberal studies: in the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics); in the social studies; in the humanities; and in the graphic and performing arts. In time, however, as needs of the community may be demonstrated, it should be prepared to consider more specialized undergraduate work. In the Committee's view it is preferable, for the present at least, to meet the needs of District students for study in these specialized fields in a manner that puts less of a burden on the college during its early years.