directly to the local school district; (3) that full comparability on basic expenditures among schools in a local district must be achieved as a precondition to the receipt of any of these funds; and (4) that the definition of "low-income family" will be sufficiently responsive to local conditions to assure that funds flow to districts most in need of them. The State would be permitted to transfer up to 30 percent of the funds available for any one purpose to any other purpose, except that, as noted earlier, the bill would prohibit the transfer of funds allocated for the disadvantaged.

Additional transfers above the 30-percent limit would be permitted if the State demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Secretary that such action would more effectively achieve the purposes of the act. The chief executive officer of each State which desired to participate under the act would be required to designate a State agency to administer the program. The chief executive officer would also be required to appoint a State advisory council broadly representative of the education community in the State and of the public, including representatives of public and nonprofit private schools; representatives of the populations in the State affected by activities under the act; persons with special competence in the planning, evaluation, and assessment of education programs; and persons with special competence in the education of the disadvantaged, the handicapped, and vocational education.

The designated agency would, for each fiscal year, develop and publish a plan for the distribution and expenditure of funds under the act. The plan would be developed in consultation with the State advisory council, would not be adopted finally until a reasonable opportunity had been given to interested persons for comment.

From the sums appropriated under the act, the Secretary could reserve up to 10 percent for making payments to any State to assist it in carrying out activities under the act which are designed to further achievement of national policy objectives in education.

The bill also provides that, except where prohibited by State law, the equitable participation of children enrolled in nonpublic elementary and secondary schools would be provided in the disadvantaged, handicapped, vocational, and support services areas.

Where existing State law prevents the participation of nonpublic school children the Secretary shall arrange for those children to receive similar services and shall pay for the services from the State's allotment.

Of course, title to and control of funds received and of equipment purchased under this act will remain with the State or local education agency.

In the civil rights area, the bill provides that revenues shared with States and local districts under this act shall be considered as Federal financial assistance within the meaning of title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Finally, the act authorizes the appropriation of such sums as may be necessary to enable the Secretary to make payments to States to assist them in planning for the transition from the existing system of categorical grants repealed by this act to the new system of revenue sharing for education.

REACTION TO PROPOSAL

Quite gratifyingly to me, our revenue-sharing bill has received considerable favorable attention within the education community. Although some individuals and organizations have criticized various specifics in our proposal, the majority of those concerned-including our critics have long endorsed the concepts of grant consolidation and program simplification embodied in this legislation. We are also encouraged by the response to our emphasis on the shift of greater decisionmaking responsibility to the State and local levels.

Criticisms of the bill have so far clustered around three points: the adequacy of the level of funding, particularly as compared with socalled "full-funding" of existing categorical programs; the capacity of the States to administer the revenues shared; and the adequacy of the civil rights safeguards in the bill.

As to the level of funding, some critics have argued that "there isn't enough money in education revenue sharing." To me this indicates a misunderstanding of our proposal. It is not intended to be a general aid to education bill, and indeed, I might interpolate that a general aid to education bill would not be a substitute for this bill.

The bill specifies no authorization ceiling, only "such sums as may be necessary." As is normally the case with authorizing legislation, the level of funding available under this act will be a function of the annual appropriations process.

The President's budget for 1972 contained only an illustrative breakdown of the amounts that would otherwise be allocated to the 33 existing formula grant programs consolidated by the education revenuesharing proposal. What we attempted to do was to show how the amounts of money presently budgeted under existing authorities would be reallocated to the five broad national purpose areas. An additional $200 million was added so that we could insure that no State would receive less than it did in fiscal year 1971.

Misunderstanding of this funding level question, since the bill authorizes no specific amount, obscures the real merits and the real aims of this proposal.

Related to this is the reaction that "present programs would be more effective if they were fully funded; then there would be no need for educational revenue sharing." At first glance this argument appears to have some appeal, but its appeal rests on a continuation of the present proliferated and unwieldly grant-in-aid structure.

It ignores the obvious complexities and difficulties which Federal categorical programs already pose for school administrators. In fact, full funding of the present programs would not eliminate the need for education revenue sharing: it would become even more urgent than it already is if we are to reduce the burdens brought about to elementary and secondary education systems from strangulation by Federal redtape.

Another reaction to our proposal is the question: "Are the States capable of spending the shared funds responsibly?" This is an odd question on the face of it since States and local school districts are currently spending 93 percent of all funds expended for public elementary and secondary education. It seems anomalous to argue that

they are somehow unfit to manage the 7 percent contributed by the Federal Government.

If we acknowledge that some States will spend the money more wisely than others, we must also ask how any States can be expected to be fully responsible, as long as Federal programs deny them full responsibility. I would make this point even more strongly: unless we establish the conditions under which States and localities accept responsibility, we will never consider them capable of the tasks at hand. If we do not make it absolutely explicit that State and local failures cannot be blamed on the National Government and that incompetence cannot be tied by a long string of excuses to Washington, then local and State agencies will never be held accountable for their actions.

This Nation has operated too long under the self-fulfilling prophecy that State and local governments are too weak to carry public burdens; to make sure the prophecy came true, State and local governments have been continually weakened. It is time for a different prophecy.

As I have noted above, we have provided in section 13 that the nondiscrimination provisions of title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will apply to programs and activities receiving funds under the bill. We believe that this is adequate and would provide full protection.

Some criticism has been made that shared revenues would be intermingled with State and local funds so that the civil rights guarantees will not be enforceable. This is untrue: funds under this bill would be no less traceable for civil rights purposes than they are under existing categorical programs, which of course now fund virtually the same grantee agencies as would be funded under the bill.

Moreover, in order to make this absolutely clear, section 18 requires strict accounting to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare by the States for the use of the shared funds, including full reporting and disclosure to the Secretary.

Just as at present, the Federal Government will have full power to enforce the civil rights guarantees that must go along with the funds collected from all Federal taxpayers. As the President stated in his state of the Union message in describing this aspect of all his revenue-sharing proposals:

Neither the President nor the Congress nor the conscience of the nation can permit money which comes from all the people to be used in a way which discriminates against some of the people.

In concluding, Mr. Chairman, let me reemphasize, particularly as one who played a role in the development and implementation of the National Defense Education Act, what I have said earlier: categorical programs in education, as elsewhere, have served a useful purpose. As a process of conditioning the public to the need for Federal support of education, it was most appropriate to pick out the particular areas of greatest need and to concentrate specific Federal programs on them. We have, however, now reached a position in history where the Federal funds devoted to education are substantial, where the Nation accepts this as necessary, and where it is necessary and appropriate to broaden the authority given the States and localities. There can always be too much of a good thing, and I believe that is what has happened with categorical programs. Through the education revenuesharing bill we propose to redress the balance and to provide an

appropriate needed in the 1970's and beyond, rather than continue an approach appropriate only to the 1950's and 1960's.

That is the essence of the new American revolution which the President called for in his state of the Union message last January: "A peaceful revolution in which power (is) turned back to the people-in which government at all levels (is) refreshed and renewed, and made truly responsive."

We look forward, Mr. Chairman, to working with the committee in its consideration of an important first step in achieving this basic national goal.

Senator PELL. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. I think Commissioner Marland has a short statement, too.

Mr. MARLAND. I do have a short statement, Senator Pell. Can I be heard comfortably from here, if I speak up, without the microphone? Senator PELL. Yes.

Mr. MARLAND. I would like to demonstrate to the committee some of the illustrative facts upon which the Secretary has been dwelling as he describes the inordinate amount of paper shuffling needed to carry out the intent of these laws and authorities.

Here are only three State plans from the State of Rhode Island, as we picked by happenstance.

Senator PELL. Thank you. [Laughter.]

Mr. MARLAND Another State, the State of New York, one vocational education, one title II of ESST, and one NDEA, title III.

Here are the materials in the office of education simply to generate these products and respond to them. You multiply these by 33 different programs.

Senator SCHWEIKER. You mean 33 different categorical programs that you folks operate?

Mr. MARLAND. Precisely. And each requiring a State plan, such as those from New York and Rhode Island.

Here you have title III, a simple straightforward piece of legislation auhtorizing local and State institutions to carry out reform in education. Each State develops an elaborate plan, scrutinized, justified, rationalized, studied, regurgitated and returned back and forth in correspondence between the field and the Office of Education, tying up literally thousands of man-days in so doing.

This is the amount of material just in the Office of Education, each separate one of these for each State. Multiply this whole pile by 33 and you have an idea of the volume of material necessary to carry out the intentions of these proliferated laws which in their time we applauded and supported.

As a practicing school administrator, Mr. Chairman, I have been aware of the condition underlying the need for revenue sharing in education for a long time. Upon my joining the Office of Education, it became even more clear that we had reached the point in the increasing Federal role in elementary and secondary education in this Nation where major reform in grant management was necessary.

I would say we referred to this concept as a process; this is a new design for the delivery of the will of Congress. It is not a money bill. It has been widely misunderstood as having a principal shortcoming in that it failed to increase money. This bill simplifies whatever money Congress chooses to appropriate in behalf of these many programs. It is not a money bill. It is a process bill.

As the Secretary has so forcefully emphasized, the categorical elementary and secondary education laws and programs have proliferated to the point where especially at the local and State level thousands of man-days are required simply to manage the paperwork.

In the main, these laws in their time were right and good. Many remain so today, supporting essential Federal priorities in the elementary and secondary schools. In education revenue sharing, it is intended that we sustain the purposes and priorities implicit in the original legislation of the 33 programs, built upon law, but at the same time we greatly simplify the delivery system.

It is our belief that Congress meant to make these funds available quickly and in uncluttered fashion to the eligible local education agencies and to the teachers. I know that I speak for virtually all school superintendents in the United States when I say that we sometimes wonder whether the game is worth the candle and whether the multiplicity of Federal regulations, guidelines, reports, forms, correspondence, State plans, local plans, overlapping evaluations, et cetera, is justified in terms of the funds received.

Of course, there is no doubt that the funds are desperately needed. However, many hundreds, if not thousands, of creative and talented people, both in the Office of Education and in the State and local systems, could be freed from unnecessary paperwork.

Under this proposed law they would be able to turn their talents to the real teaching and learning opportunities within their profession. We believe that, at least in part, special revenue sharing concepts originated in the office of education and became a part of the administration's legislative program in a wider context affecting many other agencies. It is not something that was imposed upon us. I can speak with enthusiasm for the appropriateness of education revenue sharing at this time, as a practicing school administrator.

I can assure you that this bill preserves the priorities implicit in the laws which it brings together. And I can assure you that administratively those priorities can be sustained at the local level in a simple and straightforward delivery system which my office will manage. I can further assure you that it will be a great boon to the thousands of professional people throughout the land who are charged with the stewardship of public funds and who want very much to see this bill enacted. They have so resolved.

Finally and most importantly, I can assure you that they possess, in the field, in the States and local districts, the competence and integrity to administer this law as Congress intends it and in so doing greatly to increase their efficiency.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator PELL. Thank you very much, Dr. Marland. I think we all share a desire to see a reduction in paperwork. I was talking with a teacher in my own State last week, who told me that for a mini grant of about $800, she had to put in an inordinate amount of time.

The objective, we share. The question is how we do it. I remember the arbitrary way Admiral King accomplished that goal during World War II, he set a requirement that there be no more than two typewriters in each destroyer, and that lowered the paperwork. I am not sure you could use that approach. Nor would I wish to see that occur, a simple cutback of staff does not achieve economy or quality in HEW. The question of revenue sharing has been discussed between the