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or recruit staff under Part B-2 of the Education Professions Development Act. Programs under the Vocational Education Act or an Adult Education program may complicate the picture still further.

In theory these laws offer the potential for significant support of the local superintendent's program. Unfortunately, however, each categorical program requires a separate application, often to separate divisions of the State educational agency. Some programs require matching funds; others do not. Some only require an acceptable project proposal; others fund projects on a highly competitive basis. And each categorical program has its own complicated set of regulations, guidelines, and reporting requirements.

These requirements make it difficult for even the most affluent and best-staffed school district to put together a coherent package of Federal assistance. For smaller, poorer systems, the task is simply impossible. Just keeping informed of the array of programs available and how, when and where to apply for them has become a nearly impossible undertaking for any local school superintendent, unless he can afford professional assistance. The demands of grantsmanship often tend to benefit the wealthier school districts and States by creating a regressive situation in which needy districts less readily apply for or receive aid. All districts are affected by the uncertainty, multiplied by the number of different grant applications each has filed, as to whether they will receive the funds requested. All are affected by having to rely for funding of individual grants on the level of appropriations for various particular categorical programs.

Problems with the categorical approach to Federal aid are also increasingly apparent at the State level, where the paperwork required is staggering. A typical State plan for a single formula grant program is dozens of pages

long and takes thousands of man-hours to prepare. States often establish separate units to do this work for programs and projects that are federally funded, because of requirements for individual auditing and reporting. These units and their personnel are counterparts--reproductions on a smaller scale--of the units that administer the programs in the Office of Education. State education officials frequently work more closely with various units of OE than with their own agencies, often managing their Federal funds in isolation from State resources available for the same purposes, and isolated, too, from other federally-assisted State programs. Obviously this fragmentation severely diminishes the possibility of comprehensive, coordinated educational planning at the State level; to the contrary, it insures that what is developed is not a plan which can be meaningful to the State.

Some of the other problems resulting from the proliferation of categorical programs may seem ludicrous, but they are very real to State and local officials. An employee of a State department of education may receive several small checks each payday, because his time is apportioned among different federally-funded programs. The monitoring procedures necessary to assure that personnel and equipment charged to one program are not used for other purposes may also have riduculous results. A secretary working for one program does not use a typewriter purchased for another;

a bookkeeping machine purchased with categorical funds may remain idle while non-Federal units of the same office are using hand ledgers. These results may not be legally required but the categorical mentality all too often produces them.

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At both the State and local levels, the paperwork involved in project grant applications sometimes results in administrative costs that may almost match the amount of the eventual grant--if, indeed, one is received

at all.

3. Federal Level Problems Under Categorical Programs

The present proliferation of categorical programs produces a correspondingly wasteful impact on the Office of Education itself. The paperwork generated at the State and local levels flows into the Office of Education, where several hundred men and women are assigned to reviewing reports, records, and plans--an expenditure of man-hours which, for a number of reasons, is largely wasted. First, most of this work is essentially sterile--a matter of checking to see that all is in order. The laws insist upon this bureaucratic process, although it adds nothing to the content of the paper--much less to the benefit of the students, teachers and administrators the program is intended to aid. The process serves only to move the application from desk to desk and to contribute to a cumulative delay in processing. Second, the information contained in these documents is often of little actual

value. Instead of supplying data which can be used to evaluate and improve a State's performance, it too frequently amounts to no more than a pedestrian collection of routine program descriptions, assurances that Federal requirements are being met, and voluminous statistics of doubtful worth. Third, the time required to shuffle these documents reduces the amount of time and manpower which the Office of Education might otherwise devote to worthwhile technical assistance to States and local educational agencies--just as the time spent

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preparing them reduces the capacity of State officials to contribute to State-wide planning efforts or to work productively with local school

authorities to improve educational programs.

4. Other Consequences of Categorical Programs

It is remarkable that, despite these handicaps, most of the existing categorical programs have had some notable successes in achieving their original purpose, the stimulation of new efforts to meet special educational needs. And I believe that there will always be a need for some categorical programs to meet emerging new areas of need which require special stimulation. However, categorical programs simply cannot be permitted to grow indefinitely.

Once special needs have been recognized at the State and local level and efforts to meet them are underway, it makes little sense for either the Congress or the Office of Education to continue to sit as a national school board, telling States and communities in great detail what they should spend and how. Such programs should be replaced by broader forms of Federal aid. Once areas of particular national interest have been identified and broad objectives established in the law, the States and localities should be encouraged to find their own means of achieving the stated national objectives. They should not be circumscribed by detailed guidelines and regulations

which assume that Washington knows best how to deal with problems which differ in degree and intensity from State to State, from district to district, and even from school to school.

If categorical Federal aid continues to proliferate, it will become more and more difficult for the fifty States to plan and operate effective programs tailored to their own educational needs and problems. There is

no doubt that the States need Federal help. There is no doubt that the States must work together to achieve certain broad national educational objectives. But there is increasing evidence that the present structure of Federal aid cannot provide the kind of assistance that the States can use most profitably. The distortion of State educational priorities and the shortchanging of other promising programs in order to qualify for the available Federal funds, particularly in the case of those programs which require matching funds, is another very major problem that exists under the current maze of Federal categorical programs.

How Education Revenue Sharing Would Work

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In order to provide better delivery of funds, the Education Revenue Sharing bill would replace 33 existing Federal formula grant programs in the elementary and secondary field with a single program which would automatically distribute funds to the States by formula. The funds would be used for five broad areas of national concern: education of the disadvantaged, education of the handicapped, vocational education, assistance for schools in federally-affected areas, and supporting educational materials and services.

In the case of the disadvantaged and of pupils whose parents live and work on Federal property, funds would pass through directly to the local educational agencies as a matter of right. The rest of the money would go to the States for distribution in accordance with a State Master Plan.

The Education Revenue Sharing bill would allow a State flexibility and responsiveness in the use of the Federal funds within its borders. Up to 30 percent of the funds for vocational education, education for the