Chairman PERKINS. Do you wish to summarize that statement? Mr. HARRIS. Yes, I do, very quickly. The summary I would make would be this. The inclusion of title I funds has allowed us the flexibility to do some kinds of creative things that we could not otherwise have done. We have been able to work with youngsters in our setting. I think the crux of the importance of title I is that this country, through its national leadership in development of title I, has said it is important that we provide special assistance to low-income youngsters, they should get special help.

This Nation recognizes that students from disadvantaged families need the assistance to be able to compete.

I think that I would speak to title I, part C, pointing out in our statement that we have worked with our parents' advisory committees and teachers. It has given us flexibility to say, "Here is something that you can help develop.'

I would reiterate the pressure we are getting from our outlying parents that we spend our money on a student-by-student basis. The title I fund has given us this ability to concentrate where it is needed.

I would also plead for consideration of part C of Public Law 874. We have data in the testimony showing the tremendous amount of input necessary to work with the students from the public housing projects.

So I guess I would summarize by saying that one of the things that title I has done is to provide some real local leadership. The title I parents are not going to get on the boards of any major city in the

country-they don't have the political power, they don't have the financial resources to be part of the school boards of our Nation that really make decisions. The title I advisory parents do have access and control and a voice, and a real one, in saying how some money is spent on their youngsters.

Chairman PERKINS. Let me thank all of you distinguished gentlemen for making statements that to my way of thinking, are very beneficial to the committee.

It would serve no useful purpose for me to spend a long time interrogating each one of you gentlemen, but I think we will abide by the 5-minute rule on the first go-around, and then we will give the members all the time that they want.

Dr. Gittings, if I understood you correctly, you stated that there was concrete data that title I was achieving results as measured by test scores, and you also said that children are starting to change their attitude about themselves and about society.

Now my question is simply this: Do you believe that we might imperil the gains that you have spoken about by changing all the rules under the so-called special revenue-sharing plan? Just answer that in a simple way.

Mr. GITTINGS. I certainly do believe.

Chairman PERKINS. Why, briefly.

Mr. GITTINGS. I believe so because, as the other gentlemen have intimated, there is no guarantee and there is a strong probability that if we change to special revenue-sharing the funds will no longer be concentrated on the youngsters who most need them because of their history of deprivation. If we can't continue what now seems to be going well, I think we just do imperil the gains that we have already made. Chairman PERKINS. All right.

Dr. Lehne, you stated that it was important to spend funds during the early years.

Dr. LEHNE. Yes.

Chairman PERKINS. When does your program start to work with these children? Just tell us.

Dr. LEHNE. We now have what we call 11 "child-parent centers," where we are starting at the age of three involving the child. The mother must make a commitment to also share part of her time in the school.

When we start the child at three and work with him, keeping him in small groups of perhaps 15, we have found really that the gains we have made cause that child to be far ahead of his counterparts in the inner city and cause him to be at the national level.

Chairman PERKINS. How many regional centers did you state that you had in Chicago?

Dr. LEHNE. We said we had 11.

Chairman PERKINS. And you have the parents to bring those children in at 3?

Dr. LEHNE. Yes, that is correct.

Chairman PERKINS. And you have, under title I, paid supervisors and instructors and child welfare and child psychologists and so forth?

Dr. LEHNE. Yes, and we put a home economist in the school to work with the parents in terms of nutrition, in terms of working with the child and understanding child needs and development.

In other words, what we are doing is help make a teacher out of the parent. We find it works well and we try to keep the boy or girl in the school until the third grade, and by that time he is pretty well along.

Chairman PERKINS. Are the parents doing a great part of this?

Dr. LEHNE. Yes. We get the parent out of the home, particularly the mother. She shares her ideas with other parents and it is very good.

Chairman PERKINS. Now you also said that parents must also be involved in the schools. Do you believe that the requirement for parental involvement in title I has been successful, and what suggestions for improvements do you have?

Dr. LEHNE. In response to the first part of your question, it is successful. I do not at this time have any ideas for greater improvement. I think if the funds were adequate to expand the programs in all the communities that need them and deserve them, then the necessities will reach a greater portion of the urban part.

Chairman PERKINS. Mr. Quie.

Mr. QUIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me ask you about one thing, Mr. Gittings, you said in answer to the Chairman on special revenue sharing for education. It seemed to me you are talking about something different from the bill of last year. Your answer indicated there would not be any concentration of the funds in special revenue sharing for education, but last year's bill had the five categories. All it did was consolidate some of the existing programs in those five categories.

Would you elaborate further what you meant by that?

Mr. GITTINGS. I think if I understand the bill to which you refer correctly, No. 1, it is a complete change from what we are presently doing in ESEA; is it not?

Mr. QUIE. NO.

Mr. GITTINGS. It is not?

Mr. QUIE. Not that I know of. Using entitlement formula and title I money would have gone for compensatory education only, and it seems to me that what I recall they were going to use the title I guidelines.

Mr. GITTINGS. If it is going to use the title I guidelines and we are still going to be able to concentrate on the children on whom we are presently concentrating, fine. My contention is if we are changing the rules of the game and making it possible to use this money differently, we are making a mistake, based on the simple fact that we now know how to use this money.

As I said in my prepared statement, youngsters are making progress, the teachers and the administrators are comfortable with the procedure, the parents have become thoroughly involved. If we are going to change the rules of the game now and do something else, I think we throw ourselves back rather than keep moving forward.

Mr. QUIE. Do you usually condemn suggestions because you fear they are going to change the rules of the game rather than find out about them?

Mr. GITTINGS. No, I am not automatically a person to resist change, but I do resist changing something that is going very well at this point and has not yet had the experience to make it go better.

Mr. QUIE. As far as the special revenue sharing, I don't know what it is going to be this year. Maybe you have seen and were talking

about some bill that was coming up that I have not had a chance to see yet. I was going to find out where you found out about it.

As far as special revenue sharing of last year, you were not even talking about what it appeared to me to be-and I gather that there is sort of a feeling abroad that anything this administration recommends as a change is wrong. I find that a little bit through suggestions I make, because I come from the wrong side of the aisle.

I think that we really have to look at the details of the legislation to see what is good and what is bad. There might be something good that comes out of this administration, and if there is, it seems to me we ought to have an open mind to accept it.

I am certainly willing to reject anything that I disagree with. Any of you people can lay out good reasons why we ought to reject it.

Mr. GITTINGS. As you are saying, we may be talking about two different things. I am referring to, I guess, some of the things that I have been advised of, correctly or incorrectly.

Chairman PERKINS. Will the gentleman yield to me at this point? Mr. QUIE. I yield to the chairman.

Chairman PERKINS. It would seem to me, though, the point that we have got to nail down here is that the Secretary of HEW could change the definition of "disadvantaged" every year if he wanted to. He could say $3,500 one year, $2,000 another year, $4,000. We are going to have to, I would think, come to some concrete agreement somewhere along the line about the latitude that the Secretary has got, because that could tear up the whole operation of a program in a rural section that I represent or in a metropolitan section; if the Secretary so decides, he could make a program unworkable by simply changing that definition.

Am I right about that or not, Al? If a Democratic Secretary, I am talking about, were in power?

Mr. QUIE. Heaven forbid that to ever happen.

Mr. Chairman, you are right on that, but that is similar to what we do on a number of laws that we pass, where you have-and I guess they use Department of Labor statistics-a changing determination of what a low-family income is. The way it has been in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we stayed at $2,000 all the time because the Congress

Chairman PERKINS. You and I have seen them change definitions to save money. We have seen it under the Johnson administration, we have seen it under the school lunch program, we have seen it under all the Presidents and all the administrations.

Mr. QUIE. I don't think that was their intent. Their intent was to have the determination of low income go up as inflation caused the income to go up. That is my understanding. Of course, I can understand if you feel that this would be their means of saving money, but I would be strongly opposed to that.

Chairman PERKINS. Gentlemen, that is what we have to guard and watch here.

Mr. QUIE. Let me start out with Larry. What program that you used title I money for, that you got rid of was least successful?

Mr. HARRIS. I guess the initial program, the worst, was some of our beginning efforts in reading. The first thing that we got back from the faculty was that to come out with some new reading guidelines without some common denominators, that did not work.

So the second year of title I we developed a common reading text in all of our schools. The mobility was so great we had 20 different textbooks being used in our first effort. An attempt to provide common training for teachers didn't work because we didn't have the right kind of materials. We developed instructional materials and it began

to move.

I suppose the other aspect that we ran into with title I was an initial drive on the part of a number of our people within the Minneapolis school system to try out their ideas. The discussion I remember during the early days of title I was some real tough in-fighting in the Minneapolis schools because a number of consultants by department basis were able to point out the guidelines that the money had to go to those inner city schools. We began looking at our youngsters.

I suppose the hardest thing to recognize in our city was for the first time in history there was some attention being paid to inner city youngsters, and it was hard for a lot of people to believe.

I remember the first battle I had with the Minneapolis schools through the delinquency program was it had to be all kids that were dropouts and failures, because we had a number of principals that wanted to move kids who where behavior problems. It took our school system a while to adjust to the point where there were guidelines. We were going to spend money on those kids.

Mr. QUIE. How long did it take you to determine those programs that didn't work?

Mr. HARRIS. In some instances it was during the first year. The evaluation material you have in a couple of programs was put in because the points were recommendations during the first year for change.

In a couple of instances we made the mistake of trying to do this without providing the teacher training, and we learned a very painful lesson in handing a teacher new materials without training her how to use them, how to work with the kids, how to explain it to parents.

One of the things we didn't do with the urban area summer program was to involve the parents. There was a summer school for poor kids, and we really had a go-around because we had not involved the parents in sharing the ideas.

In our testimony we have said in our title I reading program is a group of master teachers who continually work with our teachers even though they have experience, to sort of bring it all together, to step in with them, to go over the lesson plans. I think we have to recognize when the teacher faces a classroom with two-thirds to three-fourths from disadvantaged homes, sometimes it can get to be overwhelming, and we have to have this kind of additional input.

The talking typewriter program got a great deal of publicity. We have rewritten the entire curriculum for the talking typewriter program because it was a little bit too unsophisticated in the inner city schools. That was one of the wildest sessions we had.

One of the teachers wrote a session on the drums for kids interested in music, and it really turned them on. Have the kids look at it and then put in the time and effort to use it well, but we didn't do it the first time. We learned the hard way.

Mr. QUIE. Have you gotten rid of all the programs that have not worked?