Do vocational educators try to get funds? Do administrators of education for handicapped try to get funds out of the State legislature? Mr. CLEMANS. I think we have had a pretty realistic response to pressure groups in Oregon, particularly in regard to requiring the earmarking of funds for particular sorts of programs. For example, in the education of handicapped, the funds that the State provides under the current programs are for excess costs only and in most of the other areas it would be commonly thought of as subject to influence from pressure groups. The State has remained remarkably free from responding to requirements of earmarking. Mr. JENNINGS. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Quie. Mr. QUIE. Thank you, Mr. Jennings. That is all of the questions we have. We appreciate your coming from Oregon and giving us the benefit of the information and knowledge you have, not only on the title I programs and other ESEA programs, but the Follow Through program as well. I know Mr. Dellenback has something to say. We are going to be meeting again at 9 a.m. Thursday morning here in this room, 2175. Mr. DELLENBACK. I think these are outstanding witnesses and we are appreciative of their having come and given us the benefit of their knowledge. [Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m. the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 9 a.m. of the following day, Thursday, February 22, 1973.] ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1973 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1973 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, GENERAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 9:10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Carl D. Perkins (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Members present: Representatives Perkins, Ford, Meeds, Mazzoli, Lehman, Quie, Bell, and Forsythe. Staff members present: John F. Jennings, majority counsel; and Christopher Cross, minority legislative associate; Eydie Gaskins, special assistant; and Toni Painter, secretary. Chairman PERKINS. Our first witness this morning is Dr. Charles Wolfe, general superintendent, Detroit, Mich., accompanied by Dr. C. L. Golightly, Dr. Louis Monacel, Dr. Richard Smith, and Mr. Hershel Fort. Let me welcome you here. Dr. Wolfe, you may proceed in any way that you prefer and recognize the panel in any way you prefer. Without objection, all of the prepared statements will be inserted in the record. We have a 10 o'clock caucus this morning, at which time the Democrats will have to leave, but we are going to hear all of you. [The statements referred to follow:] TESTIMONY OF CORNELIUS GOLIGHTLY, PRESIDENT, BOARD OF EDUCATION, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am Cornelius Golightly, President of the Board of Education of the School District of the City of Detroit. I appreciate this opportunity to appear before your Committee, as you consider the legislative consolidation of federal assistance to Education in the next fiscal year. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first enacted in 1965, has made it possible to directly attack the problems confronting the educationally and economically deprived child. Thousands of such children located in the great cities of this nation are now participating in compensatory educational programs. If compensatory programs are continued and expanded, it remains possible for those thousands of children to emerge from the environments in which they otherwise are forced to exist as a sort of substream in the total community. The expansion and extension of the aims and objectives of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act can do much toward bettering our society. Not only have the educationally and economically deprived children of the Detroit Public Schools demonstrated consistent and increasing achievement toward national norms, but because of the decentralization of the Detroit Public Schools into Regions, hundreds of parents and interested adults are involved in the programmatic impact of E.S.E.A. Programs, in our school districts. (791) The large city school districts are faced with the almost impossible task of providing more services to more students in the face of a decreasing local tax base. The schools must be refinanced to meet the educational needs of the child. The legislation that we are discussing here today has provided funds in an attempt to maximize the educational opportunity of those children most in need. While each of us here today could expand this general discussion, the time limitation suggests that some specifics of the Detroit experience may be more directly related to our purpose. The Detroit Public Schools system is the fifth largest in the nation with over 277,000 pupils. The school district embraces an area of 138 square miles and is served by 229 elementary schools, 10 middle schools, 24 Special and Vocational Schools and 69 secondary schools. The budget necessary to maintain a minimum program in the Detroit schools for 1972-1973 is estimated at $295 million. The total available revenues from all sources for the general fund are $209 million. The state will provide 53% of that revenue program. In brief, we faced the opening of school with a $90 million deficit. Within the enrollment of the Detroit Public Schools are found 40% of the Title I disadvantaged pupils of the State of Michigan, 65% of the minority group pupils of the State, and 13% of the special education pupils of the State. The high cost of educating these pupils is only partially offset by special state and federal grants. The ability to meet maintenance of effort requirements to continue federal grants could be in jeopardy if pupil services are further reduced to effect budget savings. While we in Detroit are presently attempting to solve our financial problems, it becomes apparent that our situation applies to many large urban districts. Perhaps to reiterate the kinds of events that have infringed upon the leadership a local Board of Education can provide, will demonstrate our urgent need to maintain the Federal assistance programs we now have: The following will illustrate: -A cumulative loss over a ten-year period of $91 million because of a series of annual reductions in the state equalized evaluation. -Court ordered restructure of the school district for the purposes of desegregation and the pending appeals. -Anxiety over the proposed State income tax replacing the property tax. -Decentralization ordered by the State Legislature with no provisions for the estimated $4 million needed to finance the order. -The "Magnet School Plan" which was court ordered in December of 1970 has an estimated yearly cost of 1.5 million. With the tendency toward rising operational costs and less dollars to meet them, the school district went to the voters on three separate occasions last year in an attempt to initially pass millage increases, and finally to ask for only the maintenance of an expired 5 mills. On each occasion we were unsuccessful in our attempts. As president of the school board for the City of Detroit, I'm sure I speak in behalf of the thousands of local school advisory council members, parents and children of my district, who experience the everyday benefits of programs such as E.S.E.A. Title I. It is difficult to conceive of 40,000 public and non-public school children losing the impact of programs which have proven their worth. These 40,000 children constitute a target population for which concentrated Title I services are provided. This population, however, represents less than 15% of the total population of the district. Approximately 2,000 instructional paraprofessionals and over 500 local school advisory council members have made parental and community involvement a meaningful reality. These partners in the educational process must be given the opportunity to realize their full impact on that process and its responsiveness to the quality of education provided for their children. We think this process is good. The reversal of these trends cannot but help to foster the mistrust and the undesirable alienation, characteristic of school relations in many of the inner city areas of the country. I wish to thank the Committee for allowing me, at this time, to express the critical need for federal assistance to the educationally disadvantaged youth of our city. Hope is a powerful force in the educational lives of thousands of our parents and students. Let us not remove even this last vestige of our committment to the youth of today for a better tomorrow. TESTIMONY OF CHARLES WOLFE, GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT, DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS, DETROIT, MICH. Mr. Chairman and members of the committe, I am Charles Wolfe, Superintendent of Schools in Detroit, Michigan. I am pleased to have this opportunity to come before the House Committee on Education and Labor to testify in support of legislative action to extend and amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act has provided the only significant funds that the Detroit Public Schools have had for program improvement since the bill was enacted. The funds allocated to the school district under this act have made it possible to launch a concentrated attack on the learning deficiencies of educationally disadvantaged children in our city. Indeed, the funds have provided the only dollars available in the area of special education programs for the disadvantaged. The major difficulty that has been encountered is that the allocation of funds has permitted only the mounting of programs that can be described as "pilot" programs; programs which still leave the needs of many eligible children unattended. The Detroit Public Schools have long embraced the concept that the Federal government must provide vast amounts of program money in order that local school systems can meet the demand and right of all citizens to acquire a quality educational experience for their children. Thus, the school district was engaged in modest experimental compensatory educational programs with its own budget and with the help of various foundations as far back as 1959. In 1964, the Detroit Public Schools attempted to assume national leadership by enjoining legislation provided under the Economic Opportunity Act to continue and enlarge compensatory educational programs for the disadvantaged. In 1965, the Detroit School system was ready to launch programs as massive as the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act would allow. In April and May of 1965, the Program Development Special Projects staff met with every school principal and with many community groups to assess needs and establish priorities for the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act. From this process new programs grew. During the school years subsequent to the implementation of the initial programs, there have been annual re-evaluations of needs and priorities, and program changes have taken place. However, this programming suffered from the major deficiency of insufficient funding for each component. Moreover, as these programs were required to deliver service to thousands of children, their initial effectiveness was dulled by the limited number of dollars expended per child. The result was a weakening of the total impact on each child. In an attempt to provide concentration of effort in order to gain maximal impact per eligible child in the school district, a reconstruction of the programs was begun in 1967-68. All of the eligible schools were categorized as A, B or C schools. The categorization related to the total percentage of eligible children per school. Thus, an A school with a large target group received maximum services, a B school with a smaller target received moderate services and a C school with the smallest target received minimal services. Title I programs operating under the aegis of the Detroit Public School District have been distinguished by the following salient features. The various titles of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 have provided the school district with an opportunity to focus more directly on the problems encountered during the nine-to-three school day. 1. Programs now concentrate limited funds on a smaller target population to realize greater impact. 2. Programs now operate largely during the school day, thereby producing noteworthy modifications in existing school curriculum and staffing patterns. "Compensatory education programs", in the traditional sense, have been supplanted by activities designed to transform the basic educational program for teachers and pupils into a far more efficient vehicle for raising levels of academic achievement. 3. Title I School Advisory Committees have gained new status, manifested by participation in decisions relating to students in ways that have never before been realized in the public schools of Detroit. In many cases, besides assuming an advisory role in school matters, committees of parents and community representatives have shared in planning prior to the implementation of programs. The 1972-1973 planning reflects the input of parents, teachers and administrative staff. 4. In-Service training for teachers has become truly meaningful in terms of preparing teachers with skills related to the preparation for and utilization of pupils of individualized instructional materials leading toward the accomplishment of well-defined performance goals in the most critical academic skill areas. As a result of this new direction taken by in-service training, vital roles in the area of curriculum leadership are now emerging. 5. A number of new specialized and long needed functions have emerged as a result of special funding. Positions such as Curriculum leader, Elementary Staff Coordinator and Paraprofessional Attendance Officers provide much needed attention to the needs of disadvantaged children. 6. The number of paraprofessionals engaged in tasks related directly to the instructional process has grown to more than 2,000. The Department of Research and Evaluation has submitted a report appended to this paper based upon the results of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills administered to all Grade 4 pupils as part of the regularly scheduled testing program during Fall, 1968, Fall, 1970 and Spring, 1972. In each of these years approximately 25,000 pupils were tested. The testing results over this four-year period from 1968-1972 show: A. A substantial and continuous reduction in the percent of pupils more than one year below grade placement took place in Title I schools. Sixty-six percent of the pupils in priority A schools were more than one year below grade placement in 1968; by 1972, this had been reduced to 43 percent. In priority B schools, the corresponding reduction was from 63 percent to 48 percent. By comparison the reduction in non-Title I schools was from 44 percent in 1968 to 38 percent in 1972. B. The number of Title I schools whose performance in reading achievement was equal to or better than the city-wide mean increased from 15 in 1968 to 30 in 1972. C. The number of Title I schools who have a smaller percentage of lowachieving pupils than the national average increased from 0 in 1968 to 6 in 1970, and then to 18 in 1972. D. A strong positive relationship exists between the amount of Title I services received and the reduction in reading retardation. The financial plight of the Detroit school district is well known to this Committee. For the record, I would describe briefly the serious situation facing the Detroit Public Schools at this very moment. This fiscal year the school district requires an additional $73.2 million which would allow the schools to remain open until next June. To start school in September with a continuation of the present program, an additional $38 million will be needed. The Detroit situation is typical of most of the large city school districts. The only difference is a matter of degree relating to numbers of pupils and the rate of decline in local taxation. The timeliness of these hearings on a major approach to provide dollars for the education of hard-pressed school districts throughout the nation cannot be questioned. This is particularly true in behalf of the School District of the City of Detroit because only last November the voters of our community, for the third time in seven months, refused to renew or increase tax millage which would have provided $60 million essential to the maintenance of the reduced educational program that has been in effect for more than two years. This millage defeat leaves us with available revenues to provide not more than 117 days of school for the 1972-73 school year. The financial crisis of the Detroit Public Schools has been building over a period of years and can be directly attributed to a cumulative ten-year revenue loss of more than $91 million because of a series of annual reductions in the state equalized valuation. Only for the last two years has the state equalized valuation returned to the level of 1960-61. The electorate's rejection of the millage will result in local revenues only at the level available during the 1968-69 school year. The impact of a sweeping court-ordered restructuring of this school district for the purposes of desegregation, along with the pending appeals, the possible elimination of the property tax as a basic source of revenue resulting from the Milliken-Kelley case, and the possibility of massive federal assistance to provide quality education in school districts educating large numbers of pupils from low socio-economic families, while highly speculative, casts an additional cloud of uncertainty as to the future of education in Detroit. The Detroit Public Schools were completely reorganized under a decentralization order, mandated by the State Legislature, on January 1, 1971. No provi |