As I see it, this can only be accomplished with the coordination and guidance of the Federal agencies. Approximately 380,000 migrants in this never-ending cycle of frustration may still find themselves suffering from discrimination, hunger, poor housing, insecurity, and inadequate education.

Because of their mobility, the education has little, if any, continuity. They are from families who harvest the crops for us. Although they are an economic necessity, they are a faceless and improverished people. It seems to me in looking over what has been said, and to what I have here, that education of the migrant children by its very nature is a Federal responsibility. Local school boards cannot provide ade quate educational services for migrant children without the aid of the Federal funds designed specifically for such purposes.

There is a definite need for increased opportunity, for purposes of lessening the number of dropouts in schools, providing vocational training, preventing increased welfare rolls, preventing juvenile delinquency, and curbing the increased crime rate and social ills.

Mr. SPURLOCK. So we do more of this in this country to take more people off of the welfare programs?

I therefore recommend to this group that you support our efforts to continue this program as we are doing it on the Federal funding guidance and coordination to see that this program is operated the way we operate it.

Thank you.

Mr. FORD. Thank you.

Mr. Click?

Mr. CLICK. Thank you Congressman Ford and members of the committee. I am happy to have this opportunity to enter testimony into this record on behalf of my superintendent of public instruction, Dr. Frank B. Brouillet, State of Washington.

I might say for your benefit that Mr. Meeds, a member of this committee, has been one of the most active persons not only in this legislation but in the OEO legislation in working on the problems of my grants.

Mr. FORD. He happens also to be very active reformer in the Democratic caucus and when I left he was one of the people carrying the battle on the floor and that is why he is not here to be with you.

Mr. CLICK. Thank you.

I appreciate that and we certainly have appreciated Mr. Meeds' support in this program over the years.

I am going to only highlight some of the statements that I have made in my formal statement presented to the committee and touch upon some of those things that have been mentioned this morning.

We in the State of Washington are a receiving State. Of course most of our children come from Texas early in the spring and stay in the State for various crops during the year and return in November. We have been serving about 9,000 children on the average. Many of those during the summer and the majority of them during the regular term.

Some of the indirect services in addition to the direct services that we provide in typical programs, I think would be of interest to the committee.

These include teachers aides of course to assist the teachers. Regional media centers. Providing curricula material, audiovisuals and so forth.

The interesting thing about the aide program is that 75 to 80 percent of these people and the majority of them are of the ethnic background of the migrants find through this program an opportunity to increase their education also and many of them are in career development programs.

Through a leadership activities unit, we provide services to the Parent Advisory Committee. The Parent Advisory Committees in the migrant programs are very important and through these activities, we are getting the migrant people involved in school programs in a receiving State we depend more upon those who have settled out, of course, and we try to bring in the people, even on the State level, we have a State advisory committee and the more than a simple majority of those people are from settled out migrant families or people who actually have children in the programs.

Of course, we also service the interstate uniform record transfer system. We monitor all migrant programs very carefully. We try very hard to be accountable in these programs and give the school districts technical assistance where needed.

The academic programs in all funded projects during both the regular school term and summer term include language development of all of the basic skills, reading, writing, and comprehension and of course in the case of Mexican American children we have bilingual instruction.

We even had the law changed shortly after California did to make this possible that we can actually instruct in another language than English. When we don't have Spanish speaking teachers available, we do use Spanish speaking teachers' aides to work with the teachers in the classrooms so that we are able to give individualized instruction in order to relate with the children in their own language.

Health is another priority in both instructional and health awareness and physical education. These kind of things.

Through one of the regional centers, leadership is given to local schools and training teachers to manage classrooms so that migrant children coming into the new school can be oriented into the program. This is a management system. The teacher and teacher aide in the classroom quickly assess the child skill development and makes selection of learning areas and use descriptive teaching to improve his skills.

Continuous assessment is kept of his progress which is charted daily or weekly. Children enrolled in such classes have no difficulty adjusting to the school and enjoy making learning progress.

We are just now really getting hold of this. We feel this is a system that is really working for my grandchildren. But however good this program is, it unfortunately does not serve all migrant children. We still have a large gap in the preschool and secondary levels. Of course, these programs do depend upon categorical aide funds because. as has been stated here many times this morning, local schools tend not to accept these children as their own. They are migrating. They are someone else's children so it is a national problem.

We feel also in our State that funding should be on the basis of the number of children actually served, not only the invalid basis that it has been so far. The Department of Labor statistics only record those people who go through the Employment Security Agency

when they come in to the State and there are many many migrant families who do not register with the Employment Security Agency. So the basis for this has never been very valid at least in our State. I would like to mention here that another deterrent, of course, for good programs is that we have been late funded so often."

In order to have good programs and good planning, we need to know what our funds are going to be by April of the preceding year. We also received 11.4 percent cut by, we understood, impoundment, and whether or not this is the case, I don't know, but this was our understanding of present year's funds.

This means we are not going to have any summer schools in the State of Washington unless these funds are restored in this current program.

In a receiving State, that is very important because there are so many children there during the summer. We will have the same situation we have had before these programs started.

Children will be in the fields, in the cars, or back at the camps when they should be in a program.

The concept of compensatory programs for children of migratory workers is a good one and it should not be dropped.

Some of the important reasons that I would like to mention is that it is probably one of the few if not the only program where there is much interstate coordination and exchange of ideas.

Across this Nation is a body of dedicated educators who are working together and exchanging ideas or working to provide an equal educational opportunity for these children.

As you have already heard, the data bank tied to 48 States is in operation very successfully.

I would like to make this a very genuine appeal to retain a program that is making a difference in the lives of these children and I would like to also point out that it is not only in the lives of these children because through the compensatory educational programs and title I, not only the migrant programs but other title I compensatory programs and of course you can cite title III and all of the other titles, but specifically in these where we have been paying attention to the educationally disadvantaged kids in getting programs to them, we have had to innovate, do some things differently, and these changes are being transported to other schools and other teachers.

I think it is making a greater impact on education for change than anything else has in the history of education in the last 50 years.

I would like to just make one response to your comment about the GAO report. I am familiar with that. I am not very proud of the report that came out of our State. I am not going to be defensive about it. We have simply tried to improve where we obviously had some failures.

We don't know where some of those answers came from because I think if the people who were actually operating the programs had been contacted in all cases, there would have been different answers and we will welcome audits at any time by people who are qualified. Mr. FORD. Let me say that on balance, the GAO report can be a valuable asset to us in dealing not only with the specifics of this legislation but other legislation which I am vitally interested in.

However, in the atmosphere of 1973 in Washington, D.C., anything that can be used as hard evidence that a program is not working will be used frequently.

In anticipation of this I have already got the staff working on a follow-up survey to be made.

I want to make it very clear that in my little over 8 years here, I believe that GAO plays it straight but they are accountants for the most part and there are times when we don't agree with the basis for their conclusions, even though the conclusion might be defensible on the basis of what was before them when they reached that conclusion.

So we are going to go back to the specific school jurisdictions that are mentioned in this report with a request that they supplement this information and comments upon it and agree or disagree, whatever might be their dispensation, so that we will better understand what this report really means when it says, for example, that school people don't know the programs exist.

So there will be some follow-up and I trust that you gentlemen, even though you won't be involved in the specific areas that are mentioned in the GAO report, might want to look at it and help us in that regard. Mr. HILBURN. I would like to comment to that point.

Florida happened to be one of those districts. They wouldn't find anyone in the district that would not be aware of the migrant program because Palm Beach County is one of the heaviest counties with migrant workers that they listed.

We tried to run some type of a program in 22 counties or districts in Florida. In Florida a district is a county. Only 22 of those districts. Yet we have migrant kids, I am sure, in all 67 school districts. But due to this limited funding, we are not even able to provide in the high concentrated area the services that we need to the number of migrant youngsters in those 21 districts.

So really there is not much attempt made on our part to let anyone know there is a program when there are no funds to run that program. It could be very possible, like title I, the regular title I is concentrated and I think it is the only answer to solving disadvantaged in education is concentration of services all you can to a smaller number instead of a lot of people with a little bit.

Mr. CLICK. That is a very good point. That is true in our State also. We have spread the funds quite thinly instead of concentrating upon the areas of the greatest impact of migrant children and some of the fringe areas which I am sure this gentleman was referring to in that report were not aware possibly.

In conclusion, in respect to the question of revenue sharing, I would like to say that we doubt very much that revenue sharing which does not specifically designate funds for migrant children education will allow us to continue these programs even at the present level.

We are fearful that State and LEA will be having to revert back to the pre-1966 status and that was one of largely ignoring the migrant children if they are not specifically designated in this.

There is too much competition for funds these days. I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity.

Mr. FORD. Mr. Forsythe?

Mr. FORSYTHE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I certainly appreciate the testimony that we have had here this morning on this migrant problem and would agree that it is a national problem and not one that can be isolated at the State level.

I am somewhat concerned and I would like to make a short statement and ask for a reaction. This is what has been said so often here this morning about revenue sharing and categorical grants.

In at least one statement I picked it up from Mr. Soriano of Michigan: "The unmet needs as determined by the State migrant office result from several basic conditions. The funds are strictly categorical." Others state it must be operated by State agencies. And yet revenue sharing, I am concerned as you are, really in basic general terms is to try to move the authority away from the narrow categorical national program to a State agency operation.

And agreeing with your concern that if it is left to local districts, they have no constituency for migrants, I agree. But can we in this concept of trying to move more of the specific authority away from the massive problems of guidelines and paperwork and grant applications under the categorical problems toward more flexibility so far as you gentlemen are concerned in this migrant field, granting we may have to mandate that funds are going to go to migrant workers but leave more freedom at your level.

I would like to have some comments on that.

Mr. LOPEZ. I think some of the gentlemen behind me who have not had a chance to make a statement would like to address themselves to this question. Basically I think what we have been saying is the fact that there must be some national concern of the migrant youngsters because once a youngster leaves the State of California he travels to another State, nobody is going to pick him up. He says in our State 6 weeks or 6 months at the most and then he travels, so the national concern has to remain there with Federal funds.

Also the needs assessment have to be done under State level with the cooperation of the local school districts but in our State I have a continuous fight with my school districts who say, "Look, these kids come and go. Why don't you help them somewhere else?"

Some of them have suggested we set up migrant camp schools. They really resent us going in there and telling them you have to educate this youngster. So they will say and use any excuse such as the statements made by the principals in the GAO report.

These principals have had material sent to them and personal visits by research people and yet they wash their hands and say we don't know there is such a program. They are saying I don't care. That is what they are saying.

Everyone of those people interviewed by GAO, who were sick and tired of hearing about migrant kids, for them to make a statement they didn't know we existed was ridiculous because we were there continuously knocking on their door.

They finally got tired of it. We have a statement here from Virginia. [The statement referred to follows:]