matter, at 10 o'clock, but my staff will be here to keep me posted on what you have said and what the record shows and we will do our best to move forward along the lines that we know we must.

Senator MONDALE. Thank you for the very, very fine statement. I so appreciate your co-sponsorship of this measure and your interest in it. Hopefully the testimony we are taking yesterday and today and tomorrow will constitute a case that will result in the adoption of long overneeded legislation, if not mine, some other, which includes the substance necessary to bring justice and opportunity to the very youngest American life.

We understand that Mrs. Godbouldt and Mrs. Ortega are associated with one of the best Headstart programs in the country, that demonstrates what is possible if we give people a chance.

So, Mrs. Godbouldt and Mrs. Ortega, if you will come up to the witness table here. You both have prepared statements, I believe. Why don't you read those statements and then we can ask you questions. We are very pleased to have you here this morning.

STATEMENT OF MRS. CLARA GODBOULDT, CHAIRMAN, HEADSTART PARENTS ADVISORY COUNCIL, ECONOMIC AND YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES AGENCY OF GREATER LOS ANGELES

Mrs. GODBOULT. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, Senator Cranston, and members of the committee. I want to thank you for the chance today to talk about the Headstart Child Development Act. It is a great bill, and one that parents of preschool children throughout the country will support wholeheartedly.

I also want to thank you for inviting two parents from Los Angeles to testify about Project Headstart. I know you have heard from child development specialists, nutrition experts, scholars, researchers, critics, and Government bureaucrats. Now it is time to hear from the parents.

We have something very important to say about this program, too. Mrs. Ortega and I represent the parents of more than 7,000 youngsters attending Headstart classes in Los Angeles. The classes are funded through the Economic and Youth Opportunities Agency, our local community action agency.

Fourteen community agencies and the Los Angeles County schools administer our program in poverty neighborhoods. I have been fortunate during the last year to be chairman of the Headstart Parents Advisory Council in Los Angeles. We have worked hard for project Headstart. Its wonderful success is due in large part to the parents' efforts.

As parents we know from personal experience the tragedy of youngsters who grow up without food, medicine, books, pencils, paper that most families in our country take for granted. For a few minutes let me tell you what I have seen Headstart do in Los Angeles. Then you will know why I support this bill.

If the members of this committee have the time, you should visit a Headstart class. Ask children why they like the program. I do it all the time. Four-year-olds haven't learned to lie yet. They tell it like it is.

When I asked one little boy why he liked Headstart, he said "Because I can eat until I'm full." His lunch at Headstart is the only. decent meal he gets all day long.

Another youngster's only breakfast before he came to class was a cup of coffee. Now he eats cereal in the morning thanks to Headstart. His mother learned how to fix good, cheap breakfasts from one of our nutrition workers. And that woman had been without a job for 3 years before Headstart.

The program gave her work where she can help improve the lives of her neighbors' children and get off welfare. Because of this, I am glad to see in this bill you are considering a special emphasis on giving jobs to the unemployed or low-income persons in our community.

I am also pleased to see that you want Headstart mothers to be eligible for help from Government food programs. This kind of legislation will help solve the problem of hunger in America.

Another young lady told me she liked Headstart because "big people talk to me." She is one of nine children in a home without a father and with a mother who works long hours trying to support her family with her earnings as a seamstress.

No adults have time to talk to the child. She appeared mute when she started Headstart. She was afraid to look or talk to adults. After hours of personal attention from patient volunteers and teachers, she has turned out to be a bright, sensitive, talkative girl. Without this attention she might have spent years struggling in remedial classes; or worse, classified as mentally retarded and placed in an institution. A third youngster told me "I like Headstart because the teacher reads stories." In many youngsters' homes there are no books, or if there are books, no one has bothered to read them to children.

In other classes I have seen youngsters grow in self-confidence and pride as they stand before a mirror, pointing at their image, and chanting their own names.

The same children when asked to paint a picture of themselves often paint faceless circles with no arms and legs. After a few months, however, they are drawing happy, smiling figures playing with other children.

Now you can see why I urge you to pass this bill. At the present time, only 20 percent of the youngsters eligible for Headstart in Los Angeles are enrolled in the program. That figure could be 100 percent if we had the money. If the Headstart Development Act is passed, the program can be expanded to serve children now going without the program, younger children, and boys and girls who live in places where there are no present facilities for Headstart.

The provisions in the bill for Headstart at home are excellent. This means we may be able to bring this important program to the families of migrant workers.

Headstart for some children means more than just advantages in education. All of our youngsters receive physical and dental checkups, and have their sight and hearing tested. We have found in Los Angeles that more than 51 percent of these youngsters need immediate treatment. We must continue this kind of service.

Finally, I want to return to the subject of parents. There is one line of this legislation that is most important to me. It says that projects assisted under this act will "provide for direct participation of the parents of such children in the development, conduct, and overall direction of the program at the local level."

All these experts, specialists, scholars, and bureaucrats will not make poverty disappear unless they work with parents. The best way for this to happen is to put the program itself into the hands of local people through their community action agencies and grassroots delegate agencies. This practice is working well in Los Angeles.

What makes Headstart a success is local people working with Government to change their own lives and solve their own problems. The Congress began this effort with the Economic Opportunity Act.

The Headstart Development Act would make good the promise of that earlier legislation with sufficient money to carry out the task. You are giving parents the opportunity they have needed for generations. Please don't disappoint us.

Thank you.

Senator MONDALE. Thank you, Mrs. Godbouldt, for an excellent

statement.

Mrs. Ortega?

STATEMENT OF MRS. CONNIE ORTEGA, HEADSTART PARENTS ADVISORY COUNCIL, ECONOMIC AND YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES AGENCY OF GREATER LOS ANGELES

Mrs. ORTEGA. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me the privilege of speaking to your distinguished group today. I am proud to have the opportunity to speak for the thousands of people involved in the Headstart program across the Nation and hope I will be able to help each of you gain a better understanding of the vital importance of the Headstart program and preschool education.

As I am sure you already know, there are 6 million disadvantaged children under the age of 6 living in the barrios, ghettos, and rural slums of this Nation. These children, because their families are poor, will not have an even start with youngsters from white, middle-class homes when they enter kindergarten. They have not had the important experiences and benefits to prepare them to be ready to learn in the public schools.

I hope that I do not have to remind you of the importance of the preschool years in a child's growth. I understand that researchers have found that one-half of a person's intellectual growth takes place between conception and age 4. Another occurs between the ages of 4 and 8.

Thus, at a time when their greatest growth in intelligence is occurring, millions of youngsters from poor families are deprived of the opportunity to grow as quickly as those from more privileged families. I could go on and give you more statistics, but I think it would be more useful to tell about the human side of the Headstart program that I have personally seen as a parent.

Senator MONDALE. Thank you very much, Mrs. Ortega.

Senator Cranston?

Senator CRANSTON. I have no questions. I am very grateful to you for coming all the way back here to tell us of your experiences and to put them in the human terms you do as a way of really underscoring the importance of this program, the need to keep it going and the need to expand it along the lines of this bill, and I assur you we will be doing all we can.

Mrs. ORTEGA. Thank you, Senator.

Senator MONDALE. Minority counsel would like to make a state

ment.

Mr. SCALES. I just wanted to thank you both for coming. I am sorry that Senator Murphy was unable, because of other obligations to hear your statement, but, I extend a welcome from him and other members of the minority.

Mrs. GODBOULDT. Thank you very much.

Mr. SCALES. Thank you very much.

Senator MONDALE. Now, in your efforts, as I gathered from your testimony, you said that this Headstart program under the direction of the Community Action Agency is delivering quality education, health care, and other assistance to these children, and it has been your observation that the children do respond.

You gave a couple of examples of children who had no sense of themselves, their names, or who they were children who were unresponsive, in their shell-and you were able to get them out of that shell, get them learning and make them happy.

Some people say that we don't know enough about early childhood, that before we undertake any programs we ought to have more research and maybe somewhere down the road we will finally come up with the answer and then we can start the program.

How would you respond to that argument?

Mrs. GODBOULDT. I think a lot of research-you have to excuse me, I am not really knocking professionals, but professional people don't live in the areas where they make their researches in so all this research is a lot of figures and numbers on paper.

And what we need, we need more money to run these types of programs, because, we already know they are working, because you have to communicate with people, parents, participating in this type of thing.

If you want research I think you have to live in the area and I am quite sure none of them gentlemen that advocate research wants to live in areas like that.

Senator MONDALE. You would condition desire to do research on a community with requirements that they live there?

Mrs. GODBOULDT. Yes; if you want to get the picture, if you want to say you are researching. But you can't sit in an office in Washington and research a problem in Los Angeles, Mississippi, Alabama. Wherever you have these programs you should be there.

And I said they are wasting a lot of money doing research. They could give us that money and we could expand the programs and do our own research. Because, like I stated first, we know it works. We do.

We have everything there that makes it work. We have people coming out of the community working in the program. What more research do vou need? You have good proof.

Senator MONDALE. One of the interesting things is that the outside experts, so to speak, always say we don't have any data, but if you ask parents of Headstart children or people who are involved in the program almost invariably they are very pleased.

For example, one of the things in Headstart is breakfast and lunches. I don't know what kind of scholar it takes to tell you that kids have to eat.

If you told the average middle-class parent that there wasn't enough data yet and, therefore, he should stop feeding his children breakfast and lunch he would hang you; yet we are still back with slide rules trying to figure out whether the children need breakfast. Obviously they do.

I notice in your testimony that you stated that 51 percent of the children needed dental or medical care upon examination.

Mrs. GODBOULDT. Yes.

This figure was arrived at because being a parent I have children that is enrolled in the public school and you know a lot of times they had toothaches and things but it was bypassed by the teachers and by the nurse and three of my little boys have gone through Headstart and if they had anything wrong with them they found it out and it was taken care of immediately.

But when children go into public school they have a lot of defects that they term in the public school as being mentally retarded and slow learning and maybe they are hungry, don't have any money for lunch, don't have any breakfast, maybe its a problem that the parents might be having difficulty, but nobody at the public school level takes time to find this out.

Senator MONDALE. You try to work with the parents of the children, if you think there is difficulty?

Mrs. GODBOULDT. Yes.

Senator MONDALE. What sorts of thing do you do? Either one of you can answer. What sort of things do you do with parents where you think there is trouble?

Mrs. ORTEGA. In the community where I live we have a group called Parents Who Care; it no longer has the name SOS. We are now working on narcotics, as a group we teach our parents to recognize different drugs that young children are using in our public schools. We teach them to know just what our children look like when they are under the influence of these drugs. We learn from this that parents want to get involved and that our children are proud that their families are interested and want to help them better themselves.

Like when I put in my 2 or 3 days of volunteer work on the Headstart assignment I notice my boy is very proud. He tells all his friends that is my mother up there, she is helping, and I notice not only with me but other parents they put in more days than they have to. My oldest is in Headstart and I have two babies. I have to take them along with me if I can't get a babysitter and I put in more days than I am recommended. So I know my child is proud and I am sure other people feel the same way about their children.

Senator MONDALE. Do you find that the parents resent your coming into their homes and talking to them about these problems?

Mrs. ORTEGA. No, I don't, and they are glad somebody is finally interested.

Senator MONDALE. And do you find that the public school teachers will go into the homes and help in this way, or is this just the Headstart parents and teacher aids who are willing to do that?

Mrs. GODBOULDT. In the public school I have never known teachers to come into the home unless they were selling encyclopedias or something.