Mr. SPENCER. I am quite sure that it will do a lot of good. I might five you an example of this.

I mentioned briefly in my testimony, and it is written up in more detail in a report called the Oklahoma Science Education Story, where a couple of years ago, we ran the first statewide talent hunt, I think, that had ever been conducted in the United States. We tested about 65,000 high-school students in Oklahoma. They were the twelfthgraders. We followed them up the following fall to see how many of the bright children had actually gone to college.

Of the brightest 100, I think 93 actually did go to college. Less than 20 percent of the students had any scholarships or any loan help of any

sort.

When we increased the number to the brightest 400, as I recall, about 316 actually started the next fall, and a good many of the other 84 planned to go after they finished their military service or one or another kind of commitment.

The general balance of information and evidence with which I am familiar, unfortunately, does not tend to support this point that a scholarship program at the Federal level is essential for the purposes that we intended.

There is another point here that I think needs more examination and study than it has had up to the present time.

If, again, we begin the group with which we are concerned, the brightest 30 percent, it begins to look increasingly to me as though the key problem is not with the top 1 or 2 or 3 percent. It is the group that is, let us say, the top quarter to the top 5 percent. Maybe this group in between. These people, unfortunately, are not the students that are going to win the scholarships. They are solid citizens. They have a major contribution to make. I think this is an area where the wastage is greatest.

On balance, again, I have tended to conclude that the best thing we can do, in addition to the training of the counselors and the early identification and motivation programs, is in places where loan funds are not now available, setting up some sort of provisions so that they really do have the desire. If we can build the desire in them at an earlier age, they can get the money to go on.

Of all the programs that have been suggested along this line, this one called college on the cuff that was suggested by Dr. Seymour Harris of Harvard is one that I think is quite an appealing idea along this line.

That is point three.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Before you go to your next point, Doctor, might we not need a scholarship program, then, for that group that is a little less bright than the top 5 percent?

Mr. SPENCER. I think this is possible.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Or the top 3 percent, I believe you said?

Mr. SPENCER. I think this is possible. I do not think that we have really come to grips with this problem yet. You get yourself into a complicated problem.

When we talk about scholarships, we usually talk about scholarships for the best. It takes quite a little different set here to say that we are not really going to give the scholarships to the best ones, we are going to give them to the next best ones. Exactly how this problem

is going to be solved, I am not entirely sure. I have considerable hopes that the study that we will be undertaking this summer and running through this next school year will provide us with some new, useful evidence along this line.

I do feel that loan funds, from whatever source they might come, would likely be quite beneficial.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Do you think that the loan funds should be administered by the States or by the colleges involved?

Mr. SPENCER. This is quite a controversial point, and I am not sure that I really have the answer. You see, one of the problems that you get into is that colleges use both scholarships and loan funds as competitive devices to get students. There are enormous difference in the comparative pulling power of various institutions.

I have not dealt with the particular point sufficiently myself to feel that I have a very good judgment about it.

Let me say one other thing about the scholarship program. I do not want to give the impression that I am opposed to scholarships because I am very much in favor of them. Two things have happened to me just in this last month that have been a little disquieting along this line. Two very large corporations in this country, both of whom now have large scholarship programs, have come to us and said that they felt, or they were beginning to feel, that the scholarship idea which is one of the things that they are quite sensitive about, or the public relations value of a scholarship program, that because so many other new programs are coming in, and particularly the likelihood of a Federal program, they were looking for other ideas in education that could replace the scholarship program they had in operation.

There is a second thing. I have it secondhanded. I cannot vouch for this directly. I am told that many of the chief State school officers that have been working with groups in their own States to develop State scholarship programs are adopting a "wait and see" attitude to see whether the Federal Government does anything before they decide to go ahead on their own.

This is hearsay. I am not positive of this point.

My fourth point that I wanted to make here was with regard to the possibility of taking the techniques that have been developed in the summer training institutes of the National Science Foundation and extending these first, to the training of guidance counselors and teachers who would like to have the background in this, and possibly to other curriculum areas.

The results of our study were just overwhelmingly favorably in this regard.

If we look at the real problem so far as the guidance counselors are concerned, we see that they are only about the equivalent of 11,000 full-time guidance counselors in this country in our high schools, and many of them have as much training as they should have. I then wonder how we are going to get from this number to 35,000. This is probably a task that is going to take 10, maybe 20 years.

I am very much impressed with what could be done in a relatively short time in the summer institutes. For example, last summer I think 4,750 science and mathematics teachers participated in these programs. This is out of a number of 130,000. Look what could occur in just a short itme, 2, 3, or 4 summers, if we applied the same

sort of procedures on a similar scale in the area of guidance counseling.

In many respects, this is just about the best large-scale idea I have run across in quite a while in ways of improving the quality of our education and particularly in helping our bright people to get the kind of training that will tend to maximize their ability.

I think those are the main points that I had to make, Mr. Elliott. I recognize that many of these are on quite controversial ground and that the evidence is not definite about them. This presents, essentially, our best guess at the present time.

Mr. ELLIOTT. The gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. PERKINS. You have given us splendid testimony. What worries me is that we solicit and obtain excellent testimony here for a year, and then we get in committee and try to resolve our differences and we just cannot agree. What would be your recommendation in connection with the 100,00 capable high school students annually that are not financially able to go beyond the high school? Just considering that one factor, what would you recommend that this committee do?

Mr. SPENCER. I must say one thing as a preliminary to this. I have not been able to convince myself that there are 100,000 bright young people who really are unable to go to college.

Mr. PERKINS. Those are the figures, I think, that are available from the Government's study.

Mr. SPENCER. Yes.

Mr. PERKINS. It was the study of Education Beyond the High School that was just completed within the last year.

Mr. SPENCER. Yes, I am familiar with it.

Mr. PERKINS. Yes.

Mr. SPENCER. I frankly have some doubts about it, though. Mr. PERKINS. Just assume that to be true. What would be your recommendation?

Mr. SPENCER. Assuming that it is so?

Mr. PERKINS. Assuming that the White House study is correct. Mr. SPENCER. I would like to start with these youngsters not later than the ninth grade.

Mr. PERKINS. We do not have time, I am afraid, for that. Here we have 100,000 high-school graduates. You have covered it pretty thoroughly by your testimony. They get through this year, and they would like to go to college, perhaps, and do not have the money. What should we do? Should we just forget about it, or should we do something about it?

Mr. SPENCER. If we make the assumptions we are talking about12th graders?

Mr. PERKINS. Yes.

Mr. SPENCER. And that we also assume that they definitely do not have the money to go, I would start with the point of why be publicizing the names of these youngsters. There are all sorts of sources from which funds of one kind or another can be obtained. I think one of the best illustrations of this is the publicizing of the near winners in the national merit scholarship program of these top_7,500 students. About two-thirds of them did get some sort of aid. "It was scholarship aid of one type or another.

This would be my first point.

I would accompany it by a strong public relations program to see all the things that might be done in the local communities to obtain additional help of one sort or another for them. If there was not enough support at the local levels, I think the next thing I would go to is some sort of loan program so that these young people would have available the money that was essential for them to go to college.

If over a period of time, this did not work, then I think that I would frankly want to reconsider the scholarship idea again. This is, in general, the last thing that I think that I would do, but I would certainly not throw this out for all time.

Mr. PERKINS. Thank you, Doctor.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Doctor, we appreciate your testimony very much. I am sure that the members of the committee and the public and the educators and the others who have an opportunity to read it from our printed hearings, will enjoy it also.

Mr. SPENCER. Thank you.

(Statement follows:)

STATEMENT OF LYLE M. SPENCER

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee: My name is Lyle M. Spencer. I greatly appreciate the invitation of Mr. Elliott to appear before this committee.

I am president of Science Research Associates of Chicago, an educational service organization that conducts many scholarship programs, such as programs for the National Merit Scholarship Corp. and the Illinois Scholarship Commission. In addition, our research group develops and publishes a wide variety of guidance materials, counselor-training materials, and all sorts of testsranging from kindergarten reading readiness tests to college admissions examinations-used by thousands of schools throughout the country and by many business firms.

Our experience in these fields goes back about 20 years. We would like to make any of our experience and information available to you that may prove relevant in considering bills H. R. 10278 and H. R. 10381 on four main topics. These are:

1. Provisions for increasing the number of guidance counselors and improving their quality.

2. The desirability of Federal support for guidance and testing programs. 3. The desirability of establishing Federal scholarships.

4. Evaluating the usefulness of the summer training institutes for science and mathematics teachers that are supported by the National Science Foundation. The reason why our research group possesses some competence in this last field is because we have just completed an extensive evaluation study of the summer institutes for NSF. I am including as an appendix to my testimony a summary of the findings of this study.

One of SRA's major interests for many years has been developing better methods and techniques of identifying intellectually superior students at an early age and motivating them to develop their potential abilities to the point where they can make the best use of their talents.

Of all the programs proposed to reduce the talent wastage among young people in the United States, the spot at which we feel Federal funds could have the most useful effect is matching money to be spent to increase the number and improve the training of guidance counselors. As you already know, the President's Committee on Education Beyond the High School recently estimated that there are only about the equivalent of 11,000 full-time counselors in our country's 28,000 secondary schools, and only a very small number in junior high schools and elementary grades. Many of these 11,000 lack adequate training. The minimum estimate for providing even reasonably adequate guidance facilities in our high schools would require something like 35,000 counselors.

Adequate training for a counselor usually requires at least 1 full year of full-time study and supervised experience beyond college graduation. A long

term program is badly needed to increase materially the number of fully trained counselors.

As an interim aid, however, we would very much like to see the extension of summer training institutes, such as are now provided by the National Science Foundation for science and math teachers, to guidance counselors. Almost 5,000 teachers were helped materially in the summer of 1957 by the NSF program. A similar program in the area of guidance counseling would have a much larger proportional impact. There would be little difficulty in recruiting able people into such a program from among interested classroom teachers.

The second most important area where help is needed in our view is increasing the funds available for guidance and testing. The $1.25 supplement proposed by one of the bills, to be matched by the individual States, would be a good if modest start in this direction. As previous educators have testified before this committee, the critical problem in persuading able youngsters to go to college is to identify them at a sufficiently early age and help them get faced in the proper educational direction. The identification process should start not later than the ninth grade, and I would like to see it start at least as early as the seventh grade now. In a few more years, as our identification techniques improve, I am hopeful that this process can start as early as the fourth grade.

Some time ago we conducted the first statewide talent hunt ever run in the United States in the State of Oklahoma. This program clearly demonstrated the value of early identification programs. On a voluntary basis, more than 400 Oklahoma high schools, enrolling in excess of 65,000 high school students in grades 9-12, participated in the program. The test scores on an extensive battery of educational development tests were made available not only to the teachers of the students, but to the students themselves and to their parents. In many cases, the motivating effects of this identification process were electric.

Just as one example, for many hundreds of cases I could quote, was the experience of a 15 year-old girl who had lived for many years in an Oklahoma orphanage. She turned out to be very bright on the tests, particularly on the mathematics and science sections. Dean McGee, the president of the Oklahoma Frontiers of Science Foundation, wrote her a congratulatory letter stating that she rated in the top 20 percent nationally on these tests. Elated by his letter, this little girl showed it to her aunt. A month later, delighted by the evidence that high quality brains existed in the family, the aunt and uncle adopted this girl, which they could have done just as easily at any time during the previous 10 years. Needless to say, this bright girl is now planning to go to college.

Of equal importance with early identification is the provision of adequate school guidance programs for bright youngsters. Many students literally do not know that they are bright, and neither they nor their parents understand the possibile career consequences of intellectual superiority. Even after the identification process has occurred, not much good is usually accomplished unless effective follow-up steps are taken. The most important single step is for the bright student to undertake a college preparatory course in high school, emphasizing the hard core subjects that will provide the best possible preparation for later success in college.

To quote again from our Oklahoma experience, the fall after the spring testing and identification process, and increase of nearly 23 percent was achieved in enrollments in these hard core subjects among students in the 400 participating high schools. The school population grew by only about 3 percent during this period so the dramatic increase must be attributed largely to the identification program and the guidance work by teachers and counselors that followed.

Other studies have demonstrated that more than half of the superior young people not planning to go to college can be influenced in this direction with good identification programs followed up by adequate guidance counseling at a sufficiently early age. Much of this counseling can be done on a group basis providing that adequate guidance materials can be made availble to the students in these classes. Our research group is starting this week, in cooperation with the North Central College and Secondary School Association, with research funds provided by the Carnegie Corporation, on a new pilot study in about 50 high schools, to find better ways of identifying and motivating superior students. We hope that the methods developed will soon prove useful in schools across the country that lack highly trained teachers and counseling personnel.

On both the proposals to train counselors and provide funds for testing and guidance, I believe that special attention should be paid to the special problems