priority as well as to erode the sense of identity which the education community has with the Commissioner's office.

DISCRETION

Section 11 of the bill provides that the Secretary may retain 10 percent of the appropriations for additional grants to the States. Based on last year's appropriations of $3.3 billion, the Secretary would then have a fund of $330 million.

Proponents of section 11 will argue that, since a 10-percent discretionary fund is normal for Federal education programs, this amount really does not exceed the current discretionary level. Furthermore, they will argue that the grouping of such funds into one pot should not be objectionable, even though greater discretion will result thereby. The purpose of the special revenue-sharing plan is to ease the administrative burden of State and local governments in the management of Federal programs. We fail to see how the creation of a general slush fund will advance that purpose.

AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS

Section 3 of the bill provides that Congress shall provide "such sums as may be necessary for carrying out this act." We have generally been opposed to authorizing language which does not specify a dollar amount. And such is the case now.

We believe that a bill of this scope, nearly the whole Federal commitment to elementary and secondary education, should define both the financial needs of education and the Federal objective or target in response thereto. By excluding such figures, the bill, in effect, shifts to the Appropriations Committee a function which we prefer to have performed under the expertise of this committee.

Mr. Chairman, we fully applaud the President for recognizing administrative problems which confront school boards in the management of Federal programs.

But, as desirous as we are to seek the enactment of a special revenuesharing plan, we will not embrace any proposal until all questions pertaining to the distribution formula are resolved.

However, even should the formula contained in H.R. 7796 prove to be acceptable, we are absolutely opposed to the enactment of this bill because of (1) its treatment of the impact aid including public housing programs, (2) its inclusion of non-public-school representation on the State advisory council and its failure to provide for local school board representation thereon, (3) its failure to provide local school boards with a procedure to challenge State plans and financial distributions made thereunder, and (4) its failure to state a financial goal in the authorization of appropriations.

Furthermore, while we recognize the need for a discretionary fund, we urge that controls thereon be written into the legislation.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity of making this presentation to you, and I will turn back to Gus Steinhilber.

Mr. STEIN HILBER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to have Dr. Oser discuss the operation of current programs, particularly as they relate to the Houston School District.

Mr. OSER. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, it is my pleasure to see Mr. Bell, before whom I testified a couple of years ago with regard to the Emergency School Assistance program.

My statement is written in colloquial form and I prefer to read it, if I may.

For many months-nay, years--you have heard in presentation after presentation the details of the financial crisis faced by public education in the United States.

This crisis, current and future, is well documented, and it seems as we look across the Nation today that many forces are being brought to bear on the solution of this crisis, from the State Supreme Court of California to the Fleishman committee reports of New York, to the Governor's Committee on Educational Reform in the State of Texas. I am not here today to expand upon the information that you already have at hand or to dwell in more depth on those particulars. Instead, I would like to deal with a more pervasive problem, a problem whose fingers reach into all of the areas of school finance, school problems: the problem of control-local and otherwise.

In order that my comments not remain in the philosophical realm, I would like to particularize them by a discussion of the title I program-what has been expected, what it has done, and what I see as its future requirements.

First of all, title I has been expected, very simply, to perform miracles. It is somewhat akin to the hope that 10¢ for a cup of coffee given to a person with no other financial resources will turn that person into a corporation executive 3 hours hence.

Title I has had a hope of providing adequate financial support for youngsters who need that support, but it has attempted to do a tremendous task with miniscule funds.

Across the Nation and in Texas, we have something like $150 per year per student in title I funds. In Houston, Tex., this $150 brings our per-pupil expenditures for youngsters in the Houston Independent School District in the title I target schools approximately up to the national average of per-pupil expenditures throughout the Nation. In New York City, the title I addition in funds does not even bring the total per-pupil expenditures up to the State average.

In addition to the small absolute amount of funds available for title I youngsters, the title I program must bear an additional burden of providing survival services-food, clothing, medical and dental

care.

So on this pittance dedicated to youngsters of great need we have put the combined burdens of educational excellence and survival services, a burden which it is impossible for title I funds to bear as they are currently provided,

Let's look for a moment and see what title I has done. In Houston, Tex., just a few years ago, members of the board of education were publicly saying that there were no hungry children in Houston. I might say those board members are currently political casualties.

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Today nearly 50,000 youngsters are fed hot lunches daily from the combined funds of title I and the Department of Agriculture. Medical and dental care is provided to youngsters numbering approximately 30,000 in 27 schools in Houston. We are currently exploring the possibility of providing clothing for the youngsters who have that need.

One can talk about educational need, but until the youngster is in school, clothed and fed, one may as well forget the educational need because the educational system is not going to reach that youngster. So we in Houston feel a basic commitment to provide these kinds of survival services. We provide them from title I funds because currently those are the only funds available to us for providing these services.

In addition, part of our title I funds is used for what are nominally called "cultural enrichment programs." These programs provide experiences for youngsters which they would not otherwise have because of their parents' inability to pay for transportation to areas of interest throughout the city-the museums, zoos, theaters. We feel this is an important part of our program, but again these are programs that drain resources from the hard, substantive educational programs.

These moneys should be available from other sources beyond the title I sources.

Our heaviest emphasis in Houston in title I funding is in the area of substantive-what I call hard-educational programs. Our administrative staff and the board of education are dedicated to the principle that our job, first and foremost, is providing excellence in education for every youngster in Houston. Consequently, all funds, be they local funds, State or Federal funds, are funneled into programs of substantial educational impact.

In Houston, for example, approximately $2 million of our title I funds, or about half the total title I allocation, is used in experimental reading programs. In nine elementary schools we have the exciting LEIR program; in nine schools, the productive BRL program; in nine schools, the Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich series, which attempts to bridge the cultural gaps that previous reading programs have not. We think this is where the emphasis should be in the use of title I funds, but it is very difficult for us to provide the necessary survival services, the necessary cultural enrichment programs, and these substantive educational programs in a way that fits the need of the youngsters of our community at the current level of funding.

I strongly oppose any efforts on the part of Congress or the administration in diminishing the dollars available in the title programs. In fact, I would press strongly for great expansion of these programs so that these necessary services could be provided in a more meaningful way to youngsters across the Nation.

Educators today are agreed that educational funding, in order to have an impact, must reach what they have termed "a critical mass." It takes a certain amount of money before one can overcome the inertia of the situation, before one can make progress in bettering the educational environment.

I don't believe the title I funds in the amount they are currently distributed have much of a chance of overcoming this inertia, of making an impact, because they do not reach a critical mass.

To those critics who say title I has failed, I say "hogwash." Title I has barely been tried. Whatever alternative funding patterns are devised by Congress or the administration, I would urge that protection be given to the categorical programs currently in force and that more dollars be directed to supporting these programs.

Let me move now from a cursory discussion of title I into some comments concerning control. One of the most overworked terms by members of boards of education, Congressmen, members of the administration is "local control." For the most part, these words are merely a demagogic artifice for saying something else.

There are no Federal strings on education programs, such as the title programs, that we in Houston cannot live with. There are no strings that we find so burdensome that we would desire to have those strings removed. In fact, we urge the Congress to maintain the kinds of controls that guarantee accountability, that guarantee that Federal funds which are our tax dollars be spent in a constitutional fashion. We demand that the national priorities be fulfilled in the guidelines for expenditure of these funds.

Local control should not mean the boards of education have the freedom to violate constitutional dictates. Last year, Senator Mondale documented innumerable cases of the results of weak controls in the Federal program of emergency school assistance. We do not want to see those sorts of things repeated.

It is strange that those who speak so strongly for local control often violate that very principle in the same breath. Recently, Vice President Agnew in the second of three televised interviews with the press spoke about the administration's opposition to the Child Development Act. Vice President Agnew, I would suppose, is one who could be put in the camp of strong supporters of local control.

Yet, when queried about the administration's opposition to day care centers, he said that he felt that mothers would take advantage of these centers if they were available. And he didn't feel it was proper that mothers would be able to take advantage of these centers and not fulfill their motherly duties.

That is the kind of stance that has beclouded the issue of control. On the one hand, the proponents say, "We want local control"; on the other hand, they formulate legislation which disallows any kind of local control.

Similarly, on the issue of Federal funding of transportation, the loudest proponents for local control are the first to say there shall be no Federal moneys available for the transportation of youngsters. Local districts, under court order, are currently providing that transportation out of local funds, and local districts would like to have the flexibility to search for Federal or local funds at their own discretion and not be boxed in by those so-called proponents of local control who. in fact, attempt to make decisions for the local boards at the national level.

Let me move to the areas of control that I think are less clouded, the practical areas of control, the areas that we face in the day-to-day operations of school districts in this Nation.

There has recently been in the case of Model Cities and in proposed legislation to do with general revenue sharing a movement toward the

funneling of Federal funds to local agencies other than school districts, funds which ultimately are used in the educational system.

There have been serious practical problems, mind you, not basic differences in philosophy between administrative units, but practical difficulties in dealing with funding. The problem is particularly acute where the local education agencies are independent, fiscal entities.

Of the 50 large school districts, 37 of those districts, like my own district in Houston, are fiscally independent school districts. By State statute and State constitutional mandate, these districts have been created as independent bodies and, as such, are responsible for the expenditures of funds.

Whenever we receive funds from a local agency, such as a municipality, and expend those funds for educational programs, we have to pass those funds through our normal accounting procedures.

For districts our size, the phase lag, the system lag, the time it takes for processing, board approval, administrative review, is approximately 30 days. When that time is coupled with the time for the municipality's approval processes, the total time is approximately doubled to 2 months. If there are any problems along the way, if for example the city council or the school board has some questions that require modification of the proposal, the process can take many months.

Let me cite a particular instance. A program proposed by the Houston Independent School District to be funded by Model Cities was the ongoing education of pregnant girls-a program of critical need in the Houston School District. We made the proposal in July of 1970, and did not receive from the city of Houston a letter to proceed until April 23, 1971, when there was only a 5-week period of the school year remaining for implementation of this program.

There was no particular problem with the city's approval of this program nor the school district's but needed modifications in the program, location sites, funding levels, et cetera, took three-quarters of a year to obtain final approval processing.

The control that is involved is of utmost necessity, but the very fact that it must pass through all these control agencies limits the speed with which we can implement programs.

The problem in this process is that comptrollers whose duty it is to approve payment of bills only if they meet their interpretation of the mandates of the law-local, State, and Federal-there are always variations in interpretation and hence considerable amounts of time are used in resolving these differences in interpretation.

If we want systems that efficiently deliver education to youngsters, then we must have a single controlling agency. Hence, I would urge this committee, when it is considering alternative funding procedures to those currently adopted, to seriously consider the practical problems and that these funds be given directly to school districts for their use. in the design of educational programs that meet the local needs.

There is a facet of control, a sensitive area, one that is probably as politically landmined as the discussion of local control, and that is the role of decisionmaking with respect to program funding.

Unfortunately, many school districts throughout this Nation have excluded meaningful involvement of parents in decisions concerning