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means the only problems in education-there will always be more but they have been so clearly pointed out and so thoroughly documented that Congress must act now or be derelict in its responsibilities. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 reaffirmed the Federal Government's responsibility to support education which is so fundamental to the democratic process. Surely, the Federal Government of one Nation, indivisible, does not need to be self-conscious about playing its role in education. Educational problems do not conveniently stop at State lines, but rather affect our whole national welfare. Let me point out that we are entirely in agreement that the States and localities have primary responsibility for the operation of our school systems and that nobody is trying to foist Federal control upon our schools.

Our proposals will actually strengthen local control since they are intended to assure more adequate funds and better schools in which communities might take real pride. What is at stake here is not Federal control, but Federal responsibility to promote the national welfare. The recognition of local responsibility, however, does not mean that the Federal Government shall stand by and permit the Nation's education systems to deteriorate, its teachers to become demoralized, and many of its qualified youth to be denied opportunity for higher education-all in the name of some ill-defined principle.

The wealth of the Nation is not evenly spread across the States and localities. Shall we then penalize some American child because he or she has not had the foresight to be born into a wealthy State or community? Shall we, for that matter, extract penalties from the children because some parents refuse to approve local bond issues for better schools?

Your committee has before it bills which recognize the Federal responsibility while protecting local and State control. The bill introduced before the Senate by Senator Murray (S. 2) and now before your committee, would provide grants directly to the States for either school construction or teachers' pay. This bill maintains completely the principle of local control while recognizing the Federal responsibility.

This principle is also recognized in the bill introduced by Senator Javits (S. 863), also before your committee, and in the bill of Senator McNamara (S. 8). Because the Murray bill provides wider latitude for the States, the Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO, considers it the most satisfactory bill and urges the retention of its principles.

You do not need any briefing on the classroom shortage in this country. This need has been so carefully documented by the U.S. Office of Education that anyone with the least curiosity on this subject can recite the figures. The danger is that we will become so accustomed to the shortage that we take it for granted. We must keep reminding ourselves that this figure of 140,000 needed classrooms means 5 million children in overcrowded or unsafe and unsanitary schools, or attending split sessions, or waiting to go to schools that do not yet exist. This is a state of affairs that we must never get used to.

Some critics of school building programs say we have gone too far in our emphasis on school construction and that we should be concerned, instead, with the quality of education. But right here in

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the District of Columbia we have the best answer to that false argument. District school officials have been striving to reach a 30-pupil classroom and have been stymied in their efforts by the growing school enrollment. In addition, some pupils still have to attend split sessions because of a lack of classrooms.

It is not possible to have quality in education when a teacher's classroom is jammed to the walls with active pupils, or when pupils are required to attend split sessions. Classrooms in sufficient number to house moderate-sized classes are absolutely essential to quality education.

The critics of construction should talk to teachers or observe a few classes if they think quality can be achieved without reference to space and class size.

In fact, District School Superintendent Carl Hansen was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that he attributes rising pupil achievement levels here primarily to a reduction in teaching loads. This is the answer for those who genuinely want to create the conditions that make for quality.

What does this problem look like on the national scale in terms of money outlays needed? The Office of Education estimated the cost per classroom at $40,000, or a total of $5.6 billion. This amount is needed to wipe out the backlog alone. It would not provide for construction that must take place if we are to win the race with our population explosion.

The Murray bill (S. 2) would go furthest in meeting construction needs. This bill would provide $25 per schoolchild for the first year for either construction or teachers' pay, and would provide larger annual grants until a level of $100 per schoolchild is reached. At the outset, this bill would provide $1.1 billion for our schools and the amounts would rise to $4.7 billion in the fourth year.

The Murray bill can hardly be called a crash program in view of the need. Passage of this bill is long overdue. It is aid without too many strings where aid is badly needed. Each day that this measure is put off means more children without adequate education facilities.

Senator Javits' proposal for $400 million annually on a matching basis is constructive and the IUD is happy to hail this expression of GOP liberalism from the Senator from New York.

We do not feel, however, that the Javits program goes far enough or that it is comprehensive enough in scope. We feel also that some States would use the matching requirement on construction that is involved as an excuse for not participating fully in the program. We feel also that the McNarama bill represents a sincere effort to meet the problem of school construction but that like the Javits bill, it is too limited.

Aggregate figures tend to obscure the vast differences from one school district to another, in terms of classroom need. Some school districts have been able to come fairly well abreast of their needs, while others, where the need is greatest, have been unable to build because the tax base just did not exist.

The Murray-Metcalf distribution formula gets at this problem by dividing funds among the States on the basis of school-age population and within the individual States among school districts "which in terms of the economic resources available to them are least able to

finance the cost of needed school facilities." The Javits bill's distribution formula takes account of both school-age population in each State and the income per child of school age in each State. Within each State, it provides for distribution to districts on the basis of financial resources, effort, and urgency of need as measured by overcrowding and use of unsafe and obsolete facilities.

The basic purpose of legislation for school construction must be to meet the urgent need for classrooms. This is so important as to need no further justification. Construction legislation will, however, serve secondary purposes which should not be minimized in a period of slackness in our economy. With unemployment well over 4 million, the stimulant to economic activity from school construction on a significant scale should not be ignored. Although industrial workers are not directly involved in construction, they make the raw materials the steel, cement, other building materials, and furniturewhich go into the school buildings and classrooms. It is difficult to think of any project which is more desirable economically and more useful socially than school construction, and we urge your prompt action on this matter.

The Federal Government so far has confined itself to issuing reports on the low level of teachers' pay. That is scarcely enough. I will not subject you to a dreary and depressing recital of the figures since you know them all too well. It is a measure of the distance there is to go in teachers' salaries that top educators can speak with absolute seriousness about doubling salaries to attract and keep the best talent and the best minds in our country.

Industrial workers are astounded at the thought that the average teacher makes less than $95 a week, in spite of long and costly professional training which must be continued year after year. They know that you cannot keep the best teachers at that figure, and that the good ones who stay are cruelly exploited.

In the value we put on the services of our teachers, we display, for all the world to see, the sense of values of our society. We are a sick society, indeed, if we put education below liquor, tobacco, and advertising in our list of national needs. And it is a sad day if Congress sees fit to vote money for test tubes and Bunsen burners, as it did last year, but remains silent on the question of teachers' salaries.

The Industrial Union Department favors the approach to teachers' salaries included in the Murray bill, since it permits grants to be used for either teachers' pay or school construction. We urge inclusion of this provision in any bill reported out by your committee. We commend the approach in the Javits bill but feel that the amounts it would provide-ranging from $100 million in fiscal 1959, graduated up to $250 million in 1962 are inadequate in the face of today's realities.

The third major area of education need is scholarships to expand opportunity for higher education. The administration appears to have lost its voice on scholarships this year, although it was vocal in proposing them last year.

The most serious stain on the American record in providing educational opportunity has been in education beyond the high school. We have been led astray by our concern in recent years with the lack

of opportunity in primary and secondary schools for the so-called "gifted child"-that 2 or 3 percent who approach the genius level. Although there is no question that these children should be developed to their full capacity, we have overlooked much greater loss in another direction.

I speak of the 100,000 high school graduates in the top quarter of their classes who cannot go on to college each year for financial reasons. And there are now an additional 100,000 high school students of high ability who drop out of school each year for reasons that are at least partly financial. This is a runoff of educational talent that is truly shocking and cannot be tolerated when the very survival of the democratic process is at stake.

In the whole field of education, we have been living off our capital. The major breakthroughs in American education came in the early part of the 19th century with free public education and with its extension into high school with compulsory attendance late in that century. But no major breakthrough has come in this century, and there is no reason for us to believe that the developments of 70 years ago will suffice today. Why should we assume that compulsory education to age 16 or 17 is adequate to meet the demands of the atomic age? Why do we not take the steps necessary to make education beyond the high school as natural and normal as high school has become?

We must face the fact that for many students a college education means more than the provision of low or free tuition. The junior college movement should be expanded, as we were glad to see President Eisenhower suggest. Community and municipal colleges and technical schools beyond the high school should be developed. But these measures by themselves will not provide the stimulant that is needed to develop our best minds on the broadest possible scale.

The Industrial Union Department believes that broad scholarship aid for higher education is essential. A recent study by the Ford Foundation showed public college costs to stand at $1,500 a year and private college costs at $2,000, and noted that these costs will zoom in the years ahead.

Loans have been put forward as a solution. This may sound like a good investment to those who know the average income of college graduates versus that of high school graduates. But how does it look to the son or daughter of a worker where there is already pressure to become self-supporting if not to contribute to the family's maintenance?

This student, who may have exceptional intellectual ability, must still make the choice of foregoing substantial income for 4 years and at the same time accumulating a debt of $4,000 with interest on the loan to begin after graduation.

This sum is the maximum that can be borrowed under the loan provisions of the National Defense Education Act of 1958. The rest of the cost of college must be made up from odd jobs and family contributions. There is no question that many students of top-flight ability would be deterred from pursuing their studies, in the face of such a prospect. This would be a loss to our whole society at a time when ability can ill be spared. Those who bemoan the lack of opportunity for the gifted child should ponder these figures carefully.

It is time that we enunciate an education bill of rights that says every student who is intellectually capable and willing to work may pursue his studies as far as his gifts will carry him. It is time that ability, and not ability to pay, shall become the passport to educational opportunity. It is time to remove all means tests that make higher education the province of those who parents can afford it.

The Humphrey bill-S. 1088-is the only proposal that deals with this problem on the scale that it deserves. We support enthusiastically its provisions for $46 million for scholarships the first year, rising in the fourth year and thereafter to $184 million for scholarships. This bill should be enacted without delay.

You have other scholarship proposals before you, many of them meritorious. They suffer from the defect, however, of limiting scholarship aid to science, language, mathematics, or some specialized field.

The AFL-CIO policy is that scholarship aid should be general, and the IUD affirms its support for that position. Education in social science and the humanities is every bit as important to the good life as the physical sciences and the temporary upsurge of interest in technology should not obscure this fundamental premise.

I do not feel that the question of higher education can be divorced from the other major problems of education.

I am certain that your committee, having examined the problems, will take an overall view of the Nation's educational needs.

The administration's proposal for aid to education-S. 1016-makes a mockery of the Federal responsibility. This proposal allegedly would provide $100 million a year over the next 25 years. It would establish a means test upon communities which could then get funds from the State and Federal Governments to meet debt service and principal charges in some cases for new school construction.

Exactly how these needy communities would be selected is not clear. Not even the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare seemed able to clarify its intent, except in vague terms of getting a few classrooms built. It is hard to believe it is offered with serious intent; in fact, it was called in the press a counterattack on other pending bills. But let me point out that the enemy is not the rival education bills but the deplorable lack of educational facilities and standards, and any bill which does not have that purpose should get short work here.

Once again the administration is showing its willingness to unbalance the national welfare budget to maintain a fictional Federal budget balance. When the obsession with inflation is applied to school construction and teacher salaries, the shortsightedness and sacrifice of the Nation's future should be apparent to all.

The Murray bill and others before you have been called inflationary, yet the only way the Nation can create the real wealth to overcome the ills of inflation is by moving ahead boldly to develop a skilled body of workers and managers through an improved educational system. There is a grave danger that the pennypinching approach that denies a real Federal responsibility in the area of education will create a deflation of the worst kind-a deflation of the Nation's intellectual caliber. That deflation will be far more costly in years to come than any costs incurred by adoption of S. 2 and S. 1088. We urge your committee to send these bills to the floor of the Senate without substantive changes.

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