Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Subcommittee on Elementary, Secondary, and Vocational Education to provide testimony relative to the President's Youth Initiative under CETA.

I

You will recall that Mr. Fred Schultz, Deputy Superintendent for
Elementary and Secondary Education, delivered our testimony.
would like to take this opportunity to provide more specific reactions
to the draft bill.

First of all, let me say that I am excited about the possibility of
having the resources to serve this target population. We have
recognized for several years that this group of students needed
additional services which we simply were unable to provide because
of a shortage of resources. This bill has the possibility of pro-
viding some of those resources.

Secondly, let me congratulate the drafters of the document for identify-
ing a role for the State Department of Education in both the basic
skills component and the vocational education component. It is not
my philosophy that state agencies should add on additional regulations
or in any way be a hindrance to local initiative and innovation, but
I do believe that with all of the various programs directed toward
improving education, it is necessary to have some degree of coordination
at the state level. This bill provides for that coordination, and I
believe we will be able to provide a very vital service to local school
districts in this area.

Thirdly, the bill talks about the need for innovation and the develop-
ment of new concepts to meet the needs of this target population.
That, too, is to be commended. However, the drafters of the bill
have gotten so specific in many areas that it seems unlikely that
much innovation or creativity will be possible. I would recommend
that the final version give much less emphasis to spelling out pro-
cesses to be utilized and provide more emphasis on identifying target
populations, planning, and evaluation and leave the development of
implementation processes to state and local officials.

The Honorable Carl D. Perkins
Page 2

March 18, 1980

Subpart 3 of Title II of the draft limits the in-school vocational
program to the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. In my opinion,
this will in effect eliminate any in-school program. In Kentucky,
most of the target population has dropped out of school by the
tenth grade and would be considered in the out-of-school program.
It seems extremely important to me to change this limitation and
back up to grade seven to begin the in-school effort. This will
not only assure the school system an opportunity to reach these
people before they drop out of school, but will also provide better
linkages with our successful efforts in ESEA, Title I, at the
elementary grade levels.

I believe it is equally important to be able to use the vocational grants in these lower grade levels. We have a practical arts program in Kentucky which we feel has tremendous potential for capturing the interest of and serving the needs of this target group population. The practical arts curriculum is somewhat similar to the manual arts training which was successful in the early development of public education in Kentucky. I believe this program has a great deal to offer these students and could be provided through the resources of this law.

The process described to be used to identify eligible schools is very cumbersome and in my opinion cannot be implemented in school districts that have desegregation plans or court ordered busing. Again, I can't see where this detailed process accomplishes anything in terms of quality and creativity and will only create problems for local school districts. I would suggest that the funds be focused on school districts and the law not deal at all with the process of identifying schools within a district.

If you need additional information or further clarification of these issues, please feel free to contact me or any member of my staff. Again, thank you for the opportunity to react to this proposal.

Sincerely,

Raymund Barker

Raymond Barber

Superintendent of Public Instruction

ejk

HEARINGS ON THE PRESIDENT'S YOUTH EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT INITIATIVE

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1980

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELEMENTARY, SECONDARY,

AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION,

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met at 9:40 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Carl D. Perkins (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Members present: Representatives Perkins, Ford, Murphy, Kildee, Williams, Hawkins, Goodling, Buchanan, Erdahl, and Hinson.

Staff present: John F. Jennings, counsel; Nancy Kober, staff assistant; Richard DiEugenio, minority legislative associate; and Jennifer Vance, minority senior legislative associate.

Chairman PERKINS. The committee will come to order to continue the hearings on the President's youth initiative program.

We are glad to welcome back to the Committee on Education and Labor, Mr. Albert Shanker, who has been before the committee on numerous occasions, and who very ably represents the American Federation of Teachers. He has done a wonderful job up in the State of New York. And Dr. Arthur Jefferson, general superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools.

You go ahead, Mr. Shanker. It is a great pleasure to see you here again.

STATEMENT OF ALBERT SHANKER, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, AFL-CIO

Mr. SHANKER. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee: My name is Albert Shanker, and I am president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. Our union represents over 550,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, and health care workers, all of whom have a very direct concern with Federal programs for youth. You have before you written prepared testimony, which I do not intend to read. I will, in this presentation, highlight a number of the points that are made in the written testimony.

First, there is no question that there is a continuing need and a growing need for programs in this area. The figures in the last few years on the percentage of youth unemployed, especially in major cities around the country, are indeed alarming figures. With the rising interest rates, and the expected belt-tightening designed to cool off inflation, we can expect that there will be an increase in unemployment. As we know, the increase will be disproportionate

in terms of youth, and more disproportionate still in terms of those youngsters who have not acquired basic skills.

We, also, of course, have a further problem in that our public schools tend to have largely academic orientation, and both in terms of Federal dollars and higher education assistance. In terms of what the public schools do, there is a much greater emphasis on helping those youngsters who are college-bound than non-collegebound youngsters. In that latter group, those without specific skills really do get much less, not only in the way of attention, but in the way of dollars and programs aimed at them.

I have been watching in recent years, with the development of YEDPA and various ČETA programs, these developments with mixed feelings. On the one hand, we have supported these programs because they, obviously, filled a vacuum and provided programs that were needed. On the other hand, many of these programs were not geared to provide the best possible for the target population.

We were very much concerned with the fact that many of these programs provided low-level, dead-end type of jobs, which would lead nowhere for the individuals. We were also very concerned that some of these programs provided incentives for youngsters to drop out of school.

After all, if you had a high school spending, let us say, $2,000 on a child, and across the street was a new program, fully federally funded, provided a program that spent $7,500, and in some cases providing a stipend for the student to attend, it did not take much to say to that student: "You would be a heck of a lot better if you dropped out of public school, and walked across the street where you can be in a class that is a lot smaller, where the rules will be somewhat different, and where you will actually be paid for going to school."

The thing that troubled me most over this period of time is that here we were aware of a problem, a massive problem, a growing one, one with great explosive potential, yet we were waiting until the youngster dropped out, waiting until there was this great evidence of failure, and then we developed these programs to go out and look for them, to bring them back into some sort of training program.

The youngsters who end up in these programs are identifiable. Their teachers know who they are. Their guidance counselors know who they are. The school systems do, in many cases. Parents and community people do. They don't just develop these failures at the age of 15 or 14, or 16, 17, or 18.

They can be spotted in junior high school and high school, and it makes sense to give a major role to public schools in this country to identify these youngsters and to provide special programs which emphasize the basic skills which are necessary for any kind of decent employment in our society, and also programs which emphasize some knowledge of jobs available in the job market.

Therefore, the proposed legislation is an excellent step in the right direction. I am here to support it. I am also here, however, to point out some of the aspects of this legislation which I believe will create problems, and the hope that in your deliberations there will be some modifications before the legislation is adopted.

Once upon a time, the Federal role in education was to target certain programs and provide finances. Recently, especially in such programs as education for all handicapped, what we get are Federal mandates, and not very much Federal money, then a lot of Federal overseeing, which prods local school systems to do the job that the Federal Government has mandated that the local governments do.

Finally, if the local schools are unable to fulfill these mandates properly because of inadequate funding, along come the courts and sometimes the Federal yelling and screaming that the public schools have been unable to do the job properly. Therefore, we have to fund other institutions outside the public school system to do the job which the public schools have not done properly.

Of course, when these outside institutions are given a shot at it, they are generally provided with more funds than the public schools are provided to fulfill the same mandate. Simultaneously, they are also less regulated than the public schools are, and given a much broader latitude.

Now, I fear that those very problems are built into the proposed legislation. In this testimony I cite one example, and I could cite others, of a storefront remedial education operation which exemplifies some of these contradictions. The classes are segregated, something which would not be permitted in the public schools. The building would not pass the local building inspection, much less meet the needs of handicapped youngsters.

The young people receiving remedial education there must conform to a monthly point system, and the youngsters get negative points if they fail to do their homework, come to school late, are disruptive or disobey various rules. Anyone who gets eight points in a month must leave the school, and is either dropped out or pushed out, and that rate is 50 percent.

Now just think of what would happen if any public school did that. The public school would be viewed as being in violation of the Civil Rights Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Education for All Handicapped Act, and various Supreme Court decisions dealing with due process rights for students. This particular storefront school is funded by YEDPA.

What we frequently deal with is a double standard. We create an image of schools not doing a job, when actually what we are doing is telling the schools to do three, or four, or five times as much of a job as what we then turn over to some private agency, and we don't hold the private agency to any of these obligations.

I would ask that you carefully look over this proposed legislation to see to it that local education agencies are not treated as inferior institutions, are not provided with the funding which is less than others, and are not provided with a set of rules and regulations, and obligations which they must adhere to which are greater than that for other agencies.

I was at a conference recently that dealt with youth unemployment, and I heard quite a few speeches about the terrible job that the public schools were doing, and the wonderful job that other agencies were doing in exactly the same area. I stopped a number of the speakers at the end of their speech, and I raised the ques