In fiscal years 1972 and 1973, at least 54 State agencies (50 States plus 4 outlying territories) and 304 institutions of higher education have participated in manpower preparation. 1 In the tables for fiscal years 1972 and 1973, the physical education and recreation training program was not included in the totals. In tables for fiscal year 1974 it is. Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much, Dr. Dinger, for a comprehensive and thoughtful and illuminating statement. I wonder if I could put a few questions to you. You speak of the great need for support of the education of handicapped children. Could you tell us what States are now spending for special educational programs for handicapped children? Dr. DINGER. This is provided in one of our appendixes. Mr. Weintraub might answer that. Mr. WEINTRAUB. If you refer to appendix A of the statement, you will see a comparison, this is fiscal year 1972, of total State education. expenditures and total State special education expenditures by State and then the percentage of general education funds that are spent on Our estimate is that it will cost, in order to educate all handicapped children, it will cost approximately $7 billion. We are now spending somewhere in the neighborhood of slightly over $2 to $3 billion on these programs. Mr. BRADEMAS. I might ask at this point, unanimous consent to insert in the record the text of two articles in the March 1973 issue of Learning magazine. One of the articles is entitled "Public Education for the and then the rest of the article title is in braille, so I will have to have somebody interpret that for me. That article is by Louis Dolinar. And another article by Michael Alexander, "Let Me Learn With the Other Kids," from the same journal, contains a chart entitled, "Our State and the Handicapped Child." [The articles referred to follow:] [From Learning, March 1973] PUBLIC by Louis Dolinar Ancient Sparta left its handicapped children on mountainsides to starve or be killed by wild animals or the elements. America has disposed of the problem by institutionalizing such children or allowing them to languish in their parents' homes. Handicapped children have long been one of this society's visible and most neglected minorities. As late as 1971, according to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, less than half of the nation's six million school-age physically and mentally handicapped were getting special education. Of the other three million, more than one million were receiving no education at all. The remaining two million were shunted into ordinary public school classes, where they quickly fell behind their classmates, dropped out and became a new generation of welfare cases and social misfits. Teachers and school administrators all too often have sought to exclude the child who is different, arguing, in effect, as the Wisconsin State Board of Education did in 1919, that they produce a "depressing and nauseating effect on the teachers and school children" and demand "an undue portion of the teacher's time and attention." Some states have provided certain caretaker services, but only for the most serious mental or physical problems. Those with lesser prob In fiscal years 1972 and 1973, at least 54 State agencies (50 States plus 4 outlying territories) and 304 institutions of higher education have participated in manpower preparation. 1 In the tables for fiscal years 1972 and 1973, the physical education and recreation training program was not included in the totals. In tables for fiscal year 1974 it is. Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much, Dr. Dinger, for a comprehensive and thoughtful and illuminating statement. I wonder if I could put a few questions to you. You speak of the great need for support of the education of handicapped children. Could you tell us what States are now spending for special educational programs for handicapped children? Dr. DINGER. This is provided in one of our appendixes. Mr. Weintraub might answer that. Mr. WEINTRAUB. If you refer to appendix A of the statement, you will see a comparison, this is fiscal year 1972, of total State education expenditures and total State special education expenditures by State and then the percentage of general education funds that are spent on Our estimate is that it will cost, in order to educate all handicapped children, it will cost approximately $7 billion. We are now spending somewhere in the neighborhood of slightly over $2 to $3 billion on these programs. Mr. BRADEMAS. I might ask at this point, unanimous consent to insert in the record the text of two articles in the March 1973 issue of Learning magazine. One of the articles is entitled "Public Education for the . ." and then the rest of the article title is in braille, so I will have to have somebody interpret that for me. ... That article is by Louis Dolinar. And another article by Michael Alexander, "Let Me Learn With the Other Kids," from the same journal, contains a chart entitled, "Our State and the Handicapped Child." [The articles referred to follow:] [From Learning, March 1973] PUBLIC by Louis Dolinar Ancient Sparta left its handicapped children on mountainsides to starve or be killed by wild animals or the elements. America has disposed of the problem by institutionalizing such children or allowing them to languish in their parents' homes. Handicapped children have long been one of this society's visible and most neglected minorities. As late as 1971, according to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, less than half of the nation's six million school-age physically and mentally handicapped were getting special education. Of the other three million, more than one million were receiving no education at all. The remaining two million were shunted into ordinary public school classes, where they quickly fell behind their classmates, dropped out and became a new generation of welfare cases and social misfits. Teachers and school administrators all too often have sought to exclude the child who is different, arguing, in effect, as the Wisconsin State Board of Education did in 1919, that they produce a "depressing and nauseating effect on the teachers and school children" and demand "an undue portion of the teacher's time and attention." Some states have provided certain caretaker services, but only for the most serious mental or physical problems. Those with lesser prob available unsophisticated tests, and teachers have remained unaware of why such children had learning difficulties. Public education, in sum, has missed and mistreated the handicapped. That situation is changing rapidly, and most rapidly in the last year. Court decisions and/or legislation in 43 states mandate public education for the mentally and physically handicapped. Moreover, special education has been described as one of the top priorities of the Nixon administration, and Undersecretary of Education Sidney Marland has vowed that all three million handicapped children currently neglected or ignored by the public schools will be receiving adequate care and training by 1980. As Robert Lucky, an official for the National Association for Retarded Children, put it: "Nobody wants to be against public education for the handicapped any longer. It's as bad as being against mom and apple pie." Because legislation and court actions have evolved on a state-by-state basis, the commitment to special education varies widely in different regions, and even in different school districts within a region. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that in the next two years, thousands of teachers for whom the assignment will be a new experience will face the challenge of teaching the mentally and physically handicapped in the regular classroom. Walk down any street in your home town. Knock on ten doors and the statistics say that behind at least one of them, you will find a child with mental or physical handicaps of sufficient seriousness to keep him from learning in a regular school environment. The child you find could be an "EMR"-educable mentally retarded-with an IQ slightly below the normal range. While abstract concepts may come slowly to him, with special training and support he can probably be integrated into your classroom and eventually acquire the skills he will need to become self-supporting. Without that attention, he faces a life on the public dole. There are nearly a million and a half kids like him, some receiving care and education, some not. Or he could be physically handicapped. A bright kid, maybe, but with defective speech, hearing, eyesight or motor control. Something as simple as a hearing aid could get him back into the classroom, but if he's sitting at home, it's not likely the school doctors will have identified his problem. He's probably been labeled "mentally retarded" and excluded from the normal educational process. There are more than three million like him. Or he could be a "TMR"-trainable mentally retarded. He has severe learning problems and will never go to a regular public school. With special attention, he may be able to become at least partially self-supporting. As things stand today, however, he and the 300,000 like him face a life of institutionalization and neglect. Reduced to financial terms alone, the impact of the entry of these children into the mainstream of education will be tremendous. According to one study directed by Richard Rossmiller for the National Educational Finance Project, the price tag for a modest program of training and services for handicapped children could run as high as $10 billion a year-and that on top of an annual national education expenditure of $86 billion, or 8.2 percent of the gross national product. More serious, perhaps, this added financial burden will fall unevenly on different states, depending mostly on how much they already spend on a combination of special education, caretaker programs and welfare. A few states, when they take a hard look, may even save money. Rhode Island for example, has always provided comprehensive care and institutionalization for handicapped children, but until recently, offered them little or no education. In 1971, the Rhode Island Association for Retarded Children presented the state legislature with figures showing that a program for 57 then-institutionalized children could have enabled them to become at least partially self-supporting. Because over a ten-year period the state would save at least two million dollars in institutionalization and welfare costs, the legislature responded by passing one of the most comprehensive special-education programs in the country. At the far end of the scale from Rhode Island is Tennessee. Until 1972, there was no statewide legislation for the handicapped in Tennessee. Half the counties had no programs at all; in the rest, the quality of services was generally low. Under a 1971 legislative act, the state must provide public education for 17,000 to 20,000 handicapped children. Unlike Rhode Island, Tennessee spends little on caretaker programs and so has no readily available funds to divert to special education. For a program comparable to Rhode Island's, Tennessee will have to |