But, still and all, ours is a question of providing schools. Along with the migration of children has come a migration of teacher talent. It is a very desirable place to live and we have people coming in who are qualified to be teachers. They do need some orientation programs and so on.

We have had the benefit of the Ford Foundation program, which has been a great help in our area. The people who have, or come very close to having the qualifications and just need further filling in, have profited by this program. We have acquired some teachers that way. The State also has a program. It is making more flexible its teacher requirements or teacher specifications.

Mr. BAILEY. If the gentleman from New Jersey will permit me to interrupt, your major problem seems to be one of classroom construction?

Mr. KASEM. Right now it is our acquisition problem. Of course, paying teachers' salaries is a backbreaker for us. That is a difficult kind of question to answer, and I am sure you will appreciate it. I do not know what to liken it to, but school buildings and schoolteachers go together. One without the other is not much good. Our problem is basically money.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. There is no necessarily hinging between teachers and the classrooms so far as the role of the Federal Government is concerned, and I think you will agree with me there.

Mr. KASEM. No, only insofar as making funds available.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. If there should be an amputation from your own bill of the provision to subsidize teachers—there are some people who would like to see Federal programs without any subsidy for teachers' salaries-you would still feel that it would be of great usefulness to your State and your congressional district, I assume?

Mr. KASEM. Most surely, if we are relieved of the financial burden in one area it enables us to do a better job in another area.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This is the only other question I would like to ask you about:

I am wondering in what way, if we should be able to get a billiondollar-a-year program through, you think your district might be helped that it could not be helped now.

As I understood your testimony, you recognize that this money is going to come from Californians' pockets. You did say that you have already tapped every possible source of revenue and you listed the various revenues in it.

It is for that reason that you are turning to Washington. But you are not turning to Washington because you are going to tap someone else's pocket. You realize that California will put at least as much out as it is going to get back, so it is not that you are going to get a new source of revenue by turning to Washington.

So it is possible, I should think, you might tap your own pocket and distribute it where you think it is needed most.

What interests me is why you think a program of this kind, which does not attempt to pinpoint need at all, will be of great value to an area which you describe as unique in the country because of the depth of its need.

I would think you would like something which would pinpoint the problem more directly. You might get it through State programs or

you might get it through a program which does not diffuse it as widely as your own bill proposes.

Mr. KASEM. I think I understand the gist of your question. Since we will acquire in the net no additional source of revenue by an appeal to the Federal Government, why would I not be more pleased to have one that is specifically directed to our need there on a State level?

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Two questions, either a State program that specifically attempts to adjust to the problems that you have, or a Federal program, at least an attempt to pinpoint it to the area of greatest need.

Mr. KASEM. To the first one, school construction is a long-range proposition and is paid for over a long-range deal, over a long-range financial arrangement.

Neither the State of California, nor any State so far as that goes, is in as good a position to perform this function as is the Federal Government.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Which function is that?

Mr. KASEM. The function of arranging for this long-range financing for our schools. At least it does not appear to me to be that way. Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Your bill is not going to arrange for any long-range financing. It is going to help with dollar amounts per child. It is the administration program that will arrange for longrange financing.

Mr. KASEM. That is true, your point is well taken.

Our bill will not do that, but our bill will increase our overall financial ability which will put us in a better position to do it.

Now, partly I am motivated in this appeal to Federal help from my point of view I could go into a very long discourse of how I feel this is a Nation and there is national responsibility and the concern of each part of the country has for the other part of the country on educational standards-I cannot divorce our problem in our district from the needs for education in the Vermont and Mississippi districts and we are going to be making these contributions and we want— at least I want, and I think the people of my district want-by virtue of the fact that they elected me and this was a hot issue in our campaign—an overall national program.

I think, in many respects, they feel that the Federal Government, with an overall countrywide program, will be more dependable, will be able to spread out a base for education.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You say a Federal program does not need to pinpoint to areas of need. You are advocating not doing that? Mr. KASEM. NO. In fact, I am advocating just the opposite when I say the Federal Government would spread out a base. That would mean that those areas that would fall below it would be automatically pinpointed as being brought up to that base.

The mere fact that the money will be available and has to be used will improve these areas which we might call subdesirable.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I am not sure I understand. Are you suggesting that the Federal money should only be made available to the communities which have made, or are making a reasonable tax effort? Should we take that kind of factor into consideration?

Mr. KASEM. Well, I feel that every effort should be put in a Federal program to create some incentives so that the local effort does not lag.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Your bill does not have that.

Mr. KASEM. Our bill has in it the index, the school effort index system, which I will quite frankly admit that I do not thoroughly understand. I made some inquiry into it. It may be that in this area we can stand vast improvement, but there is an effort there to try to insure that the local communities and the States will not at least diminish their efforts as they have to date, and to relate the ability of the State to the amount of contribution, the ability of the State and the effort that it makes in reference to its ability.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This is where we get into the tangle quite frankly, Mr. Kasem, or have in the past year. How do we develop a formula that is workable with the ability of the State or the effort. If we try to pinpoint that kind of thing we get into a problem.

As I understood, the simplicity of your approach is that it avoids the necessity for that kind of determination.

Mr. KASEM. Well, I was referring now to my bill where it makes reference to the national effort school index. The State school effort index is the quotient so that we will be more specific in our discussion-obtained by dividing the revenue for schools per public schoolchild for the State by the personal income per child of school age for the State.

I do not see how anything could be more logical. You take the gross income of the State, divide it by the number of schoolchildren, and the result would be the measuring stick.

Then, of course, out of that how much is spent per child would be the measuring stick of what that State is doing.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. That kind of formula gives you no assurance so far as your own school district is concerned that will be recognition of the problem in that district, does it?

Mr. KASEM. No. The only thing that this thing does so far as I can see is that it shows that if our own efforts are lagging we will lose our right.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. In other words, you really think that is a good idea, that you think there should be some penalty, if sufficient effort has not been made and some reward if sufficient effort has been made?

Mr. KASEM. I regret that it is necessary, but I feel that it is necessary.

I think that is the best way that I can put it.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Now, you talked about the Federal role as perhaps being a long-range one. I wonder if you have taken a look at the administration's proposals, which are based on a long-range partnership arrangement with the State to guarantee the debt service of bonds to be issued by the school district.

Mr. KASEM. Only in the most general way, I am familiar with these programs, or with this idea of guaranteeing bonds.

I would say that I am against that idea. I just feel that from experiences in the past and so on these things seem to have, and here I may make a statement that I cannot properly defend at the moment, a financier's flavor to them; they seem to be sort of designed to assist the financial houses in selling bonds and paying interest.

Well, anyway, the National Education Association, I believe, has answered this.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Your State does not have any other way of financing schools except by issuing bonds, does it?

Mr. KASEM. Well, there are other ways. Through our State program we have a State aid to education program. Now, if we could have something of this nature, why, naturally it would enlarge the capacity of that considerably by just enlarging our ability to repay

the bonds.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. As I understand it, California has the same kind of program that the administration is now proposing at the Federal level. California and Michigan, as I understand it, are the two States which have programs which are presently working, I had thought, pretty well to assist the local communities to finance their own bonds.

Mr. KASEM. We do have such a program.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You have already said you would not be necessarily opposed to a program on the Federal level to help out.

Mr. KASEM. No. I do not see that they are mutually exclusive at all, the approach that we take in our bill, nor the approach that is taken by the administration. It rests in part on the extent of the overall effort that it is felt the Federal Government should make.

Perhaps we could have both modified. I am principally interested in that something be done and be done soon.

I admit this one appeals to me because it is direct, it immediately would start to render assistance.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. The only trouble, Mr. Kasem, and as a newcomer you perhaps are not aware of the fact of the trouble, the more ambitious the program, the broader it is, the more things it is going to solve in the way of helping out on teachers' salaries, the more difficulty you are going to have in enacting legislation.

It is for that reason I think we should consider the possibility of something more modest, less financial drain on the Treasury, getting into fewer areas of activity, in other words, teachers' salaries, in an effort to get something enacted, to get a Federal program started of a general nature. It is for that reason that I am pointing out we should close our minds to the advisability of looking to the more ambitious programs, knowing that the more modest program will be more acceptable to the people who are going to vote on, and the President whọ is going to sign, the bill.

Mr. KASEM. I quite agree with you that we have to look at the practicalities of the legislative problems that we are confronted with, that is getting a program through.

Because of the particular need in my district, perhaps I am a little overemphatic. I do not present myself as being well informed upon this subject at all.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Nonetheless you have made a most interesting witness, Mr. Kasem.

Mr. KASEM. It is my job of course, to get well informed on this and you have pointed out that I am kind of new around here. I am too new to have gotten the amount of information that I need to make a proper presentation here, but I am not so new that I do not appreciate the truth of your observation about the practicalities of leaving the

way open and to consider what might be acceptable alternatives on a modification basis.

On this particular point is probably where I would be the least value to you as a witness except to point out, as I did before, that in my district it is my own impression that school buildings and school construction would have to have priority over the schoolteacher problem, keeping in mind, as I said before, it is very difficult to keep divorced the particular elements of education.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Kasem.

Mr. KASEM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of the committee.

Mr. BAILEY. The Chair at this point will recognize a member of the staff to offer some material for inclusion in the record.

Mr. McCORD. Mr. Chairman, a statement has been submitted from the National Association of Manufacturers with request that it be made a part of the record of these hearings.

Mr. BAILEY. If there is no objection, it will be included in the record of the hearing.

(The material referred to follows:)

STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS

The National Association of Manufacturers welcomes the opportunity to state its position with respect to H.R. 22, the School Support Act of 1959.1 We are a nonprofit, voluntary membership organization representing the bulk of this Nation's manufacturing capacity. Since 1897, just 2 years after it was organized, the National Association of Manufacturers has evinced an energetic and constructive interest in education. As spokesmen for the business community, we have had considerable experience not only in studying the problems of American education but also in contributing to their solution.

Our concern with education stems in part from our interest in the optimum development of the capacities of our young people. As recently as June 1957, the NAM board of directors stated, with reference to increasing the effectiveness of education:

"Our continued progress in the American way of life depends very greatly on the products of our educational system. Industry has a vital interest, therefore, in seeing that this system-from the kindergarten to the postgraduate level-is strengthened and supported. Our country can ill-afford to waste the intellectual capacity of its young men and women."

In addition, our interest in education is part of our general concern with the preservation of our basic freedoms and our form of government. Education is one of the responsibilities implicitly reserved for the States by the Constitution. Our traditions bring this responsibility even closer to the homes of the children and make education a function of local government. The National Association of Manufacturers believes that:

"It is the direct and exclusive responsibility of each State and its citizens to retain control and to provide funds and facilities for public education. The citizens of each community should be activiely urged by all possible means to see that their State and local governments support education adequately in the provision and allocation of local and State funds.

"It is believed that the financial position of each of the States with respect to outstanding debt, borrowing capacity, cash reserves, and potential tax resources, is adequate to fulfill this responsibility. Therefore, we do not favor Federal support, either as grants or loans. ***" (From a statement by the

NAM board of directors, February 10, 1956.)

We have examined H.R. 22 in view of our beliefs with respect to both education and government. We are opposed to it on both sets of grounds. We feel

1 We have not had time to make careful analyses of other bills, also before this subcommittee, providing for Federal aid to school construction but using other formulas to achieve the same basic purpose. However, as the same principles are involved, we respectfully request that this statement be considered to apply also to these other bills.