SCHOOL SUPPORT ACT OF 1959 TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 1959 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON GENERAL EDUCATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 430, House Office Building, Hon. Cleveland M. Bailey, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Present: Representatives Bailey, Brademas, and Udall. Also present: Robert E. McCord, clerk of the subcommittee. The Chair would like to inquire of the staff member if we have any material for insertion in the record. Mr. McCORD. We have no statements Mr. Chairman. Mr. BAILEY. This morning we will hear from three separate witnesses. The first will be Richard Joyce, vice president of the North Dakota Farmers Union, speaking in behalf of the National Farmers Union. The second witness will be Forrest E. Connor, superintendent of schools of St. Paul, Minn., and president elect of the American Association of School Administrators. The third and final witness will be Victor G. Reuther, speaking in behalf of the United Automobile Workers. Mr. Joyce, you may proceed. STATEMENT OF RICHARD JOYCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF NORTH DAKOTA FARMERS UNION, ACCOMPANIED BY REUBEN JOHNSON, COORDINATOR, LEGISLATIVE SERVICE, NATIONAL FARMERS UNION Mr. JOYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. We appreciate the opportunity to appear before the Subcommittee on General Education. Both the Subcommittee on General Education and the Subcommittee on Special Education rendered an outstanding service to the citizens of the United States last year in the dedicated work performed in connection with the enactment of the National Defense Education Act. Except for the time you devoted to hearings and the efforts you made to change the attitude of the executive branch, we would not now have such a law. We especially want to commend you for the support given to area vocational educational programs and for the other provisions which provide opportunities for high school graduates to go to college. There are provisions in the National Defense Education Act which are designed to strengthen high school offerings in science, mathematics, and modern foreign languages. But we hasten to point out that the National Defense Education Act has its primary objective the strengthening of higher education. There is a great deal that must be done at primary, elementary, and secondary school levels if we are to progress as we should in providing equal opportunities for our youth in all sections of our Nation to get an education. We are convinced that the public generally shares our point of view. Mr. Chairman, we will not attempt to analyze the provisions of the School Support Act of 1959 as introduced by Congressman Thompson as H.R. 965 and Congressman Metcalf as H.R. 22. To do so would only duplicate the testimony of other more competent witnesses who have appeared previously before the subcommittee. We are, however, in complete support of its terms, provisions, and objectives. Our main concern is that H.R. 22 and H.R. 965 may not be adequate to meet the educational requirements necessary for living in and making a contribution to the era of rapid technological advance in which we live. At the risk of duplicating the testimony of other witnesses, we will set out briefly why we feel that Congress this year should act to strengthen overall programs of primary, elementary, and secondary education: 1. According to the fifth annual survey of public school enrollment, teachers and school housing, released by the Office of Health, Education, and Welfare on January 28 of this year, normal classroom capacity of public schools fell short of meeting the need by an overflow enrollment of almost 2 million pupils. 2. State education agencies report a need for 140,500 additional classrooms to meet needs of the overflow enrollment this school year and to replace facilities considered obsolete and unsatisfactory. Just to construct the classrooms needed at the beginning of the school year would cost more than the Murray-Metcalf bill provides in the fourth year of operation. Moreover, in spite of the record number of classrooms completed last year-71,600-the classroom shortage remains virtually the same as a year earlier. Considering increasing enrollments and obsolete equipment and classrooms, the shortage will be even greater a year from now. For example, anticipated construction of classrooms this year is only 68,000. 3. At the beginning of the current school year, 92,337 teachers in our schools had substandard certificates. We are not paying teachers in the United States enough to set arbitrarily the educational requirements and standards below which no person could qualify for a teaching job. The School Support Act will operate so as to permit salary schedules for teachers to be determined at the State and local level, giving recognition to ability, training, tenure, workload, and so forth. But more important, Mr. Chairman, is the need for a more uniform graduated salary schedule that will reduce competition between States for teachers, a situation in which school administrators with the higher sal aries to offer systematically hire the best qualified teachers in adjoining States. We believe that the School Support Act will alleviate this problem, attract young people to teaching as a career, and provide the means for holding present qualified teachers. 4. The White House Conference on Education meeting in Washington as early as 1954 underlined and recorded the need for doubling our investment in education by 1964. I understood also that the study financed by the present Governor of New York entitled "Pursuit of Excellence" also made a similar recommendation. The Murray-Metcalf bill in 4 years of operation would provide about a onethird increase in the amount now being spent for education. This bears out our earlier observation that the School Support Act of 1959 is not adequate in terms of the anticipated need for buildings, equipment, and teachers. All children should have the opportunity to obtain at least the equivalent of 14 years of education in their own community. Federal and State laws should be enacted to provide for public rural and urban educational centers to meet adequately the needs of adults as well as children. These centers should also include parks, playgrounds, day nurseries, meeting halls, recreation equipment, and libraries with traveling auxiliaries. As we move toward this goal we must provide an equal opportunity for the highest quality education our society affords beginning at kindergarten and primary grades through the highest level in our society. We have already provided the means to discovering high-aptitude students and assisting them in science, mathematics and the modern languages. The School Support Act will provide the underpinning which the National Defense Education Act needs and it makes possible financial assistance needed to upgrade education generally. We urge the subcommittee to report the School Support Act of 1959 giving consideration to even larger per pupil allocations in the beginning years of the administration of the act than is presently provided. Mr. BAILEY. Mr. Joyce, I call attention to the first paragraph of your brief. I am pleased to hear you express your appreciation of the action of the last session of the 85th Congress in approving the National Defense Education Act. My reaction to it is that there is nothing wrong with the act, except that there were inadequate requests made to implement it and we found it necessary to appear before the subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee dealing with supplementary items in an effort to ask to have certain of those categories incorporated in Public Law 864, which happens to be the Defense Education Act, to have some additional money put in those items to carry out the program for the current fiscal year. Of course you understand that that was a new field in which wo legislated. There was not too much experience on which the Department could base its estimates. For instance in the category of student loans, they estimated there might be as many as 700 educational institutions that would participate in a program of this kind, and I believe they reported to the committee some 2 weeks ago when the Department came up to testify, more than 1,200 institutions had indicated their desire to go along. There were requests pending for some $62 million, and the item that was in the budget bill was a measley $6 million to implement a program of that kind, and the Department joined in asking for additional appropriation of approximately $24.5 million to implement that student loan program for the remainder of the current year. Another one of the categories of the legislation that they misjudged was the fellowship grants. There they were even worse off in their guess as to what would be needed in the way of funds to implement the program. I think there are a lot of possibilities in that legislation, tied in with the proposals that are before the committee at the present time to materially improve our educational system. At least it will be a great step toward putting the Nation's schools in, shall we say, satisfactory condition to meet the demands of the threat from abroad as well as the need for certain domestic approaches to our educational program. There are one or two other comments I would like to make on your remarks. The paragraph down toward the bottom of page 1. Do you have any suggestion to make? You say "Our main concern is that H.R. 22 and H.R. 965 may not be adequate." I take it H.R. 22 is the so-called Murray-Metcalf bill, which would provide Federal grants for its school construction or implementation of teachers' salaries. The best thing about that legislation, if the Chair would be permited to comment, is that it has no semblance of Federal control. We have had before the subcommittee the usual opposition to Federal grants in education. I am speaking now of the chamber of commerce and one of the other great farming groups, the American Farm Bureau. Their arguments are that we would be setting bad precedents in taking the Federal Government into the affairs of local school boards and the State role of being the chief guardian of our educational system. There is no Federal interference, as I can see it. About the only requirement would be that they report that they used the Federal funds either for the purpose of implementing teachers' salaries or for construction of buildings. As a matter of school precedent, one of their pet arguments of course is, it would be bad, would violate the Constitution and destroy the American way of life. You made the point there that it was not adequate. Would you have a suggestion that it be enriched from the financial standpoint? Just what grounds have you for saying that is is inadequate? Mr. JOYCE. First, Mr. Chairman, you mentioned some opposing groups, about this being different, breaking precedent, or unconstitutional. It seems to me that the strength of our democracy is its elasticity to meet the needs of the fast changing times, which I am sure everybody will agree are fast changing now. A lot of precedents, it seems to me, have to be shattered if we are to take our place as a leading nation. One of the basic ones, as has been amply demonstrated, is the need for adequate education. It is a matter of relative values, I suppose, but it seems to me that education is one of the most valuable, and in our own case each of us wherever we came from, I feel our local taxing authorities are just being stretched to the maximum and it is just impossible either they have reached their mill limitations and have not adequate legislation, or it is impossible to get adequate State or local education for more funds so we must resort to the Federal Government. I would say that these standards in this bill should be the minimum for our requirements. If you will pardon a personal reference, I came from a very thinly populated State, though quite large in area, perhaps the most purely agricultural State in the Union. Our oldest of two children will be 12 in May. She was of that largest baby crop the country had ever seen up to that time, 1947. She started in the first grade in 1953, and in that year they divided the class and each of the classes was nearly as big as the one had been before, and each year since, and now she is in the sixth grade they have divided the class. When the school building was built it was intended to have kindergarten but we don't have room or teachers for it. Another school in our town, where we have four elementary schools, has been enlarged and the others are crowded; the high school has been enlarged and it is crowded. It seems as if there is no limit to the need, and that the need is so great it needs to have the utmost consideration. Mr. BAILEY. It looks like the plight of your daughter would be something similar to a situation I uncovered out in Los Angeles County in 1950 when I was holding hearings on school legislation. I invited a freshman class in high school and was advised that that class had never had more than half-day sessions from the time they entered the first grade, all the way up through the high school. So the situation is really bad if you consider it from the standpoint of classrooms. Mr. JOYCE. Another thing, if I may, Mr. Chairman: In our State, which is a poor and a small State, relatively-as we mentioned in here, is the lack of equalization. We are losing a lot of our North Dakota young people who are teacher trained to other States who are able or at least do pay higher salaries. We have lost an awful lot of good, qualified young people who got their training and who were raised in North Dakota but who take their talents outside of our State, their teaching talents, because of the advantage of the increased pay. Mr. BAILEY. The best illustration to drive home that point is testimony given last year at the hearing before this subcommittee. The president of the Moorehead State Teachers College in Kentucky was testifying. Forty-six percent of the graduates of the teachers' training school at Moorehead College accepted teaching positions outside the State of Kentucky. It is not fair to have a State that is short of these financial resources to give a good school program, to have them educate teachers and then lose them to adjoining States that pay better salaries. That situation is almost as bad in my State of West Virginia, not quite as bad, as the Kentucky schools, but it is a problem in our State. There is one other question I was interested in. You say: The School Support Act will operate so as to permit salary schedules for teachers to be determined at the State and local level, giving recognition to ability, training, tenure, workload, et cetera. But more important, Mr. Chairman, is the need for a more uniform graduated salary schedule that will reduce competition between States for teachers, a situation in which school admin37378-59--25 |