This is a very broad generalization, but at least it is comparable to some that are made on the other side of the fence.

Mr. BAILEY. You go ahead now.

Mr. WATSON. Even the Office of Education figures, which these are, indicate a need for 741,000 classrooms in the next 13 years. While we cannot accept this figure as reliable, 741,000 classrooms over the next 13-year period, would mean that meeting that need would call for a construction of 57,000 classrooms a year.

Last year the rate of construction, or the construction, was 71,600 classrooms.

Mr. BAILEY. That figure is considerably reduced for this year, however, is it not?

Mr. WATSON. Not considerably. It is some; 2,000 rooms perhaps. But in numbers of the bond issues and so on that we know are in the mill, or have been in the mill, where construction has not actually caught up with the provisions that have already been made, I would estimate that there would not be any substantial reduction, certainly in the next 2 or 3 years, from the nature of the commitments that have already been made or are in the process of being made.

Mr. MILES. Approximately the same number of school bonds in dollar volume were sold in 1958 as in 1957, which suggests that the number of classrooms in 1959 would be somewhat like that built in 1958.

Mr. BAILEY. But you are not doing anything more than meeting the increased need. You are not eating into this backlog of 140,000 classrooms. You did last year to the extent of 1,800. This year it is estimated that you will fall short of supplying the actual need by about 2,700.

Mr. WATSON. Let us say "supplying what have been quoted as the actual needs."

I want to mention some other facts that should be considered in interpreting what the actual needs might really mean. I will comment on that now.

We know that in many communities the shortage of schools and classrooms is not because of the inability of the community to build the school or its lack of intention to do so. It is because of sudden migratory moves in suburban areas, and so on, that take place. Suddenly they wake up one fall morning and find that the children are dumped on them and they have to take emergency measures. that does not means that that condition would continueMr. BAILEY. Let me make a point right there. Who is responsible for these sudden emergencies? Is it not largely our defense pro

gram and the concentration of workers?

Mr. WATSON. No.

Mr. BAILEY. What, then, is it?

But

Mr. WATSON. I would say, speaking now of migration within cities, there are a good many reasons.

Mr. BAILEY. You are talking about bedroom communities now? Mr. WATSON. I am talking about suburban communities that grow up where you have 2 or 3 miles of new homes built within a year, Here you have several thousand children for whom there is no school, and there could have been no school no matter how much money had been available. There is a lot of that kind of thing which must be considered in reviewing this question of overall needs.

There are also matters relating to this, some even more delicate, where construction is not going on because of the segregation question. There is no amount of funds that is going to relieve that situation.

There are other types of nonquantitative problems that should be considered in evaluating what are projected as facts of classroom shortages.

Mr. MILES. Mr. Chairman, I wish we would not let this 1,800 figure, which you mentioned, go without comment. It is a typical illustration of the misinformation which we have mentioned earlier.

Mr. BAILEY. I am just quoting from the Department of Education. Mr. MILES. That is right, sir, but I want to comment again on the fact that this is not reliable information, as can be demonstrated from a mere superficial, cursory look at this. I would like to tell you why it could just not be true.

It is true that their fall figures, as of the fall of 1958, said there was a shortage of 140,400, and that in the previous year the shortage was 142,200, they said. That is where you get your 1,800 figure.

The

In the same report they report an abandoning during that year of only 17,000 classrooms, and the buildings of 71,600 classrooms. difference there is some 54,000 to 55,000 classrooms built over and above those that were abandoned.

Then, when you look at the enrollment figures, you see that in this same report the enrollment figure for 1957 in the fall was 32,834,000, and that the enrollment figure for this last fall was 33,936,000, an increase of relatively 1.1 million students.

If you divide that by 28 you will find that 40,000 classrooms would have taken care of the enrollment increase.

What, then, happened to the other 13,000 or 14,000 or 15,000 classrooms?

We have already taken care of those abandoned and of the enrollment increase, and we have 14,000 or 15,000 more classrooms, by this same report, built than were required to replace the abandoned rooms and take care of increased enrollment.

Mr. BAILEY. Have you talked this over with the Department of Education?

Mr. MILES. Repeatedly, sir. And may I mention that the Commissioner has told me repeatedly they wished they had the power not only to summarize what you mentioned, how much money is going into various aspects of education abroad, but to improve the quality. They have wanted to improve the quality of this.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Chairman, may I ask, looking through the testimoney here, how is it that the U.S. Office of Education produces statistics on teachers that seem to be worthy of citation, but that they are so unreliable, according to your statement, when it comes to classroom statistics.

Mr. WATSON. I think I can answer that. It is easy because it is a very simple matter to count noses as far as teachers are concerned. It is not a simple matter to determine where a room is needed and where it is not, or where it is obsolete and where it is not. It is not a matter of judgment of whether there are so many teachers, but it is a matter of judgment as to whether you need another room.

Mr. MILES. Especially, Mr. Brademas, when some of these projections of the old figures we receive information on from certain States, are based on nothing much more than a post-card sampling survey sent to school superintendents asking them, "How many classrooms would you like to have?"

Mr. WATSON. We are not questioning at all the interpretation that may have been put on these summaries by the Office of Education. We are questioning the basic information that went into making up these summaries, and, although in this case we will not say the statisticians are lying-they are not-the figures are not comparable and not reliable.

Mr. BRADEMAS. I would have thought that the problems of learning what type of teacher and what type of educational training the teachers have would pose some problems just as complex as those associated with identifying classroom shortages, but I just raise the question.

Mr. WATSON. It would be a detailed study, but when you got it, it should be a factual study unless somebody just lied about this, or the records were not correct as to whether she had finished college or not. But at least there is a basis for factual information there, while there is not a basis in the type of information that has been gathered nationally and summarized nationally in regard to classrooms.

That kind of information is available in some very few States.

This might surprise you, but there are many States that, themselves, do not have any more reliable information totally for their States than we have for national figures. Yet, we are depending on them as factual.

Mr. MILES. May I add that, in my opinion, one of the errors of the whole school facilities survey was that in places-in the beginning— they did not identify classrooms at all. They merely identified what was called a total of pupils in excess of normal capacity, and then divided into that some automatic averaging and came out with a number of needed classrooms without ever having identified a single classroom in the process of deriving this figure which they ended up by calling a shortage of classrooms.

Mr. BRADEMAS. If it is true that the States are having as much difficulty as you suggest in getting together adequate satistics, is is not reasonable to suggest that they would probably understate their needs rather than overstate them?

Mr. MILES. That is a political statement, if I may say so.
Mr. BRADEMAS. I do not ask it as a political question at all.

Mr. WATSON. No. I think it is a good question, and I do not have here the specific reference, but it depends on the way the question is asked.

There was a time when school superintendents or commissioners in the States were defending their school program as to how many classrooms they were short and so forth. But when you ask the question, "How many would you like to have?" or "How many do you need?" we find from the figures that the figure, just by that question, changes very drastically.

Mr. BAILEY. Doctor, you are atacking the reliability of some of the figures supplied by educational people.

The secretary of your State chamber of commerce in West Virginia testified last year before the committee and said there was not a single

one of the 55 counties in the State that could not take care of their school construction needs.

The figures supplied by the educational people were that in 19 of those 55 counties they had exceeded their total bonding capacity.

How could they take care of their needs at that rate?

Mr. MILES. Mr. Chairman, may I say you are not mentioning one assumption; namely, that the present 5-percent limitation on bonding power in the State of West Virginia is a valid one even though there are many States in which it is 10, 15, or a higher percentage.

Only under the assumption that the 5-percent limitation is valid, and that the assessed valuations in the counties cannot be raised, is there any real limitation on binding power.

If I am not mistaken, you are now in the process of having a reassessment of property in West Virginia, materially changing the bonding power of every county in the State.

Mr. BAILEY. I just made the point because I want to question some of the facts presented by the chamber of commerce. They are not always true, and they cannot possibly be in this particular instance. Mr. WATSON. I do not know in that particular case because I do not know the circumstances in West Virginia. But I would certainly assume he thought they were true.

Mr. MILES. May I state that I received a letter yesterday, written March 7 by the director of the West Virginia State Chamber Mr. BAILEY. That is Mr. Stansbury.

Mr. MILES. Mr. H. A. Stansbury.

The total number of instructional rooms allegedly needed was only 2,093 whereas at this very moment an aggregate of $150,631,000 worth of identical school building bonded capacity is at the disposal of the 55 West Virginia county school districts.

Then, farther down, he says:

Within the next 6 weeks the voters of Kanawha and Ohio Counties

Kanawha was one of those reported to need 641 classrooms in the total of the two, or about a third of all those reported in the State of West Virginia

will respectively vote on the issue of $18 million and $9 million of school bonds. Mr. BAILEY. But some of the counties in West Virginia do not even need any State aid for construction. They are capable on their own resources. But for him to say that there was not a single one of the 55 counties is absurd.

Mr. MILES. My point is that part of the report is again an illustration of misinformation. The figure on classrooms needed in the State of West Virginia was in those counties which you yourself said do not need any Federal or even any State support to do this job. Mr. BRADEMAS. Is the State chamber of West Virginia supporting increased State and local expenditures on education?

Mr. BAILEY. They are in a pitched battle over it right now in Charleston. This is the last week of the session of the State legislature and they are battling over additional money for the schools just like they always do.

You ask them how they stand on the State income tax in the chamber, and you will probably get your answer as to what is going on.

Mr. MILES. They were concurring and urging the passage of these bond issues, and the last one in that county passed by a vote of 91 percent.

Mr. BRADEMAS. And are they for increased State aid?

Mr. MILES. I have not checked that.

Mr. BAILEY. Doctor, will you conclude your remarks on school construction because I want you to talk about what your objections are to the administration bill and to the Murray-Metcalf bill and any other proposals we have here?

Mr. WATSON. Let me make some general observations here to fill out this picture. The details are reported in the printed testimony.

We have heard a lot about the dilapidated, rundown schools we have, particularly the emotional appeal about the firetraps we have all over the county. I was amazed myself to see this information, that in the last 20 years there have been only two fires in the whole country in public schools that resulted in a loss of life, and yet we hear, reading everywhere, about these rundown fire hazards and so on. Only two fires, and one of those happened in a federally constructed school; but that is substantially less than the record indicates.

Mr. BAILEY. I do not think we can give too serious consideration to the point because the record might have been kind to us.

Mr. WATSON. That may be true, but public education generally has an excellent fire safety record.

But another fact is that, on the basis of present construction, by the fall of this year half of all children in this country will be in schools less than 14 years old; built in the last 14 years. And a 14-year-old school is really a new school. Half of all the children will be in schools built since the war.

I had some figures here to make a comparison with what Russia has done simply because we hear so much of it in the papers. But, the comparison of what we have done in school construction with what Russia has done is even more dramatically in favor of the accomplishments of what we have done here. There are many local shortages, there is no question about it, but there are these other factors of migration; of delay pending Federal action; that they think they are going to get some money and they do not do their own job on it; relocation within cities; integration; all of those things relate to this.

The next and final point has to do with the State and local fiscal capacity. Of course that is a vital issue. Those matters vary so as between States and, as you say, between counties within States, that it would be impossible here even to summarize figures. But I think one of the most significant things is what actually has been accomplished and the fact of the progress that has been made, and that can be judged on the basis of an overall picture of whether the States and communities can support it.

Just look at what they have done, and the increases in what they are doing and what they are anticipating doing. I think that can answer your question generally. That does not answer the question in regard to specific emergency situations or particular communities or locales; but those again are locan problems, and it becomes very difficult to see how any overall Federal finance program can pinpoint those local problems when they have difficulty doing that even within the States.