MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1966. OFFICE OF EDUCATION WITNESSES HAROLD HOWE II, COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION ARTHUR L. HARRIS, ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER FOR ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION PETER P. MUIRHEAD, ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION RICHARD L. BRIGHT, ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER FOR RESEARCH JOHN R. LUDINGTON, ACTING ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER FOR ADULT AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION FRANCIS A. J. IANNI, DEPUTY ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER FOR RESEARCH NORMAN KARSH, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER FOR ADMINISTRATION JOE G. KEEN, BUDGET OFFICER JAMES B. CARDWELL, DEPARTMENT DEPUTY COMPTROLLER BIOGRAPHY OF COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION Mr. FOGARTY. Dr. Howe, we are pleased to have you with us today. You are the new Commissioner of Education, and so we will appreciate it if you will give us some of your background. Dr. Howe. I have been on the job since about the middle of January. Do you want my background in terms of my education, experience, and so on? Mr. FOGARTY. Yes; we ask this of all new appointees who appear before the committee." Dr. Howe. I was educated at Yale University where I took a bachelor's degree and Columbia where I took a master's. I have also attended the University of Cincinnati and Harvard University. I have taught history in several schools. I spent 5 years in the Navy and for the last 15 years or so I have been engaged in school administration. This has included the position of high school principal in Massachusetts, and Ohio, and that of superintendent of a school system in Scarsdale, N.Y. For the past 2 years I have been the executive director of an organization called the Learning Institute of North Carolina. Perhaps that requires a little explanation. Mr. FOGARTY. I regret that I never heard of it. It is a private nonprofit corporation in the State of North Carolina set up by the State university, Duke University, the State public school system and the State department of public higher education. Its purpose is to do innovative and experimental education work in the State with the hope that whatever it learns will be communicated throughout the South and will be applied to the pressing problems of education in that State. 60-627-66-pt. 2- -9 It is a small organization, financed by funds from the organizations I mentioned; that is, Duke University, the University of North Carolina, and so forth. I have been engaged in bringing that organization into being running some experimental schools and some experimental teacher training programs, helping communities in North Carolina plan what they would do to take advantage of some of the newer Federal funding which has been available, and trying to make ourselves useful as a new innovation oriented organization in education in that State. In addition to the foregoing I have been a trustee of Yale University and of Vassar College. I also have been a trustee of the College Entrance Examination Board, and rather active in its affairs, having served as chairman of its committee on examinations for many years before becoming a trustee. I have engaged in various consulting functions in education related to helping communities, or states in planning connected with improvement of their educational systems. I came to Washington, where I was given the appointment by the President in mid-December, and took the oath of office in January. Mr. FOGARTY. How are you and Admiral Rickover getting along? Mr. Howe. We have not encountered each other directly. I have listened to him and he has listened to me. We have never had a chance really to talk it over. Mr. FOGARTY. Do you have a statement? Mr. Howe. With your permission, I will read it. GENERAL STATEMENT Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I welcome the opportunity to appear before you today to present the proposed 1967 budget of the Office of Education. As you know, this will be my first presentation to you of the total program that I have been asked to administer. It is a program that, in large measure, you gentlemen have helped to shape. It is a program that attempts to meet universally acknowledged needs. And it is a program which certainly constitutes a central portion of the administration's effort to achieve a society to which all citizens contribute and in which each citizen can live with freedom and purpose. We have witnesses with us today who will present to you the details of each of our appropriations. However, before we begin, I would like to give you an overview of our total program, of what we are doing and of what we are hoping to do in the forthcoming fiscal year. hope that this will help to place in perspective the discussion of individual program elements which will follow. In presenting these introductory remarks, I am aware that many of you have participated over the years in the developments I shall discuss, and that you are more familiar than I with many aspects of them. I shall, therefore, make my observations brief. 1967 BUDGET The 1967 budget for the Office of Education contains some 20 separate appropriations, and will support more than 100 individual pro grams. Our total request for 1967 amounts to $3,478,900,000. On the assumption that the Congress will approve our presently contemplated 1966 supplemental appropriation requests of $212,450,000— an assumption which we hope is a valid one-our 1967 funds will reflect an increase over 1966 of $174,153,000, or approximately 5 percent. This budget and the budget which preceded it constitute what might be termed a near revolution in the fiscal role of the Federal Government in the support of education in the United States. Our total budget for fiscal year 1965 was $1.5 billion. In 1963, it was $662 million. EDUCATION LEGISLATION ENACTED DURING 89TH CONGRESS During the coming year the central task of the U.S. Office of Education will be to meet the challenge the Congress has set for it in the legislation of the last session. This will not be easy. As President Johnson has said, the 89th Congress made educational history. Our job is to continue to write that history in accordance with the principles the Congress has laid down. Particularly in the area of FederalState relationships in education, we have been and will be writing new chapters of history. We are determined that they shall reflect a constructive, growing partnership between State and Federal agencies and that the Federal partner shall not dominate or control. We are determined also to carry out our responsibilities for administration of the acts the Congress has passed so that the principles laid down in them are given careful attention and so that the intent of Congress is carried through. My own work in education in North Carolina for the past several years has given me the chance to see the beginning effects of the new legislation for which I am now responsible. At the State level and in local communities the impact of new energy available from Federal sources is clearly apparent. School people and community leaders are actively going about the business of planning for effective use of the new funds and in many places new programs are actually underway. My judgment of what I have seen and heard is that the legislation you have passed and funded, and for which we here ask continued funding, is beginning to have its intended effects. It is too early for us to present to you any comprehensive evaluation of the results of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act. But I do want to assure you that there is much hopeful activity already launched. We shall be evaluating the results of this new legislation, and we shall be reporting to you in the years ahead the outcome of our studies. I would make one further observation. It is that we need to keep a balanced view of our diverse educational system in this country. It is a system which has many problems and many shortcomings; it leaves many of our people without the services they require. All of us in education concede the need for improvement and we are working hard to provide it. But criticism of this kind is only part of the story. The other part is that no other country in the world has expected so much of education and received so much from it. We have good schools, strong colleges, and dedicated educational leaders who are striving for quality. As we focus our attention on the aspects of education which the Federal Government is joining the State to improve, we should not forget the achievements of our schools and colleges. After all, our Nation is the product of our people, and our people are the product of our schools. Now with your permission, I would like to focus a little more closely on the appropriations requested for fiscal year 1967. There are many ways to look at the programs for which we are responsible. Knowing that you will wish to discuss each requested appropriation in detail, we thought that it might be helpful for purposes of an overview to group our requests in certain broad categories. SUPPORT OF EDUCATIONAL SERVICES Roughly half of our dollars in fiscal year 1967 will be used for the direct operational support of educational services, through local school districts, through public libraries, and through institutions of higher education. This major proportion of our funds, amounting to approximately $1.8 billion, will provide for support of eduactional activities during fiscal 1967, in contrast to the future benefits of construction and research funds. Chief among these federally supported activities is the assistance to educationally deprived children. We are aiming to improve the eduactional opportunities of some 7.5 million children from low-income families. Approximately $1.2 billion will be for this purpose. In addition, 5.8 million students will be enrolled in vocational and technical education programs; public library services will be made available to 2.5 million people currently without any such resources; developing institutions of higher education will be helped by providing funds for cooperative arrangements with more established and developed institutions; and a new emphasis will be directed toward the solution of community problems through the recently enacted community services and continuing education program. CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITIES In fiscal year 1967 over $863 million, or 25 percent of our budget, will be directed toward the construction of facilities. These construction funds will be applicable to all levels of education-elementary and secondary schools affected by the impact of families employed by the Federal Government, undergraduate and graduate institutions of higher learning, facilities for vocational education, public libraries, research facilities, and facilities for the handicapped. AID TO INDIVIDUAL STUDENTS Funds for aid to individual students next year will total $428 million and account for 12 percent of our program. This includes undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, and financial assistance to students in higher educational institutions as well as in vocational schools. The fiscal year 1967 budget reflects a proposed change in the financing of student loans rather than continuing Federal contributions to college loan funds. It is not intended to reduce the amount of loans, only to change the manner of funding. This will, of course, be explained more fully by subsequent witnesses. TEACHER PREPARATION AND EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH We are proposing $227 million, some 7 percent of our funds, to improve teacher preparation and to help bring teachers to schools desperately needing them. A major contribution to this end will come from the Teacher Corps. Current plans call for the placement of 3,750 teachers in schools by this fall, with additional numbers being trained during fiscal year 1967. Training of teachers of the handicapped will be increased. To meet a critical shortage in this particular area, 5,000 teachers began training in September 1965, 6,500 are scheduled to begin training in September 1966, and 9,100 in Sep tember 1967. Approximately 3 percent of our program will be devoted to educational research in fiscal year 1967. A total of $107 million will enable us to continue research already started and to begin new investigations to benefit education in the future. Research will be conducted in many fields of education including vocational education, improvement of education for the handicapped, and curriculum development. We are making particular efforts to bring the results of research into action in the schools. We invest in research a smaller proportion of our budget than is usual in business. In my view, these efforts should grow in the years ahead. DEVELOPING ADMINISTRATIVE CAPABILITY IN THE STATES In the next fiscal year we plan to devote about $45 million to the development of greater administrative capability where it counts-in the State educational agencies that administer a majority of the programs financed through the Office of Education. More funds, in fact, will be provided to State educational agencies for administrative purposes than to the Office of Education itself. |