1. The increase of $4,677,000 and 548 new positions in 1967 will provide necessary support for the Office to carry out the considerable expansion in program responsibility recently assigned to the Office of Education by new legislation. Included in the increase is 220 positions to be assigned to the various regional offices.

2. An amount of $38,000 will permit employee training in such areas as executive, management, professional, internships, clerical, and secretarial training, and reading improvement.

3. An amount of $2,900,000 will provide a new data gathering activity involving the collection of achievement data on a consistent basis to evaluate improvements in education of students; a survey of adult and business training to obtain reliable data on this greatly expanding area of education, and to purchase data from the current population survey of the Bureau of the Census.

4. An increase of $350,000 for machine tabulation is due to the expanded educational statistics system.

5. An increase of $225,000 is included for evaluation contracts in the elementary and secondary program; the remainder of the increase is required for various research studies and contracts.

Compliance with Civil Rights Act

1. Committee recommends that there be developed, at the Washington level, a more expeditious way of processing applications which have been forwarded by local, State, and district school boards signifying compliance with the Civil Rights Act. (P. 11 of House Report.)

ACTION TAKEN OR TO BE TAKEN

1. In 1966 a staff of 53 positions has been placed in the Office to handle applications signifying compliance cases. Procedures for handling assurances of compliance have been streamlined and information from the files of these documents is now readily available. (For some 2,000 school districts in the South or border States-for which assurance of compliance is not applicable-a preponderance is now covered by voluntary desegregation plans accepted by the Commissioner.) The 1967 budget calls for 50 additional positions to be placed by June 30, 1967.

The functions included within this activity provide the Office of Education overall coordination in planning, guidance, and evaluation. The offices having responsibilities in this area include the immediate Office of the Commissioner, the Office of Legislation, the Office of Program Planning and Evaluation, the Office of Information, the Office of Equal Educational Opportunities, and the Office of the Disadvantaged and Handicapped.

Work program, fiscal years 1966 and 1967, Office of the Commissioner

The Office of the Commissioner provides central direction and program development to provide a coordinated and cohesive Office program. With the significant increase in legislative responsibilities, and the increasing importance of education to our society, the Office of the Commissioner has had an unprecedented demand for services and leadership. Not only is the Office faced with responsibilities for the administration of new programs, such as the Higher Education and Elementary and Secondary Acts of 1965, but the Office is increasingly assuming a position of leadership in education which generates new demands and new requirements daily. In order to carry out the new responsibilities and programs authorized to date and to better coordinate the overall efforts of the Office, three positions are requested in 1967.

Program planning and evaluation

The purpose of this activity is to coordinate and evaluate the total educational effort within the Office of Education as well as those carried on outside the Office by other agencies. The broad responsibility for a national evaluation of the combined educational efforts was created by an Executive order issued by the President. In 1967 efforts will continue toward gathering data on other Federal programs in existence, and to explore the possibilities of combined or joint programs to better obtain the desired overall objectives and to insure maximum use of available resources.

Office of Information

Federal and State agencies of Government depend on the Office for current advice and information as to education activities. The mass communications services including the press, radio, television, and related media systems request information of the Office in order to provide the public with current facts about education.

The Office of Information furnishes services to program specialists who are engaged in the preparation of manuscripts, helps plan their programs, and manages the production and distribution of publications. It edits and publishes the new journal American Education.

Other educational information efforts of the Office include planning, editing. publishing, and distributing professional educational publications and periodicals; developing and writing articles on education for publication in national magazines; planning and developing materials for use in press conferences; preparing speech materials for use by the Secretary, the Commissioner, and other Government officials; planning and developing materials for use in television and radio programs; and receiving visitors to the Office and explaining its overall functions and services. Two professional and two secretaries are required to meet increased workload.

Office of Legislation

This Office is responsible for planning, developing, and directing the legislative program; reviewing all proposals and bills in the field of education introduced in Congress; and providing information and services on educational legislation to organizations and individuals interested in the improvement of education in the United States, including Members of Congress, congressional committees, other Federal agencies, State departments of education, local school officials, and interested citizens. The workload has increased significantly in connection with special analysis and reports concerning education programs. Two positions are requested to meet these demands.

Office of the Disadvantaged and Handicapped

This program is intended to bring about a close coordination of efforts in education of the disadvantaged and handicapped within the Office of Education and the Office of Economic Opportunity as well as other Federal and nongovernmental agencies and organizations having education programs in this area. Work in carrying out this objective consists of providing OEO with a review of all migrant and Indian program proposals as well as research, training, and demonstration proposals aimed at advancing the educational goals of community action programs; monitoring on a sample basis, CAP proposals submitted to OEO for purposes of quality control; determining and effecting the maximum benefits possible from current OE legislation with regard to education of the disadvantaged and handicapped; stimulating and developing proposals in neglected or relatively unknown areas of education for the handicapped and disadvantaged; continuing evaluation of programs to determine the most productive; and establishing a clearinghouse for education of the disadvantaged and handicapped. In order to coordinate and administer the increased program efforts in this area, two additional positions are requested for 1967. Office of Equal Educational Opportunities

The Office of Equal Educational Opportunities has central responsibility in the Office of Education for all activities related to implementation of title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Under the guidelines issued by the Commissioner, assurances of compliance have been filed by approximately 20,000 school districts, 2,600 colleges and universities, and 5,000 other educational institutions.

The regular assurance of compliance was not applicable for about 2,280 public school districts in the South and border States under the Commissioner's guidelines. The Office of Equal Educational Opportunities developed a voluntary desegregation plan for 1,960 of these districts. For an additional 200 districts, a final order of a Federal court was accepted as a desegregation plan. Negotiations have not yet been terminated with respect to 40 school districts. Legal hearings have been held, or are being scheduled, for 80 school districts cited as failing to comply with requirements of title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Examination of records and reports from recipients and on-site examination of operations in school districts or educational institutions are used to determine compliance. Inquiries or investigations are undertaken in response to specific complaints or, on a random-sample basis, by a full compliance review of selected school districts or educational institutions. To accomplish this, 18 of the 50 new positions will be assigned to field activities.

Whenever an instance of noncompliance is encountered, every means is used to attain compliance on a voluntary basis. When all efforts for voluntary compliance have failed, the Office undertakes a full investigation which can result in a legal hearing on noncompliance. If sustained, funds to the school district or educational institution may be withheld pending compliance. To date, only a few investigations have been undertaken. The 50 additional positions requested in 1967 will provide the nucleus of an investigation staff required to assure compliance of title VI.

The National Center for Educational Statistics, created on January 1, 1965, is responsible for providing overall direction and coordination for the statistical program of the Office of Education. This responsibility includes the administration of the National Defense Education Act, title X program of grants to States for improvement of statistics.

Program emphasis for fiscal years 1966 and 1967

The expanding role of the Federal Government in the field of education requires that the Office expand accordingly in collecting and analyzing data. It

is necessary to assess and evaluate the effects of Federal programs on the educational system, and to make analyses of data leading to a better understanding of the operation of the entire educational system.

The Center is embarking on a new and more comprehensive series of analysis. This new approach, using techniques of operations analysis, will explore the relations among various categories of data. The new data to be collected will include achievement data on students at all levels, socioeconomic data on students and teachers, and considerable basic economic data. This will make it possible to evaluate the extent of improvements in the education of students, taking into account the costs involved in providing these improvements.

Plans and programs

The great increase in activities in the Center will call for an expansion in the program planning requirements. It is anticipated that in addition to the development and coordination of the statistical program of the Office of Education, the Division of Plans and Programs will devote considerable attention to the coordination of survey activities of the Center. This is to include development and maintenance of realistic schedules. This division will also be responsible for generally overseeing the application of operations analysis techniques to strengthen and improve the management activities of the Center. The publications program of the Center will also be administered by this staff.

Data sources and standards

The Division of Data Sources and Standards consists of the Field Programs Branch, the Data Compatibility Group, and the Systems Design and Development Group.

The Field Programs Branch has, as one of its major functions, the implementation of the standard items in the cooperatively developed handbooks. This Branch also has the ongoing responsibility of administering title X of the National Defense Education Act. Additional emphasis will be given to the tasks of providing consultative assistance in the field and furnishing guide materials to aid States and local school systems in establishing records which serve their needs and the needs of the Nation for current, adequate, and reliable information about education. With the availability of standard items about pupils, staff, and instructional programs, this work is of primary importance in fiscal year 1967.

The Data Compatibility Group, responsible for cooperatively identifying, classifying, and defining records items and terms to be maintained in comparable and compatible form by all school systems, will continue its current project in fiscal year 1967 to standardize instructional program items and terms. The handbook manual on educational finance will be revised and brought up to date with special emphasis to be given to accounting for educational programs for which finance data are scant. A cooperative project to revise the State reporting handbook, a necessary guide to reporting of compatible educational information to the Federal Government, will be undertaken.

The service of the Systems Design and Development Group through the design and development of a basic educational data system will continue in fiscal year 1967, providing a means of data communication which has been only marginally treated in all of the years of education in America.

Additional staff are requested to undertake the revision of the handbook manual on educational finance and the State reporting handbook, as well as furnishing consultative assistance in the field.

The greatly increased program responsibility of the Office necessitates much more statistical analysis to support operational, evaluative, and planning functions. Analytical resources will be available on an unprecedented scale as computer technology is applied to the vast store of data produced by program operations and by mechanization of data flow from the field to the Office of Education.

There will be increasing demands on the staff to develop statistics and projections to support the legislative program, including estimating cost of programs and developing and analyzing allotment formulas.

Additional staff will enable this Division to meet its growing responsibilities in the regular survey program, the analysis of data to be collected in the new comprehensive program, and the legislative and methodological areas.

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