One result is that the poorly educated, untrained child of one State becomes the unemployed worker of another. Inadequate educational facilities in one community impose a burden on all communities.

In general, our States and municipalities have exerted-and are exerting their utmost efforts to meet the educational needs of their people, but those efforts have not been enough. Because States and communities have unequal resources, only the taxing power of the Federal Government can make equal opportunity a reality in education-whether for schoolchildren, college students, or adults.

I repeat, it does not matter whether the Congress approaches this task through one bill or several; they are all part of the whole. The levels of education are like so many building blocks; a weak one anywhere can pull down the structure.

Therefore we urge you to consider our proposals for improving S. 580; we urge you to be bolder and more realistic in the amounts of money appropriated; but about all, we urge you to enact the program itself. Every hour of delay is a disservice to the young people of America and to the future of our Nation.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Thank you, Mr. Biemiller, for a very forceful statement. I agree with you that we should not let aid to education stand or fall on whether we can pass this as one package, as S. 580 attempts to do. It we cannot pass it in one package, we should pass it in a number of packages. I think the form is of minor importance in comparison to substance. The real test in the minds of the people will be did Congress pass the legislation, not whether it is one bill or four bills or five bills or the exact language used.

TEACHING OF SOCIAL STUDIES

There is one point you have raised in here that touches on a matter that has far-reaching ramifications in America. In the fourth paragraph on page 4 you say:

Many union members have expressed dismay at the confused ideas about organized labor that their children develop in school. An important reason is that the teachers, who are supposed to educate our young people about economic and social problems, are ill equipped to do so.

I have run into more of that in recent months than ever before. Films are being shown by some of these so-called superpatriotic organizations who start off with good, sound Americanism, and then end up with the evils of our American system, and point to the NEA and American labor as the economic evils that are undermining the good life of America. I regard this as evil, and a result of shortsighted administration.

School teachers know better but are helpless to prevent this sort of thing. Their school administrators and the governing boards are forcing this type of thing. I think that education would help, and would enable the teachers to better protect themselves or to resist this type of effort to warp the minds and judgments of the children. It is an intolerable thing to have children of all the members of organized labor go to school in America and have films shown there, saying that if their parents are members of a union, they are members of a subversive organization. If anything, they should be taught that

many of the things in America were created as a result of the efforts of organized labor. Back in the 1820's, 1830's, and 1840's, when the public schools, during a period when the public school system was being developed is the very general size of our system. I think that is a problem we are going to have to meet politically before you meet it educationally. You are going to have to educate members of your organization, Mr. Biemiller, to participate in school board elections as well as in national elections. It seems that the trustees do not demand this kind of thing of their school superintendents and teachers.

S. 5, THE COLD WAR GI BILL

Now, I want to express my congratulations to you and to_the AFL-CIO for the resolution it passed this year supporting S. 5, the cold war GI bill. To me that is one of the worst-needed educational measures of all the educational measures, because we have many people in America who do not get an equal educational opportunity with what we might call the average child. In the usual case, that failure to obtain this equal opportunity might be due to illness of the child, a crippling illness, or death of the mother and father while the child is small, leaving it as an orphan, and maybe being shunted around from place to place economic factors, the impoverishment of the family, geographic factors, maybe in desolated areas where school is not available or where circumstances exist such as to make equal educational opportunity impossible under difficult conditions. Those things are all things caused by nature or act of God; they are not brought about by the Federal Government. When we take these GI's that are drafted into service now or go into service to avoid the draft, that is the only group in America whose educational opportunity is being denied them by the power of the Federal Government. There are 5 million of them in this cold war period, whose average service is over a period of 2 years.

They are taken away by a mandatory act of the Federal Government; under existing law, the Federal Government throws them back, 600,000 a year, with no oportunity for retraining.

This GI bill is a readjustment bill. It is not a bonus bill. As you know, it is an educational readjustment; to let them retrain or be reeducated for jobs. I think the government that pulls these men out of their normal lives and then says, "We will hold you back," and the Defense Department comes up here and testifies as it has this. year, we do not want that bill, because they might not reenlist-they say we want to so clobber your opportunity in life that you will have to reenlist in the Armed Forces as your only way of life. I think these men fail to understand the spirit of America when they say, "We don't want them to have an education, because if they do, they might get out from under our thumb."

Some people like military service, some don't. There are enough men to fill the armed services. Many men just like these jobs. Others are like the members of these crafts that you mention here. Some men like the steady diet, the steady chow, they call it, of the barracks job. They don't like to have to wait until one job ends, the precarious life of the civilian. So they don't mind being denied getting the education

So I think this greatest injustice is being perpetrated by the act of the Federal Government, this denial to 5 million members of this decade, their equal opportunity with the 55 percent who do not serve. Only 45 percent serve. I congratulate you for supporting such a far-looking measure.

Any questions by counsel?

(No response.)

Senator YARBOROUGH. Thank you, Mr. Biemiller.

Mr. BIEMILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. May I call your attention that I did submit the four appendixes, which I assume you will put into the record?

Senator YARBOROUGH. Yes. The appendixes to Mr. Biemiller's statement are ordered printed in full in the record. (The documents referred to follow :)

APPENDIX 1.—ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

Several of the proposals advanced in the National Education Improvement Act, S. 580, extend aid to elementary and secondary education. Even though local communities and the States have made unprecedented efforts to cope with their school problems, Federal action is imperative. Although alltime records of school construction have been achieved, a critical shortage of classrooms still remains; and in countless communities the shockingly low salaries paid to teachers have constituted a subsidy to the school construction which has taken place. At the elementary and secondary school level thousands of communities and many States simply do not have the financial resources to develop a school system to equip our citizens to meet the needs of our society.

There has been a great deal of public discussion about the crisis in our schools, but the magnitude of this crisis and the consequence of failure to meet it are still little understood by most Americans. Even on the part of those arging greater support for education, there is a tendency to understate the problem. A curious illustration of understatement exists in the President's message to the Congress on education. "Last year," the President stated in his message, "over 1,500,000 children were in overcrowded classrooms." The statement was presumably based upon the figures issued by the U.S. Office of Education which in part said that in the fall of 1962 there were enrolled in the public schools 1,666,711 pupils in excess of normal capacity. But this is something quite different from 1,500,000 children in overcrowded classrooms. If a classroom built to hold 30 students actually holds 35, there are 5 children in excess of the normal capacity of the classroom, but 35, not simply 5, children are going to school in a crowded classroom. It is impossible to estimate exactly how many children attend school in crowded classrooms, but certainly even a conservative estimate would result in a figure at least 10 times higher than that suggested by the President in his message.

We mention this not to quibble but to emphasize that we are dealing with a problem of vast dimensions which certainly calls for bold solutions.

But qualified, dedicated teachers are needed in these classrooms. S. 580 provided that teachers' salaries, at the beginning level, at the top and in the aggregate, would be brought up to the average levels in each category prevailing in the State. To keep the better qualified teachers in the classroom, salaries must be adjusted upward. The most recently available figures from the Office of Education indicate that during the school year 1959-60 there were 21 States in which the average teacher's salary was between $3,000 and $4,500. Although the situation has improved since that time, it is still true that more than onefifth of all American teachers earn less than $4,500 a year. To raise the most poorly paid teachers up to an average of between $3,000 and $4,500 would indeed constitute a limited goal. Able young men and women will not be induced to stay in teaching at these levels.

Assistance for emergency school construction, as proposed by the present bill is badly needed. It will also have a salutory effect upon the economy. Unemployment among construction workers has run far higher than the national average. The 1962 rate among construction craftsmen other than carpenters

averaged 8.8 percent, among carpenters 9.4 percent, and among construction laborers 20.4 percent. We need school construction for its own sake, but the healthy effect in terms of employment is an added benefit which should not be overlooked.

The National Education Improvement Act further provides that Federal funds may be used to meet the special needs of children in slum schools, depressed areas, and migratory labor camps. Improving the educational opoprtunities for such deprived children is an urgent need. Dr. Frank Reissman of Columbia in his study of the culturally deprived child suggests that the schools of America are completely out of tune with the needs of one out of every three urban children. It is one of the greatest educational tragedies of our time that the schools are least equipped to help the very students who need help the most. We are pleased that special recognition of this problem is included in the National Education Improvement Act.

Taken all together, these proposals would constitute an important step toward a revitalized system of elementary and secondary education. Yet we feel that it is essential to an understanding of the issue to make it clear that added together all of the features of the bill do not constitute anything like a total solution to the problem of our schools.

If the State of Massachusetts were to spend 4 percent of its income for public elementary and secondary education, just exactly what the average State now spends, Massachusetts would have enough money to pay its teachers an average salary of $8,000 and to match New York State's average in other school expenditures. To meet this same standard, the State of North Dakota would need to spend 10.2 percent of its personal income on its schools.

This standard of what our schools might be is admittedly arbitrary, but we believe that it is revealing to see what various States would need to do in order to meet the same standard. Some people may think that $8,000 a year average salary for teachers and matching average New York State expenditures in other respects is too much to expect of the Nation as a whole and some people may think it too little. But even if the figure be adjusted upward or downward, the relationship between the States remains essentially the same as in the following table showing the percent of its personal income each State would need to spend for its schools to meet our arbitrary standard.

These figures, approximations though they necessarily are, graphically demonstrate the reason why equalization of educational opportunity cannot be achieved by the States and localities alone. What some States could do with only an average effort would require 10 percent or more of the income of many other

11.0

7.6

7.8

6.6

9.2

5.6

6.5

States. Only the power of the Federal Government can really insure a high standard educational opportunity throughout the Nation.

It has sometimes been suggested that local communities have let their school problems go unsolved because of their hope that eventually they would get a Federal aid program to take care of things. This is altogether unfair. Many of the States which need Federal aid the most are among the States which are presently straining their resources to the very limit. Of the nine States which are committing the largest percentage of their personal income to education, all but three are below average in their expenditure per pupil. Of the three States which spend the largest part of the personal income for education-Utah, North Dakota, and Louisiana-all are substantially below the national average in their per pupil expenditure.

Organized labor supports the fullest possible effort on the part of States and localities for their schools. And we believe that the record of achievement has on the whole been impressive. Despite the general notion that it is difficult to get community support for schools, the fact remains that 72.2 percent of the par value of all school bonds submitted to voters during the past 5 years was approved.

State and local debt in general has mounted in the United States at a rapid rate. Between 1954 and 1961, Federal debt increased by only 8 percent, but State and local debt during the same period nearly doubled.

As a matter of fact there is good reason to believe that the average community has invested more than a safe amount in school construction. When a school district gets to the point where it must curtail operating expenses in order to pay off its debt service commitments, something is wrong. The late Dr. Paul R. Mort, of Teachers College, Columbia University, and one of the Nation's foremost authorities on school finance, concluded after years of study that for the average district, when debt service and capital outlay reach 15 percent of net current expenditures, there is trouble ahead. The median school district is now spending 14.9 percent above current operating expenses for these items and is therefore very near to Dr. Mort's danger point. And a tenth of the school districts in America are spending 30 percent or more of their school budgets for debt service and capital outlay.

Although State and local efforts to improve education have been on the whole remarkable they have not been able to meet the real need. Only action by the Federal Government can give the youth of our National the quality of education that our complex democratic and industrial society demands.

Any less than the best in education in any State is a problem not only for that State but for the entire Nation. Nearly one-third of the American people live in a State other than the one in which they were born. According to the 1960 census southern Negroes, too often victims of poor school systems, leave the South at an average rate of 12,000 a month. The poorly educated child of today in one State becomes the unemployed worker of tomorrow in another State. The National Education Improvement Act would ease some of the most serious problems. We would nevertheless suggest several changes in the proposed legislation which in our opinion, would result in a more succcessful approach to the problems of elementary and secondary education.

First of all it is our conviction that this bill does not include sufficient money to accomplish the stated objectives. There are few provisions of the National Educational Improvement Act which could not be improved by doubling the suggested appropriation.

Earlier we suggested as arbitrary standards that (1) average teachers' salaries be $8,000 and (2) that New York State's average per pupil expenditure for elementary and secondary education be matched in other respects. To accomplish such a goal would require an additional $10 billion a year. Even if one should feel that this standard is unrealistically high it is a measure of how little can really be accomplished by the expenditure of $1.5 billion over 4 years, or an average of $375 million a year for elementary and secondary education as proposed in title IV, part A, of this bill. In fact it would take that amount simply to raise the average teacher's salary $250 a year, to say nothing about needs for school construction and special programs for educationally deprived children in urban and rural areas.

This appropriation should be at least twice as large as suggested in the present bill. What we are discussing is, in a very real sense, not an expenditure at all, but an investment. There is abundant evidence that education greatly increases individual earning power. The money that we appropriate today for schools