It seems to us that any effort to raise educational standards in order to meet national responsibilities would be woefully incomplete if it did not seek some solution to assist all children.

It should be kept in mind that the nonpublic school system has been growing at a rate faster than the public school system for the last 20 years. Taking 1940 as a base, we can show that the public schools in 20 years have increased their enrollment by 42 percent while the Catholic schools, and other nonpublic schools, have increased by 119 percent. Thus, for every 10 pupils enrolled in public schools in 1940 there were 14 in 1960. But for every 10 pupils in Catholic schools in 1940 there were 22 in 1960.

No one can predict whether this phenomenal growth of Catholic schools will continue. We do know this-that while we are educating more students today than 10 years ago, we are not educating a proportionately greater number of Catholic school age children. Despite our growth we have been able to care for approximately 45 per cent of all Catholic elementary school age children, and less than 35 percent of high school students.

CATHOLIC CHILDREN IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Senator MORSE. Monsignor, do any of these tables-I am going to comment on the tables shortly-or any of this material you are going to refer to later contain a statistic that will show us how many Catholic children are going to public schools, State by State?

Monsignor HOCHWALT. It will be an indication, but it will not be totally exact. It is rather difficult for us to count the children in the public school system who are Catholic children. We can take an exact account of the children in our school system, and compare that with baptismal records of the comparable years, 7 years removed, and come to a fairly good figure.

But to put our finger exactly on the number of Catholic children in the public schools is rather difficult, since the question is not asked. In many cases we have non-Catholic children in our school, we know they are non-Catholic by the fact that they tell us this. But we don't seek out that information generally.

Senator MORSE. If your research staff could file with the subcommittee at a latter date a memorandum on this, it would be helpful. This matter has been raised several times within the committee in our discussions. When we come to analyze the statistics you just put in the record, I can almost hear someone say, "I wonder how many Catholic children are going to public schools, and whether or not they are clustered anywhere-whether in some States there are more or less, percentagewise."

This isn't for you to obtain, but I want to address myself to counsel of the subcommittee for a moment.

We ought to ask the Commissioner of Education to have some work done by the Office of Education. They should compile some statistical information for us to show the number of children by denomination attending private schools. If they have any record on children by denomination attending public schools, this would also be helpful. (Information submitted by the Office of Education follows:)