infants or only preschoolers or only elementary students; therefore, the working mother is often forced to make different arrangements for each child in the family. For example, the baby goes to the sitter, the preschooler goes to a day care center, and the elementary student is left at home to get his or her own breakfast before going off to school. These arrangements are not only impractical and unsafe but cause the working mother to spend a great amount of unnecessary time transporting children before and after her work day.

The answer to this dilemma is total day care services. Total day care service involves three complete programs housed in one central location to serve infants, preschoolers and elementary children. This concept is not only more conventient and economical for working parents, but also provides continuity in the child's development. Anything short of this full range of services may cause an servere interruption in a working mother's employment career and her child's educational and social development.

The educational program for the three age groups will be developed and implemented by professional consultants specializing in early childhood and elementary education. All staff members and volunteers will be trained to effectively carry out the goals and philosophy of the educational program.

Extent of Parent Participation and Education

A vital and necessary part of any child care program is that of parent participation and education. In the total day care plan a parent program would serve as a base for the parents involvement and education not only in center activities but also activities of the home and community.

The Board of Directors will consist of parent/employees whose children are enrolled in the Center as well as representatives from the sponsoring business firms.

The parent program would be coordinated by the Center Director. The Director would make suggestions and encourage the parents in their pursuits; however, the extent to which the parents become involved and the direction they take will rest with the group itself.

Some of the activities may include:

I. Parent Advisory Committee

II. Parent Education

A. Parent-Child Relations

B. Child Development

C. Health, Hygiene and Nutrition

D. Consumer Education

III. Community Involvement

IV. Classroom Participation and Observation

V. Parent Social and Recreational Activities

Parents may also participate in the Center's activities by being part-time employees or volunteers. This arrangement would be appropriate for parents who are enrolled in part-day training programs or as students at local colleges and universities. The majority of parents are very interested in the well-being and education of their children and should be encouraged to contribute and participate in the Center's operation.

Research and Evaluation Design

The effectiveness of the Northside Child Development Center will be measured in two ways. First, the effective of reliable total child care services upon the employment history of the childrens' mothers will be closely measured. Data will be obtained from each child's mother as well as the mother's employer in order to determine the impact of child care upon employee turnover, absenteeism and morale. The purpose of this phase of the research is to demonstrate that the cost of quality day care can be more than offset by benefits of reduction in an employer's turnover and absenteeism costs.

The other form of evaluation will focus upon measuring the effect of the child development curriculum upon each child's social, educational and physical development. Every curriculum area of each program will be based upon a series of measurable progression steps against which the progress of each child can be individually measured. This unique educational measurement system allows both staff and parents to be keenly aware of each child's strengths and weaknesses, thereby making it possible to tailor an individual program for the development of each child.

BASIC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AMENDMENT OF LEGISLATION

First we must make it clear that our recommendations proposing industrial involvement have the development of the child as a primary interest. It is interested in freeing the mothers for work as a means to obtain more child development resources by increased usage of industrial resources. Getting the mothers into the labor force, which of course is of advantage to industry, will naturally follow.

We also would like to make a point which we are sure you have heard before, that unless some provision is made to improve the economic status of families of children living in poverty the expenditures you propose will have to be continued indefinitely.

You will note that the purposes cited for our recommendations are primarily evaluative, that is to say the project is designed to determine the pay off to industry, the working parent, the community and most important, the child. Those purposes associated with the child are the same as those of your proposed "National Center for Child Development"-establishing the basis for assessing and improving the quality of preschool education.

There is an additional component of research and development that we feel is necessary and has not been recognized sufficiently in your proposed legislation. Our recommendations in a sense address themselves to the question you cited on Page 4, Column 1 of your proposed legislation: "The question before us today, therefore, is not whether we are going to have Federal involvement in day care, but rather how is it going to be structured and what kind of services we are going to provide for our children and their families." In order to do this, the role of major components of society, other than the government, must also be considered. Industry, as a highly resourceful and large segment of society, should be aggresively encouraged to participate in the expansion of preschool education in the United States. This should not be done only through the traditional means of taxation, but also by a program designed to prove that providing child care is good business. Presently, business and industry do not recognize the advantage of child care in reducing turnover, absenteeism and tardiness costs. "Hard" data are needed to show that a rather complex positive relationship does exist between child care and reducing industry's personnel costs.

A major research and development effort is needed that will:

a. Bring companies in all kinds of business and in all major geographical areas into child care programs.

b. Determine the cost benefit of child care to industry over a significant period of time-at least two years.

c. Obtain the most efficient, least costly child care delivery system while assuring high quality child development programs.

d. Solve the problems of location of child development centers in relation to the residences of employees and the work place.

e. Explore consortium arrangements between several businesses, prime sponsors, local policy councels, etc.

f. Investigate the impact this will have on providing child care to children of the non-welfare mother. As Senator Mondale noted in his introduction of the bill, ". our new bill also expands services to include children from above the poverty level, especially children of working mothers and single parents. It provides the legislative framework for eventual universally available child development programs for all families who need and want them." g. Determine feasibility of expanding into infant and latchkey care. The Senator further noted that "priority on preschool programs continues, but services will be expanded to include infant care and before and after school services for children in school . . .".

Such a program should be designed so that it will be set up immediately. It should be designed and coordinated by a group of governmental, industrial, labor, education, research, and parental representatives.

The program should have sufficient flexibility so that it can be as creative as possible. It would allow companies to experiment without committing themselves to permanent programs, should the program be found to be economically unfeasible. Secondly, as soon as the R & D results are available, and assuming they are generally positive, an intense "marketing" effort should be launched by the "group" or "committee" coordinating this project in order to expand the participation of industry as a major resource in expanding the availability of child development.

Thirdly, it is our understanding that Title V-B of the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act contained legislation which would greatly expand the role of industry and labor in providing child care. However, Congress has failed to appropriate any money for Title V-B and no administrative apparatus has been established to implement it. While we are not familiar with the specifics of Title V-B, we recognize the merit in its intent and strongly urge that similar provisions be added to the Child Development Act of 1971 to provide an incentive for firms to become involved at least for a two-year period of research and development in industrial day care.

Finally, further proposed legislation based on the experience of this program would be developed as a result of this R & D effort.

RATIONALE FOR THE RECOMMENDATIONS

There seems to be a basic assumption underlying the current legislation before Congress and the direction in which national public policy is heading under the leadership of Congress and the President. It is that the entry level of children into formal education should be age 3 instead of age 5 or 6—because the ages 3-5 are the most formative years. The pay back to society will be extremely high in the form of increased creativity and reduced problems from these individuals when they become adults.

If this is the case, or even partially true to the extent that economically and culturally disadvantaged children are targeted, then the emphasis of legislation and executive action should be to muster all the resources necessary to provide education to the age 3-5 population in the U.S.

Theoretically, this could be done under the existing practices by legislation lowering mandatory educational entry level age and levying sufficient taxes to pay for the education. Practically, this cannot work under present allocation of national resources because the additional funds for such a large and costly undertaking are not available, to say nothing of the administrative and political barriers. To quote from your proposed legislation, Page 3, Column 5, Our states

and cities are already being bankrupted by the cost of elementary and secondary education."

Until such time as national priorities and resources can be reordered to meet the objective of full participation in preschool education, legislative and executive action should be designed to obtain all the resources potentially available. Present proposed legislation provides federal money but requires local matching funds in most cases. The greatest resource from which these matching funds are available is industry. Additionally, matching funds might not be necessary if it could be proven to industry and business in general that it is to their advantage to pay for child development themselves. Industrial resources should be drawn into this area to the greatest extent possible.

Pump-priming expeditures on the part of government must be a part of the effort to get employees actively involved in child development programs. Present legislation has not succeeded in getting the industrial segment involved. It allows involvement from only the very few who have the perseverence and patience to explore the complex administrative and funding mechanisms which presently exist. The incentive under present mechanisms is certainly more negative than positive. To realistically gain industry's involvement, legislation should be designed to cause aggressive encouragement to interested industrial and business concerns who seek to establish child development programs.

If a suitable, flexible, administratively responsive and workable means is made available to industry to promote child care to welfare mothers who want to work, another major element of society will be drawn into the efforts to eliminate the problems of poverty.

Many more children will receive development and training experience, which will enhance their future capabilities as creative citizens, and the working welfare mother will reduce welfare costs now spent to support her. As a productive member of society she will provide goods or services for others to use. As her income rises, her increase savings or consumption will be both to her benefit and that of the general economy. Finally, increased income increases the tax base which can be effectively employed in further solving our social problems.