DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION ACT

TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 1978

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, D.C. The committee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to notice, in room 3302, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Abraham A. Ribicoff (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Senators Ribicoff and Humphrey.

Staff members present: Richard A. Wegman, chief counsel and staff director; Marilyn A. Harris, professional staff member; Robert V. Heffernan, staff member; John Childers, minority staff director; and Brian Conboy, special counsel to the minority.

Chairman RIBICOFF. The committee will be in order.

Our first panel consists of a representative of Mayor Logue, Illinois State Superintendent Dr. Joseph Cronin, Pennsylvania State representative Helen Wise, and Dr. Warren Hill.

Because of the large number of witnesses and a very heavy Senate schedule, we will be required to limit the oral testimony of each witness to not more than 10 minutes. However, your entire statements will go into the record in their entirety.

The first witness is Mr. Lubbie Harper.

TESTIMONY OF LUBBIE HARPER, JR., EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT, NEW HAVEN PUBLIC SCHOOLS; DR. JOSEPH M. CRONIN, ILLINOIS STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION; HELEN WISE, MEMBER, PENNSYLVANIA STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES; AND DR. WARREN G. HILL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EDUCATION COMMISSION OF THE STATES

Mr. HARPER. My name is Attorney Lubbie Harper, Jr., executive assistant to the superintendent of schools of the city of New Haven, Conn., and I am here representing Mayor Frank Logue.

I want to thank Senator Ribicoff and the committee members for this opportunity to present the views of the city of New Haven on the proposed establishment of a separate Cabinet level Department of Education.

We have witnessed a rather broad-based and general decline in the educational performance of young people over the past decade, and as an attorney and a school administrator in one of Connecticut's largest cities, I have found that concern for the quality of the education of our young people is of comparable importance in the minds of our citizens with the issues of unemployment and crime.

New Haven's present budget allocates $34.6 million or 37.02 percent of our total expenditures to the area of education, the largest single expenditure category in our municipal budget.

With these resources, cities are doing what they can to make sure we provide the best possible education. For instance, in New Haven we have recently instituted systemwide accountability for administrators, principals, and teachers so that they can all be evaluated on the basis of results achieved in our classrooms.

We want to insure that students no longer are automatically passed on to the next grade regardless of whether they are adequately prepared for promotion.

Yet, as in cities across the Nation, New Haven's educational system continues to have difficulty educating those who are most in need of the opportunities which only education can give. I wish that I could report to you that we were solving the many complex and difficult issues of our school system; however, that is not the case.

We look to the State and Federal Governments for research which will lay the basis for new programs and approaches to reach those who are hardest to educate. Instead of clear direction, we often find disparity between State and Federal guidelines.

This confusion occurs because the Nation's educational programs are at this time fragmented and dispersed throughout more than 20 Federal agencies. No mechanism exists to coordinate these numerous programs into a workable and efficient framework.

I want, therefore, to express my support and, of course Mayor Frank Logue wishes to express his support, for the proposed creation of a separate Cabinet level Department of Education and note that the Carter administration is now supporting such action. I would like to discuss three specific reasons for establishing such a department.

First, the size of the current Department of Health, Education, and Welfare reduces efficiency in Federal educational planning. A redesigned department could lead to an increased focus on the major problems in education-particularly those confronted by urban education. Cities in the United States need well researched recommendations to help us in our attempts to educate those whom society has, to date, failed.

However, reorganization should not be carried out in such a manner that important and effective programs which presently exist will suffer. Head Start, for example, which has strong parent involvement, and other unique characteristics, should be left intact. The new Department should not be structured in such a way that it concentrates solely on traditional service delivery or on higher education.

Second, a separate Department of Education might well result in more efficient communication among municipal, State and Federal agencies. One department cannot hope to balance the needs and interests of the Nation's concerns in health, education and welfare. A separate Department of Education will be able to play a new, independent and more active role in developing needed educational priorities.

Third, there are three problem areas that are of critical concern to urban school systems across the country and in which Federal planning and information services would be most helpful.

The special needs of the physically, emotionally and educationally disadvantaged student must be addressed by the local school systems. No uniform standards presently exist, and State and Federal laws often conflict.

Better coordination, improved communication and greater information and technical expertise are needed to insure that the special needs of an ever-growing segment of our school populations are not overlooked.

Additionally, urban school systems are currently finding themselves forced to provide services that had previously been within the purview of the church and family. These social services, particularly in regard to health-related issues, are both costly and ill-defined at the present time.

National attention is necessary in order to provide direction to States and municipalities that are faced with the ever-mounting noneducational services provided through school systems.

Finally, cities and States are addressing for the first time fundamental questions regarding the equalization of educational financing devised in other States or by education experts. A newly organized Federal Department of Education would play an important role in coordinating and disseminating educational equalization information.

I have, and certainly Mayor Logue has, visited classrooms throughout New Haven. I enjoy meeting the students. It is a pleasure to see in them such promise and hope. At the same time, it is distressing to know that a city, with a stable tax base and increasing costs, is unable to provide the needed facilities, supplies and skills to give our children the education which they need and deserve.

Education is the major cost of government. It is also its major challenge. I therefore support the bill before you today as a significant, positive and necessary step into the future of this country and its school children.

Thank you.

Chairman RIBICOFF. Thank you very much.

Our next witness is Dr. Joseph Cronin.

Dr. CRONIN. Thank you very much, Senator, for the opportunity to testify. I am State superintendent of education in Illinois. Three years ago I was the secretary of educational affairs in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I would like to give a perspective from the State level.

Illinois this year is receiving about $350 million in Federal aid to education. Out of that, $200 million comes from HEW and the Office of Education, but a full $100 million comes from the Department of Agriculture in the form of school lunch, school breakfast, and nutrition programs. Still another $50 million comes from the Department of Labor earmarked for school use for CETA training or the new youth employment demonstration project. So we are currently dealing in a major way with three of the Cabinet-level departments.

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Many of us in State agencies, either serving as State superintendents or on State boards of education, feel that this is a very unsatisfactory situation. Even such routine things as the accounting systems employed differ between the various Federal agencies that we must work with right now.

I would like to elaborate about the satisfaction I had serving as a Secretary of Education in Massachusetts, just to provide one perspective.

Chairman RIBICOFF. How long were you secretary?

Dr. CRONIN. For 3 years.

Chairman RIBICOFF. How long have you been in Illinois?

Dr. CRONIN. Thirty-eight months.

Chairman RIBICOFF. Has your entire life been devoted to education?

Dr. CRONIN. Yes; it has, Senator, at various levels-school principal, professor.

But being a secretary of education allowed me to work as a full equal with the other similar cabinet-level appointees in Massachu

setts.

This turned out to be enormously important, not only working out big problems with the budget each year-and I know in the Federal Government this has been a persistent problem for commissioners of education in the past-but in working with people on the various new agencies, carving out new relationships, for example with the elderly, which is a growth area, and working on preretirement and post retirement educational opportunities.

But one of the most exciting aspects of the job was having responsibility not only for higher education coordination and for approving the budget for the elementary and secondary schools but also in working with the Council on the Arts and Humanities and with the several library systems and with television.

I applaud the inclusion of these functions in your bill, because I think there is a natural linkage between education and various cultural programs. This is not to stay that all of these marvelous creations, such as the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities and the Endowments, have to be absorbed or pushed together in any heavy-handed way. Clearly the National Endowments need to have a large measure of autonomy in terms of giving out grants. This is vital. But it can be done, just in other States as well.

New York has a similar kind of broad definition of education and the arts, to include, for example, the archives and historical sites and the like.

So those who question whether or not there is a partnership between the arts and education have only to look at the experience of a number of States. In my testimony I add Maine to the list of States where there is an educational and cultural department, with the head appointed in that State by the Governor.

I think also as we look at the research functions and research and development, these too are scattered, not only in the National Institute of Education but in OE and in the National Science Foundation. There are different sources of funds. This from the State per

spective is somewhat confusing to have to go around and find out who is financing the research and development activities.

Some of the members of the delegation from Illinois have expressed to me concern about Federal encroachment. I want to address that just a minute or 2.

We currently have problems with Federal encroachment and with the Congress overriding certain pieces of legislation-foremost of which is Public Law 94--142. We would like to have not more encroachment but more consolidation of very disparate agencies that right now are involved in the regulation of State and local educational activities.

We feel we need the visibility so that when we protest, we don't have someone four or five echelons down from the President saying:

Well, what can we do? The Congress has written this and maybe overspecified some of the regulations. But there is nothing we can do because we are not up high enough in the Administration to protest and to do anything about it.

We also applaud the feature saying that a good look should be taken at the advisory councils. We, at the State level, are enthusiastie about citizen participation and teacher participation, but we now have in the State of Illinois so many advisory councils-at least 57 varieties, many of them mandated by the Federal Government—that we spend $500,000 a year just on bringing people to advisory committee meetings. So there is provision in

Chairman RIBICOFF. You mean the State of Illinois spends $500,000 a year?

Dr. CRONIN. Just on advisory councils, just on the input function. Hardly a week goes by I don't have an invitation to sit with an advisory council and get advice. That is good in one sense, but we have numerous advisory councils whose functions overlap.

Recently we just said:

This is crazy. Let's put together the advisory council on vocational education, career education and adult education so we have a group of 30 people talking with each other and giving advice to each other about how do you provide for the vocational needs for adults as well as for children, rather than have totally fragmented and separate groups.

The Federal Government has grown so, and these councils blossom like crabgrass. Your bill provides an opportunity to begin to pull together some of these councils in a streamlined fashion. That to us makes eminent good sense.

Chairman RIBICOFF. I am just curious as I am listening to youif the President offered you the commissionership of education, would you take it?

Dr. CRONIN. NO; I don't think I could afford to. [Laughter.]

Chairman RIBICOFF. If he offered you the job of Secretary of Education, you would consider it, wouldn't you?

Dr. CRONIN. There are others I think more qualified.

Chairman RIBICOFF. I am just making a statement. Because when you consider there were 13 Commissioners of Education in the last 12-year period, you can understand the frustrations of being a Commissioner of Education. And it was very intriguing yesterday to have the lady who represents all the union employees of the Educa