Chairman RIBICOFF. Gentlemen, there is a vote going on. We will take a 10-minute recess to give me an opportunity to go to the floor and vote. I will return and have a few questions for both of you. The committee will stand in recess for 10 minutes.

[Brief recess.]

Chairman RIBICOFF. The committee will be in order.

I would like your comment, gentlemen, on a letter that Senator Magnuson, Senator Pell, and I sent to Vice President Mondale last

summer.

Let me read from the letter our comments on the DOD model. I would like your comments on it.

Patterning HEW after the DOD sub-Cabinet model would be little more than a simple facelift and in the end do much harm to the overall Federal education effort. Such a reorganization would drastically increase and centralize the HEW Secretary's powers and duty.

A Secretary of Education within HEW would only serve as an administrator, not a policy-maker. The education function could even be further buried in unnecessary layers of bureaucracy.

If the present Department of Defense organization is any indication of what we could expect, the education sub-secretary would probably be relegated to a lower position within HEW under as many as nine assistant secretaries and a Deputy Secretary in the Office of the Secretary.

Furthermore, the education division's budget would continue to be outnumbered 18 to 1 by HEW's massive health and welfare program expenditures.

The HEW Secretary out of necessity would continue to be preoccupied with pressing health and welfare concerns. Education would take a back seat, as it has always taken. An education secretary outside of the present HEW structure would clearly have more access to the President and in his or her position alone would signify the importance this Administration attaches to the education of 60 million persons enrolled in public and private education institutions today. Educators would see that they truly have a spokesperson at the highest levels of government, an individual in a position to give constructive policy input on the use of more than $25 billion the Federal Government spends on education every year.

In this room we have interested, knowledgeable people. I would be curious how many of these people could name the present Secretary of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, let alone the three. I am just curious if anybody in this room even knows the name of one. Änd it has been that way since DOD was created-the near disappearance from public purview and policymaking of the Secretary of the Army, Navy, or Air Force. But I would welcome the comments of either one of you gentlemen.

Mr. SHANKER. You want us to testify on whether we should break those up into three separate departments; is that right? [Laughter.] Chairman RIBICOFF. No; not break those into separate departments; a Department of Education. But the Pentagon is complicated enough to ever consider trying to break it up again.

Mr. SHANKER. I would like to hear the argument for breaking them up again. It certainly can't be that their ability to get Federal dollars has been hurt by the current setup. [Laughter.]

Seriously, I think it is endless. Why not break up health and welfare as well?

Chairman RIBICOFF. As a matter of fact, I think eventually you should.

Mr. SHANKER. Well, I think when the pendulum goes back that way, you go back to Army, Navy, and Air Force, you get separate

departments, I think there will be a big congressional move to bring departments back together again because they have gotten too far apart with too many Cabinet members.

I think the main thing here is to ask yourself the question, What influence will a Cabinet-level education Secretary have with a relatively small budget as against a person representing or heading a department whose budget will continue to be much bigger?

There is a reason why those budgets are different. It is because the Federal responsibilities in terms of financing the Government are quite different in these areas. They are much greater in the health and welfare field at the present time than they are in education. If you want to beef up the education department, you can leave it in there and bring their budget up so that it is equal to the other areas and that part will be just as important.

But that is not what is being proposed. What is being proposed is to take a department which receives, or an area which receives and will probably continue to receive relatively small parts of the Federal budget. The question is, Are they better off out there alone or are they better off as part of something else?

Chairman RIBICOFF. Monsignor?

Monsignor PARADIS. No; I don't want to comment on that part because I don't know too much about the Department of Defense organization. I did not go into that as a model in my testimony. Therefore, I would not care to comment.

I am proposing improving the Office of Education within Health, Education, and Welfare, but we are not proposing a specific model. We would be very happy to help in any way we can if this were to be requested of us.

What we see is important with regard to the link between health and welfare and education. It is our feeling that as long as they are linked together, if it works well within this department, that the child and young person will get a greater benefit out of it than if education were to stand alone.

I do not want to say that we do not recognize the fact that there can be interdepartmental cooperation as well. But it would seem to us if it is within the same department, the child and young person is getting the benefit, or should if it is well organized, of the health part of it and the welfare part of it.

Chairman RIBICOFF. Both of you gentlemen have discussed the importance of the linkages between education, health, and welfare. I would like both of you to cite me specific examples of links today in HEW between education programs, health programs, and welfare programs.

Mr. SHANKER. You are absolutely right. They don't exist and they should. They don't exist even though they are in the same Department. It is a major shortcoming.

I would like to say that if in the development of your legislation for the new department, which we are opposed to a separate department, but should one be proposed that is broader rather than ̄narrower, the broader it is, the fewer objections we would have because the greater the possibilities will be of coordination; the narrower,

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the greater our objections because the more we would then believe. that our point about isolation would be an important point.

Chairman RIBICOFF. Can you name links between the three? Monsignor PARADIS. No; not at all. That is why I spoke to this. I would see in the restructuring and reorganization that this sort of thing should be done.

I would like to say something else, Senator, if I may. We are very well aware of the fact we are not coming up here in any shape, form, or manner to decide for you. We are just giving you our impressions after giving this very careful thought.

My own personal feeling would be very similar to that of Mr. Shanker. That is, if in the wisdom of the Federal Government, the Senate, and the House, they feel that this was in the best interest of the country, then we will certainly do the very best we can to cooperate and to do everything that we see is necessary to provide good, sound education to the public sector and also not forgetting the private sector.

We know that the public school sector will be well defended. That is why I did not address myself to that. What we are concerned about in large measure is the fact that 1 out of every 10, every 10th child or high school-age person, is in a private school.

Many of these are being served in private schools that are in areas where the children and the young people are deprived. I don't want to go into statistics on how the Catholic school system happens to be serving in these areas. I think you are probably aware of them, at least in a general way.

Chairman RIBICOFF. I know specifically. I think you are doing an excellent job, in many instances much better than the public schools. I met Bishop Curtis the other day on the way back from Washington to Connecticut, and I asked Bishop Curtis to get for me, maybe from your organization, what role the Catholic Church and the parochial system had played in bringing minorities into a better educational program. I have been aware in the central cities in many instances you have done better than the public school system.

I am aware of that. May I say that on our list of cosponsors you have got a lot of friends. We are aware of these problems. I am aware of these problems.

I am listening to all of your testimony, those for and against. That is why we have you here. If we are going to get a bill out, we want to get the best bill we possibly can and do the best we can for all education.

Mr. SHANKER. The fact that those linkages have not been there does not mean that they are not needed. Certainly with a good deal of child care, early child development programs, in both the health and welfare fields and not very much in the education field right now, there needs to be that linkage.

We have had very direct experience with paraprofessionals and aides in terms of welfare mothers taking jobs and pursuing a career ladder and developing an education. Certainly some kind of program like that will inevitably be part of any welfare reform program and restructuring the use of schools, not only for immunization programs

but in terms of developing community health programs, in terms of education.

Again, it has happened very little, even though they have been in the same department. But that does not mean that it should not happen.

We have recently proposed legislation dealing with community education, the use of school facilities now that there is a declining pupil population, for many other community services rather than a narrow education purpose that they have been used for so far.

There is a true commitment here to use the schools not in their narrow function but as a center of coordination and dissemination in terms of these other programs, and this is very important.

But I must say I do not see that thrust. We haven't done it in the past. I don't see that as the thrust of a new education department. I see it as a movement not toward coordination and togetherness, in coordination with these other functions and services, but rather as a movement to greater separation.

Chairman RIBICOFF. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I do appreciate your testimony.

Mr. SHANKER. Thank you.

Monsignor PARADIS. Thank you.

Chairman RIBICOFF. The next panel consists of Charles Saunders, Helena Howe, James Norton, and Donald Robinson.

May I again state there may be another vote soon. There is another commitment that I must keep at 12:30. So I would hope that you could confine your remarks as briefly as possible. Your entire statement will go in the record.

Chairman RIBICOFF. Mr. Saunders?

TESTIMONY OF CHARLES S. SAUNDERS, JR., DIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS, AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION; DR. HELENA B. HOWE, BOARD OF DIRECTORS CHAIRWOMAN, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY AND JUNIOR COLLEGES; DR. JAMES A. NORTON, CHANCELLOR, OHIO BOARD OF REGENTS, REPRESENTING STATE HIGHER EDUCATION EXECUTIVE OFFICERS; AND DR. DONALD L. ROBINSON, CHAIRMAN, TASK FORCE ON A SEPARATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS

Mr. SAUNDERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

On behalf of the nine higher education associations listed on my statement, I would like to just give you a brief summary of the major points.

I would have to say the higher education community as a whole has not endorsed any specific organizational pattern for Federal education programs. Yet it is in general agreement on several basic principles which I would have to say are entirely consistent with the stated objectives of your bill, S. 991, and with the stated objectives of the President in his announcement several weeks ago of his support for a separate department.

In Secretary Califano's first week in office, we presented to him a statement of our concerns in this area. Our primary points were that education does need to be elevated in the decisionmaking status of the Federal bureaucracy, that there is a strong need for coordination of educational-related programs throughout the Government, and that any organizational change should reflect or strengthen the tradition of State and local and private control of education.

With regard to the specifics, we have several comments and suggestions we would like to make. First of all, I would point out that the proposed department would certainly resolve the flaw that currently exists in the structure of the education division whereby an assistant secretary is given statutory authority for the activities of the division without any authority over its principal programs which are in fact the responsibility of the subordinate commissioner of education.

I might say, Mr. Chairman, that having served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education and for a considerable period as Acting Assistant Secretary of Education, I am personally aware of the problems caused by divided authority. It isn't only the duality within the education division but it is the status of the whole education bureaucracy within the Federal Government.

I think it is fair to say that it is frequently so that in the past many major educational decisions that fundamentally affected education have been made without consultation with the principal education officials of the Federal Government.

They have been made elsewhere, in the Secretary's office or at OMB or in the White House.

Now we do see a problem in the organizational pattern that S. 991 proposes for the top leadership echelon reporting to the Secretary; because the assistant secretaries, as stated in the bill, all hold staff positions rather than line responsibility.

We believe this is a serious mistake and that the statutory assistant secretaries should serve as high level spokesmen for the major sectors of American education-elementary and secondary, postsecondary, continuing education, vocational, and handicapped education. Otherwise the special needs of these sectors will continue to be addressed at the same low level of bureaucracy they are now.

There should also be an assistant secretary responsible for all the department's research and related activities who would serve as Director of the National Institute of Education.

S. 991 would transfer a number of programs from other agencies to the new department, and some of these we think are very appropriate. Some of them we have serious concern about.

We would oppose a transfer of the National Science Foundation's education directorate. Most members of the higher education community believe that the location of the education directorate within the National Science Foundation affirms the importance of the interdependence of science education and scientific research, and that to separate the two would inevitably damage the quality of both by depriving them of their mutually supportive relationship.

We also oppose the transfer of the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities to the new department. Their functions and