Like the President, I attach a high priority to the establishment of the Department of Education. We will be working hard to complete action on the legislation this year. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JAVITS Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that the committee is continuing its extensive hearings, begun last fall, on S. 991, a bill that would establish a Federal Department of Education. During the next 2 days, the committee will be hearing from an impressive group of witnesses, and I am anxious to hear their views and consider their testimony. Mr. Chairman, there exists in the Congress today a great deal of support for upgrading Federal support for education and cultural activities. This is a sentiment with which I concur; indeed, throughout my career in Congress, I have always been a strong advocate for a greater Federal role in these areas. However, I am not yet convinced that the extensive reorganization contemplated by this bill, and the establishment of a new Cabinetlevel Department of Education is the proper mechanism for accomplishing this goal. I believe that it is important that we should not lose sight of the fact that reorganization of the Federal agencies dealing with education is not an end in itself. Rather, this reorganization, like any reorganization, must be judged by carefully examining, in concrete terms, the advantages and disadvantages that will result to education should the reorganization take place. We must know whether it will solve substantive problems, or merely create new ones. We should also consider whether some middle ground, such as upgrading the status of the Office of Education within HEW, might not be the best course. Mr. Chairman, I have an open mind on all these questions. I am sure they will all be examined in detail by the committee during these hearings. After the hearings have closed, I intend to weigh carefully all of the arguments that were presented before I decide what course of action I believe would serve best the public interest in this matter. STATEMENT OF SENATOR JIM SASSER Senator SASSER. I continue to advocate the creation of a separate Department of Education. I am proud that I was one of the original cosponsors of S. 991 which would authorize the Department. I commend Chairman Ribicoff for his leadership in obtaining the signatures of a bipartisan majority of the Senators asking passage of this bill. This concept continues to garner support from educators and those who seek to be educated. The letters I have received from Tennessee show that most people in my State are in full agreement that it is time to have a separate department to administer programs for education. I have been asked by the Tennessee Education Association to move the authorization for a separate Department of Education with "all deliberate speed." I particularly applaud the recommendation of the Department of Education by President Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union message to Congress. The President's support has focused greater public attention on the effort to create a separate department. It also insures the cooperation of the administration in implementing the new policy after S. 991 is enacted. I think that the expertise of the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in drafting workable final specifics of the legislation will be invaluable. There must be a greater commitment of Federal resources to education. A separate Department of Education will insure that more attention will be given to education at the Federal level. It can mean greater efficiency and economy in the administration of existing educational programs. And it can also mean a greater investment of Federal dollars in learning. I continue to be impressed with the fine job that the State and local governments have done in running our schools. I believe that local communities should continue to administer their own educational programs. But more attention to education at the Federal level can enhance local efforts. I should like to submit for the record a letter from the Tennessee Education Association president which expresses the organization's support for S. 991. [The material referred to follows:] TENNESSEE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, Nashville, Tenn., January 25, 1978. Hon. JIM SASSER, Dirksen State Office Building, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR SASSER: The Tennessee Education Association, composed of more than 44,000 Tennessee educators is ecstatic with the recommendation from President Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union address for a separate cabinet level Department of Education. As you very well know, this recommendation moves us a step closer to realizing a long-sought goal of the Tennessee Education Association and our national parent association, the NEA. We hope that you will join with President Carter and with Tennessee teachers in moving the recommendation forward with all deliberate speed. We sincerely believe that the separate cabinet level position will diminish the bureaucratic red tape that so often burdens federal education legislation. Again, we are delighted with remarks from the President, and we feel confident that you will join in this bipartisan effort to put in place a Department of Education. Most sincerely yours, GEORGE KERSEY, JR., President. Chairman RIBICOFF. Today, we have two panels. The first panel consists of Mr. Lawrence Zaglaniczny, Mr. Joel Packer and Ms. Barbara Kemp. So may we have your testimony? As you know, because of the large number of witnesses, each witness will be limited to 10 minutes, but your entire statement will be going into the permanent record. Mr. Zaglaniczny? TESTIMONY OF LAWRENCE S. ZAGLANICZNY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COALITION OF INDEPENDENT COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS; BARBARA KEMP, PRESIDENT, AFGE LOCAL 2607, HEW EDUCATION DIVISION; AND JOEL PACKER, LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL STUDENT ASSOCIATION/NATIONAL STUDENT LOBBY Mr. ZAGLANICZNY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Lawrence S. Zaglaniczny, national director of the Coalition of Independent College and University Students, also known as COPUS. The coalition is a national organization of students who attend independent colleges and universities. We are working for adequate Federal student aid to insure that no student is denied the opportunity to attend college for financial reasons alone. We thank the committee for this opportunity to comment on the proposed Cabinet-level Department of Education. COPUS favors the creation of a Federal Department of Education. It is our hope that a separate department will better serve students and the field of education, than has been the case of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. We are especially thankful the committee recognizes the significance of students in the educational process by the fact that our student group and the National Student Lobby are the first witnesses to appear before you in this second round of hearings. While the Nation receives many benefits from an educated citizenry, while education employees give service and receive professional satisfaction, it is students who are the raison d'etre for the whole of the education establishment. And, as students it is our education and our future that is most important and most at stake. I would like to quote from an American President on education, if I may. Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so imme lately from the sense of the community as in ours it is propositionably essential. To the security of a free Constitution it contributes in various waysby convincing those who are entrusted with the public administration that every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people, and by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burdens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness-cherishing the first, avoiding the last-and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws. Whether this desirable object will be best promoted by affording aids to seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a national university, or by any other expedience, will be well worthy of a place in the deliberations of the legislature. That President was George Washington, and those remarks are from his first state of the Union address. Since the first Congress we have been every now and then debating about the place of education in the Federal Establishment and what the Federal Government's role should be. It is time a Department of Education was created to coordinate and bring some rationality and some long-term focus to the problems of education. We favor a Department of Education because of the fact that in HEW education has been too long neglected. At the national level, the Department of Education will focus attention on current and future. educational problems and issues. As students we believe our individual learning experience can only benefit from a new Department which is solely concerned with American education. The second reason we favor a Department of Education is in the past students have not been included very much in the decisionmaking process. I think one recommendation we would have for a new Department of Education is that it have a substantial unit within it that would allow students to be consulted on decisions affecting them; and second, bring student ideas from across the Nation into the decisionmaking and educational process of the Department. Second, we would recommend-this figure is open for discussion— approximately 2.5 percent of all research moneys in the Department go to student-initiated and run research projects. The educational value of such research projects is obvious. We believe the Department of Education has been long in coming. It is an idea whose time has come. As a final point, COPUS wishes to acknowledge the fact many higher education associations and other interest groups will place great political pressure on you and your fellow Senators to exclude this agency or that one from a new Department. We wish you to know as students we have no ax to grind in terms of what should or should not be included in the Department. You have heard from and will hear from expert witnesses and must make the decision on the structure and activities to be included on a nonpolitical basis. Otherwise, each interest group will attempt. to water down the functions of the Department or may attempt to kill it. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for your great efforts in promoting a Department of Education, for so many years now. We wish to commend President Carter for reaffirming his commitment to create a Department of Education and we will be happy to assist you in any way possible in creating this new Department. [The prepared statement of Mr. Zaglaniczny follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE S. ZAGLANICZNY, NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF I am Lawrence S. Zaglaniczny, National Director of the Coalition of We are especially thankful that the Committee recognizes the significance of students in the educational process by the fact that our student group and the National Student Lobby are the first witnesses to appear before you in this second round of hearings. While the nation receives many benefits from an educated citizenry, while education employees give service and receive professional satisfaction, it is students who are the raison d'etre for the whole of the education establishment. as students it is our education and our future that is most important and most at stake. And, There can be no doubt that education is the "cutting edge" of social advancement, of intellectual accomplishment, of business and technological progress, and of cultural achievement. It is a significant circumstance that this Committee began hearings on a separate and new Cabinet-level Department of Education on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the Bakke case and within two weeks of the 20th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik I. In this nation, education has helped to preserve our freedoms, given us material goods through basic research, and has provided solutions to the concerns and problems of our generations. And, it is in education where our great social questions are first faced and resolved. |