Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much, Dr. Moynihan. I think you have given us a brilliant, perceptive, and balanced opening statement, one to which I have little doubt we shall often be referring as we consider this legislation during the months ahead.

The Chair would just like to make a couple of observations quickly and then ask you a question or two. First of all, with respect to your comment that some persons saw the introduction of a National Institute of Education idea by the President as a hostile act, I want to sayespecially since my distinguished colleague, Mr. Reid of New York, the ranking minority member of the subcommittee, is here-that within hours, indeed minutes after the President's message arrived, he and I had agreed that we would seek to cosponsor this bill, because we both saw in it the seeds of very great good for American education. And that we have so long delayed considering it, as we are beginning to consider it here today, I think is in no way related to our interest in the subject. But to be gentle about it, there have been changes in personnel downtown and it has taken a little time to get that house in order.

Second, with respect to your observation about the importance of taking seriously the findings of social science research, you specifically alluded to the findings of the Coleman report, and more specifically to Coleman's finding that poor children do better educationally when mixed with nonpoor children. Mr. Reid and Mr. Meeds and Mr. Hansen of Idaho here, and I might say other members of this subcommittee and full committee, have been working very hard this last year to put together a comprehensive child development bill which is in large measure premised precisely on that finding of the Coleman report.

I make these observations only so that you will know that there are at least some of us who have heeded your admonition this morning. Dr. Moynihan, I was struck by your statement on page 14 when, in effect, you were suggesting, I think-and perhaps you would care to elaborate on this-with respect to the proposed Institute, that we may now be on the verge of very significant breakthroughs in educational methodology and research. Do I perceive that you are suggesting that if we make the kind of commitment represented by NIE, this could be the kind of impetus required to break out of the impasse in which we find ourselves?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. Chairman, is not possible to give you a confident answer, but I can give you my judgment, yes. Ten years ago you would not have been well advised to establish a large research basic effort in education. You probably would not have gotten out of it. There has been a great change in these 10 years. There are people in this field with a level of methodological sophistication and background we have to find out. There has been a merger between people doing different from even before. There has been a definition of what it is research on what happens in school system and what do you get for this and that, with people doing fundamental studies of what goes on in the chemistry of the brain when a child learns something. Something happens. They feel they are going to get it.

As I say, this kind of serendipity in science is not unknown. Fifty years ago there were fellows who thought they were going to get at the atom, and they did. I would say, sir, two things have happened. One is that there has been an influx into the field, not great, but a significant influx of men of large ability. I mean young men of great promise.

Secondly-and this is perhaps the most important thing-it has been discovered that most of what we thought we knew about the subject isn't so. This has a way of exciting the interest of people who only like hard problems. Educational research I think can fairly be said to have suffered for a long while from the thought that it was all done. If it is all done, you are not going to get many first-rate people in the field. Now finding out the kinds of things which you and Congressman Reid have been associated with, and the startling findings of the equal educational opportunity survey, has brought people in that just never would have bothered because they thought the work was all cleaned up and not worth their while.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Well, the impression that I have heard on this committee and in talking with some colleagues and with educators and others in the country is that educational research is really not very important. But I take it, Dr. Moynihan, what you are saying is that if we are first, really serious about getting more for the taxpayer's investment in education, to look at it purely in dollar and cents terms, which are not irrelevant in these matters; and that second, in substantive terms, if we want to help people learn more and learn more effectively, it is imperative that we give far more attention than we have been giving to the nature of the learning process. And you quoted Kenneth Boulding's statement to the effect that we really don't know very much about how people learn and teach.

I put this question to you for any further comment in order to try to raise the question of the relationship between what on the one hand, some people may say is an abstract, academic, cloudy, vague, cotton-candy phrase; namely, educational research, and, on the other hand, what really happens to real children and real schools and real teachers.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Sir, I absolutely agree with you here. Let me put two points. First of all, when you are dealing with education, you are dealing with one of the sacred responsibilities of the democracy. We are only going to be as good as the next generation we educate and train to take over from us. The public men of this country have not been ungenerous about education. To the contrary, there is no society on earth that does so much in terms of expenditure, I think. We have doubled our expenditure in the last 30 years as a proportion of gross product. You have a further responsibility to try to see that the taxpayers get something for that extra money.

By and large, the school systems have not been able to deliver more education for the increased taxes which they have received. They haven't done that. But beyond that, sir, there is another problem. I alluded to it. Let me say it once again. With respect to the educational achievement of disadvantaged groups, right now we are promising things we can't deliver, and there is no better formula for social unrest. We are saying, "Watch! It is going to be great". And it does not happen and the sense of betrayal, I think, is real; the sense that this is a deliberate outcome rather than at at this point an unavoidable one is having consequences in every urban school district in America. Pick up a morning newspaper and see where the latest disorder was. Mr. BRADEMAS. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Reid. Mr. REID. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

First, I would like to welcome you most warmly here. I am delighted that you are back in Washington, and permit me, as one Member, to

commend you for the work you have put forth at the White House which was pioneering and creative. I would like to ask a few specific questions, after I make some comments, if I may.

First, I think that the President, with your counseling, focused on an extremely important matter when he talked about the importance of the first 5 years of life. And, further, I think the concept of serious research in education, embodied in this bill to create a National Institute of Education which would cover the whole gamut of research from preschool through higher education, is something that is badly needed.

I think that your remarks on page 15, where you talked about the challenge of getting some meaningful answers perhaps within a decade, is a challenge all of us should take seriously and a little bit hopefully. What I would like to ask you about particularly is about preschool, first 5-year period. You have commented a bit about the cognitive development, and we are trying to fashion a national day-care center bill which will deal not only with the learning process, however that might be defined, but equally with the proposition that nutrition and health and environment are all germane and relevant, and a hungry child or one without shoes on his feet or one with bad teeth is not likely to be the best student.

My question, therefore is: What are the elements that you think would be most helpful to support both the cognitive development and what you call the environmental impact on the development of intelligence? We have the late architect, Dr. Nutra, here talking about the design of a day-care center that would be compatible with departure from a home environment, indeed, from the home itself as a tex tual matter. How would you relate these different elements, therefore, of cognitative development and environmental impacts, nutrition, and health?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Sir, may I say that I think you and Mr. Brademas and your colleagues are doing something brave and brilliant in trying to put together this legislation, trying to respond to what is simply new knowledge. Fifty years ago nobody knew this was so. It was just assumed that you started educating children when they were old enough to talk and they could walk and go to the bathroom on their own. Up until then, nothing was happening to them; that they were sitting in the crib gurgling. But they are not gurgling. They are learning how to talk. We didn't know this. Mothers knew it, but school principals didn't.

I would say three things. In terms of the kind of research, first, there is a level of research in this area which is extraordinarily abstract and important, that is, the kind of molecular biology that led to the discovery of DNA. We are beginning to have a sense of how the brain works, and there are men who really think we are about to get it. They know each other and they just need to be supported. You can't push them. They are going pretty fast, but, my good friend, they are close. Second, you do need some fairly sophisticated clinical work, clinical psychology of the kind Brunel is carrying out in Harvard-and I believe you are meeting with him one evening-that is observing child behavior and noting patterns. They have found, for example, that one of the first things a child learns is when his arm has crossed the center line of his body, and that is when you begin getting that kind of

sense of left hand, right hand. That kind of work needs to be supported.

Finally, you need some just plain very good cost accounting of the actual operation of educational experiments. We change this input. What happens to the output? You just observe the actual experience of the day care center, or whatever the facility is. I would like to analyze it by the methods of regression analysis, and so forth, which we are pretty good at. I would like to say two things to you, sir, and this is hard felt, particularly in the aftermath of the Headstart experience. Don't expect to learn anything serious inside 10 years. It takes 18 years to produce an American citizen, or 18 years and 9 months, some people would say. You can't do some of these things quickly. You learn some things early, but not finally.

Second, I would hope that in going ahead with your proposal-and I certainly hope it does go ahead-that you confine the area of research to a fairly limited number of these enterprises. One of the difficulties with Headstart is that we have tried to go out and evaluate all Headstart programs. There are a number of thousands of these, no one of which is alike. You don't get good research out of that. You get good research by saying we are going to do a thousand of these things and we wish them all luck but there will be a few which we are really going to watch, we are going to instrument, we are going to calibrate and we are never going to let go. Concentrate your inquiry on a few and, for the rest, hope for the best. And then learn to recycle your findings among the rest.

Mr. REID. I think these comments are extremely lucid and helpful. Let me ask a final question. The research on DNA-and indeed the research on potential, if not actual brain damage, perhaps some of it prenatally as well as in the early formative years-certainly suggested the importance of balanced nutrition, it seems to me. And any such project, I think, nutrition has got to be part of any such project.

The other question that I would ask you: Would you not distinguish in your cognitive approach between what might be called compensatory education and what might be called going on from a certain level? I may not be putting it accurately, but there are so many children so far behind in basic training experience that they never really catch up with grade level in reading. And we have to factor in, if we take your goal hopefully, some equality of output at a certain point; this is the compensatory side as opposed to general improvement for one and all, isn't it?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. First, I agree with you completely about nutrition-and remember, we don't have to talk about brain damage in order to argue that it is a good thing to feed children. Let's just feed them.

Mr. REID. I would add, even in New York City today there are 400,000 children who do not get free lunch and breakfast, who do not get it and who need it. It is obvious as a Nation we haven't made the commitment to feeding the hungry.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. What is the matter with us? But on the point of fact on compensatory education, if I read your thinking correctly, we may get to the point hopefully in this country where we don't need

compensatory education, because people don't arrive at an institution behind, if you pick them up early enough.

Professor Kagan at Harvard has demonstrated very clearly that at different social class level by age 9 months the children are different. Don't let me be held to 9 months, but they already have different abilities reflecting their class and origin. These reflect money and environment, and so forth.

We have much to learn from the principle of preventive medicine. All of the great changes in health have come from preventive medicine. Doctors don't do much fixing up. They prevent. Compensatory education has proved enormously difficult. It almost never succeeds. We now know things we didn't know a decade ago as to why it never succeeds.

The problem originates very early, at the ages you and Mr. Brademas are talking about. We are beginning to know how to reverse it to see that it doesn't happen. A doctor out at National Institute of Health has been working with poor children here in Washington. He has been able to show a decline in IQ starting at about 18 months, in a control group, and he has been able to prevent that with the group he is working on. Having prevented the problem, you never have it.

Mr. REID. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Meeds of Washington.

Mr. MEEDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Moynihan, it is very good to see you again. And, as usual, you have never been one to shrink from controversy and you have made statements here today which I feel are very provocative and will undoubtedly embroil you in more controversy, and I am glad you have done so.

I think for years, ever since its inception in this country, we have felt that if we simply provide equality of educational opportunity that we have done our share in this country and that is sufficient. And I hear for the first time this morning someone say that merely providing equality of educational opportunity is not sufficient.

It seems clear to me, after and years of seeing that it hasn't provided real equality, you are saying we have to do more, and I am happy to hear you say that. I commend you for it.

Let me raise a question with you in terms of educational research. It seems to me that one of the big problems with educational research has been the length of time between the input and the evaluation, social evaluation-what happens to the child later. How do you suggest that we can compact evaluations so that we can determine from our research whether we are having any effect or not?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Sir, I will not sound glib to you, but I suggest that the Congress in its legislative history of the NIE, say it would like to have some answers to that question. The basic problem, as I say, it that it takes a long time for a child to grow up, so what you do today you don't really appear to have consequences for 25 years or so. But it is entirely within the range of methodology technique today to begin seeing differences in rates of change very early on, and probably to make very accurate forecasts of where things will go.

This is the kind of thing which, if you give good men a little time and resources, they are likely to get you good answers. I absolutely