would be: How are we going to get a table that will relate the cost to the activities?

And then also, there would have to be some kind of a cost criteria for the communication?

Mr. GALLAGHER. Yes, given some attention to the problem, some cost estimates would not be too hard to come up with. One of the things I was most intrigued with during the 2 years I was Chief of the Bureau of the Handicapped in the Office of Education was this special education material center network. That was established with about 14 centers throughout the country, and their mandate was to get new ideas into the field as quickly as possible, once they are validated. They have since set up 300 associate centers. These are centers at the local level that take responsibility for the actual delivery to the teacher, whereas the centers themselves provide materials to the associate centers.

These associate centers are being paid for out of a wide variety of local funds, out of funds from title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and title VI of that act. They really show the commitment of the local people to the development of such a delivery system. These are currently restricted just to work with teachers of handicapped children, but I think the lessons that have been learned through that system and through some others that have been tried on a limited basis are available to us. And it would not be too hard to put some reasonable cost figures on those experiences.

Mrs. HICKS. Thank you very much.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Peyser.

Mr. PEYSER. Dr. Gallagher, I am delighted to hear the concentration on communications, because this is the area I am personally very concerned about. The costs are equally tremendous in this area, and I wanted your reaction to the utilization of some of the top people in the communications field on a voluntary basis, assuming they are available, to develop some basic ground rules on how these areas should be developed.

I can say right now that I have a group of men in this field in New York City who are working in the development of what is going to be a purely communication situation on narcotics or drug abuse education. They are doing this on a purely voluntary basis. If the Government or myself are involved in compensating these people, we would be involved in tremendous expenditures.

Do you believe it is compatible to the national education program to utilize the private sources of communication in a voluntary basis? Mr. GALLAGHER. Yes; actually I think that is an excellent idea. If you take the concept of a national institute of education and the prestige that such an institute would have, it could bring together the leaders of the communications field and present them with the problems and say: "Look, here is what we need in order to communicate these ideas more effectively. What can you gentlemen provide for us in the way of advice and plan?"

The plan would involve both private and public sectors, I would hope. Again, I want to stress the difference between communication of ideas and materials, and the communication of practices, which are different. Even Sesame Street with its impact-and it has had an impact-isn't going to change the day-care worker in the day-care cen

ters throughout the country. The children may respond to the program, but the day-care worker probably hasn't improved her skills very much by watching that program.

What we want to do is, not just present new and exciting kinds of experiences to the children, but to strengthen the ability of the person who works face-to-face with the child to do their job more effectively. That is the other side of the communications problem.

Mr. PEYSER. I understand that, and I am hopeful that as we develop and work in this program we are going to utilize private sources, as long as educational areas don't feel a closeout-let's keep it strictly within our own area.

I am delighted to hear your comments on it, because I think there is a great deal of source available for more expenditure.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Dr. Gallagher, I would like to raise one point that Dr. Moynihan alluded to, of which I am reminded by an article that appeared in the Washington Post last week, by Peter Milius, about the difference between rhetoric and action as to the educational program.

I refer specifically to title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and without objection, I would ask consent that the article to which I refer be inserted in the record.

(The article referred to follows:)

[From the Washington Post, Feb. 15, 1971]

NIXON AND EDUCATION: RECORD AND RHETORIC DON'T MATCH

(By Peter Milius)

President Nixon may be right in saying that the present "wide array of overlapping . . . contradictory" narrow-purpose federal programs in domestic fields is in great need of repair. At the very least, in proposing that these programs be consolidated into broader-purpose block grants to the states, with fewer strings attached, he has hold of a powerful political issue. A subtitle in last month's budget message put that issue succinctly, in big capital letters that no opponent could fail to see or understand. "Revenue Sharing," it proclaimed, "Returning Power to the People."

Yet at least in one domestic field, education, the President's call for reversal of the tide that has made power flow toward Washington contained some ironies. The President is saying now that federal regulations and guidelines ought to be relaxed, on the theory that state and local officials know best how to spend the money at their disposal. Thus he noted that, while current "statutes routinely purport to prohibit federal 'control' of education, they surely impede local control." Yet the Nixon administration, during its first two years in office, has sought not to relax, but rather to tighten regulations governing at least two major federal education programs. And its reasoning has been precisely the opposite of the reasoning advanced last month. Its view has been that, without tighter controls, state and local officials would continue to "waste" federal funds.

In his budget message the President said that, "more than any other federal activity, the school-aid programs of the Office of Education reflect the excesses of the categorical (narrow-purpose) grant system." He noted that the Office of Education now administers "over 100 separate grant programs," and said that "the the maze of set-asides, special conditions, priorities, plans and approvals for these grants is bewildering to states and local school districts alike." Worse, he observed. “Federal aid is often provided for needs and purposes which have already been addressed by state legislation, yet the states are unable to transfer or convert the funds to other purposes that are going unserved."

As his answer to these problems Mr. Nixon announced that he will ask Congress to consolidate these myriad old programs into five new, simpler ones, providing funds for the disadvantaged, for the handicapped, for vocational education, for "schools in areas affected by federal activities" (impact aid), and for "general support" (textbooks, laboratory equipment, other miscellaneous items). This

reform, the President said, would "provide support for educational activities in broad areas where the federal government has developed strong interests . . . over the years." However, he added at the same time "the states would have discretion as to how they would accomplish each of these major purposes." The implication was that they lack such discretion now.

The irony of all this is that the states already have great discretion-and that the Nixon administration has been saying for two years that in some fields at least, they ought to have less.

As one example, there is at least one old federal program that already seems exactly to fit Mr. Nixon's new specifications. It is Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, at $1.5 billion this year the largest of all OE programs, accounting alone for almost a third of the whole OE budget. The money is distributed to school districts according to how many disadvantaged children they serve. The only requirement is that they spend it only on these children, and as an extra, to help them catch up. All further decisions-as to whether they spend it on teachers or textbooks, reading or math for example-are theirs alone to make.

Title I, like so many of OE's other current programs, is a legacy of the Johnson administration, one of its proudest accomplishments from Great Society days. The trouble with it, as Mr. Nixon himself observed in his education message last March, is that it has "not measurably helped poor children catch up." Proponents say this is because state and local officials have misspent the money, used it in unimaginative ways, spread it too thin, and often spent it on all children rather than just on the poor. Thus for two years the Nixon administration has been doing something the Johnson administration-partly for fear of being accused of encroaching on local prerogatives failed to do: it has tightened and warned that it will enforce Title I regulations.

One of these regulations (on "comparability") reaches down to the tiniest details of school management, further than the federal government has ever moved before. Its purpose is to make sure that Title I funds are indeed spent on extras for poor children. It requires that local school boards first spread all of their non-Title I money out evenly, local and state money as well as federal, so that services to all pupils in all schools in any one grade are "comparable." The boards may then add their Title I money on top just in poor schools. The comparability rule does not assume that state and local officials are somehow less fallible than federal officials. If anything, it assumes the reverse. The rule, if enforced, will require a major redistribution of resources in many local school districts.

The problem with Title I, and the problem posed by federal revenue-sharing generally, is how to reconcile a federal purpose with local and state control. The Nixon administration has faced the same problem on a smaller scale in the field of vocational education. Federal appropriations for vocational programs used to be pretty much what Mr. Nixon now says he wants-lump-sum grants to the states to spend as they saw fit. In 1968, however, Congress changed that. Its finding was that the states were spending too little money on the segments of the population most in need of vocational training. Its response was to rewrite the law, divide the money up, and require that fixed shares be spent each year on such groups as the poor, the handicapped, and those who had left high school with few marketable skills.

The administration has not yet determined whether to keep or abandon these "set-asides" in the consolidation bill it will send to Congress. Its problem was clearly put in a memo last fall, from presidential assistant John D. Ehrlichman to Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary Elliot L. Richardson. The memo, intended to elicit policy proposals in the vocational field, contained six questions. One was, "How can federal vocational education programs best serve as a catalyst for reform in the often moribund state vocational educational agency without violating the principles of the New Federalism?"

Mr. Nixon declared once before, in his education message to Congress last March, that "I am determined to see to it that the flow of power in education goes toward, and not away from, the local community. The diversity and freedom of education in this nation, founded on local administration and state responsibility must prevail." Yet the President also said, in that same message, that he was not going to seek "major new expenditures" for education until, as he put it, "we gain a new confidence that our education dollars are being wisely invested to bring back their highest return in social benefits, and . . . provide someassurance that those funds contribute toward fundamental reform."

How to reform and not interfere? That is the question.

Mr. Nixon said in his State of the Union message last month that "I reject the patronizing idea that government in Washington is inevitably more wise, more honest and more efficient than government at the local or state level The idea that a bureaucratic elite in Washington knows best what is best for people everywhere and that you cannot trust local government is really a contention that you cannot trust people to govern themselves." That is the politics of his proposal. It is also an oversimplification.

When the President's bill is sent to Congress, it will have strings attached to funds; his own Commissioner of Education said as much last week. Meanwhile, it is enough to say that the President's rhetoric and his record do not match. Mr. BRADEMAS. The point of Mr. Milius' article was twofold:

First, title I ESEA funds have not been expended as Congress intended; namely, directed toward those school districts in which there are large numbers of poor children. But second, we are then told that the expenditures of title I are not producing the results for which they are intended-improving the education of children in such districts. And people then say we don't know enough about what really works in education!

It seems to me that what Mr. Milius is describing is really not intellectually honest; for if Congress says, spend the money on oranges and the money is then expended on apples, we must not then be told, you know money spent on oranges doesn't work. Yet that in essence is what has been going on in this country. We don't have time at this point to go into it, but I think the instance I have just cited is one which those of us concerned about honest educational research ought to have in mind. For otherwise, it will be contended that we ought not adequately to fund certain ongoing educational programs which may very well be more productive than would, given the facts I have described, appear.

Have I made my point clearly?

Mr. GALLAGHER. You certainly have, and one could talk about Head Start in a similar vein. And I think the wisdom that this committee has shown in its considerations on day care could be mentioned here in terms of saying that, if we dole out the money in the same fashion in a new effort on day care, without providing the support services that allow us to train personnel or allow us to have research and development, or to have the communication system we are talking about, we run the risk of the same kind of problem.

Any program that we now introduce has to have these kinds of support elements in them. Because we have learned from title I and Head Start, and from some of our other experiences, that unless those support forces are put into place, the persons on the firing line are not going to be able to do the job that they can.

It is like complaining about the infantryman when you don't have a logistic system to get his needed equipment to him. You can't blame him for not operating as effectively as he might. We have a very sophisticated concept of a supply system for the military. What we don't hap is a sophisticated concept of a supply system of new ideas and effective services for education. And I would hope that the National Institute would be a catalyst in considering such a system.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much indeed, Dr. Gallagher. You, too, have been enormously helpful to our subcommittee on our first day of hearings, and we are grateful to you for having come.

The Chair has observed earlier that we would be continuing hearings on this bill next Tuesday and Wednesday, but he has been advised that there will be a Democratic caucus on Tuesday morning and this may therefore mean that we will have to put our witnesses scheduled for Tuesday morning off until probably Wednesday afternoon, because we already have witnesses scheduled for Wednesday morning. The Chair makes that observation for the benefit of those who plan to be following this bill.

Thank you very much.

The subcommittee is adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 12:30 a.m. the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene Wednesday morning, February 24, 1971.)

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