Mr. Secretary, we welcome you. We look forward to hearing your statement. Then I understand that Commissioner Marland will be highlighting his testimony and then we can put questions to you. We are glad to have you, sir.

STATEMENT OF HON. ELLIOT RICHARDSON, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE; ACCOMPANIED BY HON. SIDNEY P. MARLAND, JR., COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION; DR. JOHN OTTINA, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF DEVELOPMENT; AND CHRISTOPHER CROSS, ACTING DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR LEGISLATION

Secretary RICHARDSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, the Chair has very succinctly, and I am sure the Commissioner and I would agree, very persuasively stated already the considerations underlying the President's proposal for a National Institute of Education. I think we would associate ourselves with all of the objectives that you have just summarized.

From that point of view, therefore, perhaps it could be said that my testimony and the Commissioner's amount in effect to preaching to the converted.

On the other hand we will at least be laying a foundation on which questioning can proceed and perhaps supplementing in slightly dif ferent perspective some of the points you have already made.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Allow me to interrupt at that point Mr. Secretary. I just want to make an observation. Our subcommittee plans to go into the NIE in considerable depth, as I think you may know, and one of the reasons I at least feel very strongly, that we need to do so is that although we on the subcommittee may be to some extent converted to the importance of educational research but we still really don't know as much as we should about educational research. If, therefore, we simply were to rush through action on this bill without giving it the attention that it merits, we will be missing a great opportunity to educate ourselves on this committee and our colleagues in Congress on this and we may pass the bill but you won't get any money out of the appropriations committee.

Secretary RICHARDSON. I think the point you make is very well taken Mr. Chairman, and the hearings and the record made in the hearings will be of value to us in the Department of HEW and the Office of Education as well as I am sure to all people in the United States who are interested in the field of education in general and the development of research capability within that field as well.

As you pointed out earlier, Mr. Chairman, President Nixon did call for the creation of the National Institute of Education as the driving force in a national effort of educational revitalization. The President declared:

As a first step toward. reform, we need a coherent approach to research and experimentation *** the purpose of the National Institute of Education would be to begin the serious, systematic search for new knowledge needed to make educational opportunity truly equal.

For the schools that have served so well for so long have come into days of serious difficulties-difficulties no one has yet found tools

to resolve. The dimensions of this crisis in educational experience are truly sobering. We have poured billions of Federal dollars into education, only to find that the situation seems more critical than before.

Each year a heartbreaking number of disadvantaged young people leave school without the basic skills needed to fill any but the most menial jobs. There is no assurance that their younger brothers and sisters will do better.

Older people with years of productive labor find themselves in a market which no longer needs their skills and with no adequate system for reeduction and renewal.

Too often creativity and curiosity are stifled, persistence and motivation lost, because we do not know how to build a learning environment which responds to the kaleidoscopic effects of modern society. The schools are attacked as a symbol of repression rather than honored as places which serve the student's hopes. Violence against teachers and against other students reveals an emotional wilderness in the minds of our young. Incidents of violence initiate spirals of security measures which turn the school from a community center into a daytime prison.

Even the best of schools don't prepare our children to deal constructively with an ever-changing world. We have not yet found ways to teach coping with chance. Or humanity. Or ingenuity.

In the face of these difficulties, we can be sure of one thing: the old answers no longer work. Where once we put faith in the power of a new school building, an extra teacher, a new textbook, we now know that such improvements just don't seem to make much difference. Where once we supposed that careful research would show us the way, we now know that what is proven successful in the laboratory may still prove a failure in the classroom.

Research into the ways that people learn and live, then, is especially critical and especially difficult in this era of change and uncertainty. Traditional techniques and forms will no longer serve; little has yet been found to even replace them.

Promising ideas do abound, but we are coming to appreciate the difficulty of turning them to practice. Complex ideas cannot be marketed so easily as we again market television sets. We know that an innovation may fail because we have not shown teachers how to use it successfully. We know that an innovation may fail because teachers, administrators, or even parents distrust it or dislike it.

We know that an innovation may fail because it involves a mismatch with some other part of school; it does not build on a child's previous experience, or it does not prepare him for subsequent experience, or it is incompatible with other present demands on his time or on school

resources.

As a result, fresh and far-reaching educational solutions demand both new knowledge that can be used to reshape those solutions and new ways to put those solutions into practice. These tasks represent educational research and development's most challenging agenda.

Together then with a bipartisan group of Congressmen, we have called for the National Institute of Education to provide fresh leadership in carrying out these tasks. Cosponsored by Congressman Brademas as the subcommittee's chairman, Congressman Quie, and 19

other distinguished members, H.R. 3606 would establish the new agency in HEW as a visible and vigorous focus for educational research and development.

The agency would be separate from the Office of Education, although responsibility for it would be delegated to the Commissioner. Designed to attract scholars of outstanding competence, the NIE would be headed by a presidentially appointed director with special authority to hire and compensate technical and professional staff exempt for certain civil service requirements.

Astute observers have been calling attention to the need for a special educational research and development institution since 1958, when a National Academy of Sciences committee first proposed the agency. The President's Science Advisory Committee repeated the suggestion in 1964.

More recently, both the Commission on Instructional Technology and David Krathwohl, former president of the American Educational Research Association, have come forward with similar ideas.

Through all of these suggestions echoes a common conviction that a new institution would exert greater leadership toward strong educational research and development, and thus toward revitalizing education in America.

For despite our belief that research and development can be the key, we have not supported the major research and development effort needed to tackle our most stubborn and complex educational problems. In contrast to research and development in other areas of national importance, educational research and development has remained a poor cousin in size, in resources, in scope, and in organization.

In 1968, the man-years devoted to research, development, and innovation in education totaled just 5,390; in health, 59,400.

Only about 10,000 researchers work on education, while the number of researchers working on health is three to five times that figure.

Since 1950 the Nation has invested less than $1 billion in educational research and development; in that time, $7 billion has been devoted to agriculture research and $14 billion to health research. Private industry's research and development investments have been even higher. The electrical equipment industry, for example, spends $4.2 billion a year on research and development; the aircraft industry spends $5.6 billion.

Research and development receives only 3 percent of educational expenditures and 4.6 percent of health expenditures.

I mention research in health, agriculture, and industry, not because their tasks are identical to those of education research-they are notnor because resources in these areas are sufficient to their needs; certainly there is always a need for new thrusts in these areas of knowledge.

Of course, research in these fields has had the advantage of a strong base in the hard sciences and more easily observable results than educational research.

But the mission of educational research and development is certainly as challenging and complex as that of research in health, in agriculture, in industry. And education research and development clearly lags several orders of magnitude behind.

In addition to problems of size, and insufficient resources, educational research and development has not attracted enough top quality re

searchers from a broad range of disciplines; it has been approached mainly from the standpoint of educational psychology, testing, administration, and the like.

And research has rested on narrow institutional base; most of it has been conducted on university campuses. Industry, Government, and other institutions carry on very little work in educational research and development.

Finally, we have not established a visible high-level national institution charged with educational research and development management. In part, this failure reflects a general lack of interest in educattional research because of its relative weakness, and the lack of educational research and of organizational prestige helps to perpetuate that weak

ness.

In other fields, high-level agencies devoted solely to research and development have proven extremely successful. In health, for example, nationally visible research efforts have benefited from the establishment of research and development units separate from health operating functions.

In contrast, the National Center for Educational Research and Development has remained a component of the Office of Education. As such, it has not been able to escape some measure of bureaucratic anonymity. While the top Federal management position ranks at a level IV in health research and a level V in agricultural research, NCERD's placement in the Office of Education has kept its head at a GS-17 level.

Creation of a National Institute of Education would address directly this last problem, and it would address indirectly educational research and development's other weak points.

The National Institute of Education would bring greater stature to research and development in education, organize interdisciplinary teams to seek radically new approaches to solve educational problems, and invite the commitment of more resources.

Establishing a new agency will not by itself and all the difficulties facing educational research and development. But a separate research and development institute with special characteristics is needed, if we are to make room for major progress. The changes feasible within existing institutional arrangements simply will not lead to a quantum lean toward excellence in educational experimentation and innovation. Creating a new agency can, for example, affect the size, scope, and vitality of the educational research community. A National Institute of Education will spark interest in educational research generally. Since education research has traditionally lacked prestige in the academic community, many top scholars have been reluctant to enter it. As education research gains prestige, outstanding scholars from a wide range of disciplines will become interested in the field.

The National Institute of Education's prominence would be main tained by several key characteristics. First, as I have mentioned, the agency itself would be a distinct unit outside the Office of Education, allowing it visibility as a separate unit.

Second, its Director, as an executive level V, would be a high-level appointee. This ranking is a necessity if we are to recruit a Director with extensive experience and the highest national stature, and to compensate him appropriately.

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The Director must command enough respect to draw the very best academicians, educational practitioners, public administrators, and so on, to work in NIE.

Third, the special personnel authority would allow the agency enough high-level positions and freedom to bring in outstanding scholars. Their presence, both permanent and short term, will build an institutional reputation and a high degree of confidence.

Beyond strengthening educational research and development itself, the new Institute would organize people, energies, and resources more effectively to conceive fresh approaches to education. A "critical mass” of expertise from a variety of fields would be marshaled. The National Institute of Education's personnel system will allow special flexibility to gather the best minds and put them to work together. And as a new agency, the National Institute of Education can develop its own operational patterns best suited to a research and development agency.

Finally, the NIE could stimulate the increases in funds for research that we have not yet been able to achieve. Perhaps because of its immaturity as a field, education research has not received the public support needed to secure substantially increased resources.

If the agency does indeed succeed in boosting public interest in educational research and development, a willingness to increase public investment should follow.

In this connection, Mr. Chairman, I can address directly the con cern you expressed earlier as the underfunding of the proposed NIE. I would like to emphasize the President's commitment to a sound and systematic growth of Federal expenditures for educational research and development under the NIE. We would expect NIE's firstyear budget to fall within a range of $150 to $200 million. An estimated $120 to $140 million of this represents projected levels of programs to be shifted from the Office of Education. After the first year, we would expect to see NIE's budget rising steadily to a level of $310 to $420 million in fiscal year 1977.

In summary, let me reiterate that renewing education's promise requires new tools and techniques developed by a vigorous research and development system.

The system of educational research and development itself needs strengthening if it is to match that challenge. Prominent researchers from many disciplines must be drawn to the task; funds must be so marshaled to devise imaginative and radically new approaches.

As the next step toward these ends, we must mold a new agency capable of providing energetic national leadership-a National Institute of Education. I urge you to join in support of this move, by acting favorably on the bill before you, at the earliest possible date.

Mr. Chairman, I will now turn the discussion over to Dr. Marland. Although for the reasons I've mentioned we feel it crucial that the National Institute of Education be organizationally distinct from the Office of Education, I also wish to make Dr. Marland responsible for all major efforts in education, including the National Institute of Education.

He speaks today in the broad role of the administration's chief education officer.

Mr. BRADEMAS. We agreed that Dr. Marland would have a chance to summarize and give the highlights of his testimony, and then we would go on with the questioning. Go ahead.