competing communities would have mobilized their best resources for a major social goal; local goals would have to be defined and evaluated much more precisely than is usually the case; various alternative means to selected goals would have undergone serious and thoughtful scrutiny; and communities would learn much from each other.

One possible implication of this program is that it would require a "supraagency" at the federal level which could (a) concern itself with the entire range of major urban problems to which technology can contribute and (b) prepare policy and action guidelines for affected federal agencies to follow after the competition had been completed. The winning approaches should be adopted by affected federal agencies whenever feasible so that the best thinking of the country is incorporated in their future plans and programs.

This plan has a number of advantages at the local level: All of the diverse resources must be focused on the problem, private industry can be involved, there is a financial reward, risk-taking involves the public, and a systems approach is required. Using a COMSAT-type approach, all communities could hold a proprietary position in their system and could ultimately sell or license other groups. Winning concepts would be implemented through matching federal funds or perhaps grants. Other communities, for which the approach or a modification of it appeared feasible, would be encouraged to use it by similar federal funding devices.

6. Since a major factor in the solution of many problems to which technology is applicable is that political boundaries act as barriers, many problems are best handled on a regional basis. Yet there are no established means for the federal government to deal with regions except those specially structured around a given problem (like air pollution or sub-average income).

The establishment of regional groups with highly skilled staffs would bring together the scarce talent of a region capable of working on the application of technology, create a recognized resource for all levels of government and act as a focal point for regional problems with technological content. Such a regional group would have as its assignment the definition of significant regional problems amenable to technical solution, the evaluation of alternative solutions, the application of systems concepts to the problems (both singly and in relation to other problems), and the stimulation of regional industries, governments and universities to join forces on the solution. Such a regional group might be a nonprofit corporation to act as a systems manager for appropriate federal and federal-state programs; as such it would fill a considerable missing link between agencies operating at national and local levels. Its ultimate objective would be to encourage regional industry to become involved in the successful solution and exploitation of many areas not now dealt with.

7. There is considerable agreement that new cities or model cities afford one of the best possible opportunities to make massive innovations in urban design and living; yet there have been few such developments in this country. The continued rapid growth of the nation's urban areas and the very heavy existing federal investment in urban areas (through highways, housing, schools, hospitals, etc.) suggests that the federal government should take a more active role in encouraging new cities which would take advantage of the best technology available. Because conditions and requirements differ from place to place, it would be desirable to establish a number of these cities around the country. They would then not only take into account local characteristics, but would also provide the opportunity for a number of different approaches. Finally, they would provide good demonstration projects easily accessible to large numbers of interested persons-builders, financial institutions, consumers, social scientists, educators, materials suppliers, labor, etc.

The exact vehicle for building these model cities might also vary from place to place, but some sort of public-private partnership would be best to join diverse interests. The experimental nature of the projects would probably preclude most private enterprise participation unless it was joined in some way by government at various levels. Labor groups with an interest in capitalizing on new technology might be expected to join in some cases as should groups of financial institutions.

8. School Construction Systems Development provides an almost singular example of the systems approach to a given problem, namely better school construction at lower cost. The same approach should be most fruitful in other areas like low cost housing, low cost rehabilitation in housing, hospitals and other health care facilities (including mobile), and transport subsystems. The financial support required to launch such a project, provided by the Ford Founda

tion in the SCSD case, should logically be provided by a similarly innovative group. The federal government should encourage other foundations and associations to fund similar experiments as well as sponsoring some itself. Federal participation may be justified on the basis of greatly improved knowledge for decision-making in these areas of heavy capital involvement.

SCSD should be studied very carefully as a prototype for the systems approach to various social needs because it has successfully overcome a wide range of apparent barriers to the application of technology. The general philosophy as well as specific actions can be extended and extrapolated to a variety of situations. 9. The National Institutes of Health provides an excellent example of what is possible in the application of science to major national social needs. NIH is well accepted as a mechanism for dealing with critical national problems. An analog in the area of urban "health" would seem to be a very logical development, perhaps growing out of the existing Institute for Applied Technology in the National Bureau of Standards. The constituent Institutes could follow various functional areas of transport, shelter, communications, pollution, etc. They could provide a national focal point for both research and clinical programs which would involve, as does NIH, the best groups in the country through grants and contracts. As a national institution, the Institute would be required to take the broadest possible overview, relating the various pieces of the programs to overall national needs and goals. It could be a logical policy formulation group, as well as a national resource, for government programs at all levels. It would probably function best if it did not have overt control or regulatory responsibilities. The Institute would have a relatively small in-house staff of very high quality and would rely to a significant extent on cooperative programs. Such an Institute should be the focal point in government for policy, planning, and research in urban technology.

10. The final mechanism, or family of mechanisms, recommended by the Conference was directed to the professional engineering community. Much of the responsibility for the application of technology to urban and social problems must rest with the engineers, the professional societies, the engineering schools. Ways must be found to involve the engineers, particularly at the subnational level, in the formulation of urban policy where technology is involved.

State and local societies should work more closely with all levels of government to provide the kinds of information and insight necessary in policy formulation. Opportunities and alternatives must be posed to the appropriate political groups involved in urban planning.

The engineering schools should take a more active role in developing curricula which would go well beyond those now available in equipping men to deal with urban technology. This is needed at both the undergraduate and the postgraduate levels.

The National Academy of Engineering should be encouraged to concern itself with appropriate research-based policy statements which can serve to inform national policymakers of the scope and value of the potential contributions of technology to unmet public needs.

The Engineering Foundation should sponsor a second conference on the social consequences and implications of technology which would carry forward the discussions begun in 1965 and act in part as a continuation of the work of the Commission.

EXHIBIT 218

THE POLITICS AND FINANCING OF EDUCATION: FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL INTERACTION

By Alan K. Campbell

Professor of Political Science, Director of Metropolitan Studies Program, Syracuse University and Delegate-at-Large to the New York State Constitutional Convention

Presented to American Orthopsychiatric Association, 44th Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., March 20-23, 1967

Are sufficient resources being allocated to public education?

There are many ways to approach an answer to this question-none intrinsi cally better than another, but perhaps some more relevant to public policy. making than others.

Research over the past decade has clearly demonstrated that investment in education is among the most productive investments a society can make. Recent studies using different methods of calculations and different measures of economic growth, attribute from 20 to 42 percent of national economic growth to education.

A recent study of the education provisions of the G.I. Bill of Rights found that 7,800,000 World War II and Korean War servicemen had taken advantage of the education part of the Act. The Veterans' Administration stated that "As a result they raised their income level to the point where they are expected to repay, through taxes, two and one-half times during their lifetime, the 14.5 billion dollars the program cost."

Other calculations confirm the economic return of education to its holder. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company estimates that a college degree adds $150,000 to a person's earnings during a working career of forty years. Equally impressive is the return which completing high school pays. A pupil, for example, who graduates from high school increases his earning power by 13.7 percent over that of one who completes only the tenth grade.

Just as it is demonstrable that education pays rich dividends, it is equally clear that inadequate education is costly-for the individual and for society. Low educational attainment levels are highly correlated with persistence on welfare and unemployment rolls. The relationship between delinquency and crime and education points to another cost of inadequate and insufficient education.

The fact that educational investment is productive does not tell us, however, whether present investment levels are as high as they ought to be. Answering this question is made difficult since the private market cannot act as a calculator of whether investment levels are high enough. Resources do not flow into education as a result of its high productivity. Investment in this activity is public decision, pointed to whatever goals society has set for itself. Since the automatic workings of the market-place are not operative, careful analysis is imperative if the appropriate amount and distribution of resources is to be understood and properly adjusted.

What does the record show about total investment in public education? I think it is now well understood that state and local governments have been making terrific over-all fiscal effort over the past ten years. Despite growing federal aid there has been no let-up in the pressure on state and local fiscal bases. It is necessary to talk about state and local fiscal totals since every state divides responsibilities differently between the state and its local government. Over the past decade state and local expenditures have grown by 126 percent, while federal expenditures have grown by only 24 percent. In fact, the relationship of state and local proportion of total governmental expenditures in the United States to federal expenditures approaches the relationship of the 1920s. Within this growth pattern education has increased more than the average for all public expenditures. Education has grown at the rate of 151 percent for this period, in contrast to the 126 percent for all state and local expenditures. This increase has resulted in the proportion which state and local education expenditures are of total expenditures to an increase from 34.4 percent to 38.3 percent. However, if one looks inside this package of educational services it is found that the greatest growth has been in the field of higher education rather than for elementary and secondary schools. Higher educational expenditures have increased by 290 percent for this period, while the expenditures for elementary and secondary schools has been 128 percent-only slightly more than the average 126 percent increase for all public functions.

Whether this increase is sufficient is difficult to determine unless the analysis is made relative to the allocation of resources to different types of communities. As communities differ, so do their expenditures for education.

One of the most useful ways of examining differences between communities is to look at the population shifts which have and are occurring in this country. Suburbs continue to grow, while central cities decline or, at best, hold their own. This shift has not only been a matter of numbers of people, but also a sorting-out process. In general, the poor, less educated, non-white Americans are staying in the central city while higher income whites and a great deal of the industrial sector moves to the suburbs, taking their tax base with them.

Although this description must be qualified somewhat, in terms of the size of the metropolitan area and region of the country, the larger the metropolitan area, the more accurate the description.

This sorting out process has made the problems of central cities more critical while removing to inaccessible suburbs, the very resource base which is necessary to solve city problems. Central cities not only find it difficult to finance education but with lower income and a declining tax base (or one which is, at best, holding its own) all public expenditures, municipal and education, have become increasingly difficult to finance.

It is the educational problems created by this redistribution of population and tax base for which recent federal aid to education was designed. Although some of the aid goes to rural areas, the bulk of it flows to the cities where more and more of the disadvantaged are concentrated. This use of federal aid for the purpose of overcoming the educational disadvantages of the under-privileged is a new development. As the Report of the National Advisory Council on the Education of Disadvantaged Children points out, "Only five years have gone by since educators first began to recognize and define the special problems of educational disadvantage and at first, very few educators at that. Less than three years have gone by since these first definitions of educational disadvantage began to win a reasonably wide recognition leading to a political climate favoring a federal commitment to large scale compensatory education. Less than one year has gone by since that federal commitment through Title I has become a reality."' The demands for aid to education, of course, go back far longer than does the recognition of the special educational needs of the socially and economically disadvantaged. Previous to this recognition, and particularly in the post-World War II period, the greatest demands for aid to education came from the suburban areas which were feeling the pinch of increasing enrollments and a resulting need for physical facilities.

The combination of the need for new facilities in the suburbs, and the obvious economic advantage of investment in education were given new political significance with the launching of Sputnik. The educational system of the country came under general attack from those who believed that the students were not required to learn enough. Progressive education was often depicted as the cause of the so-called educational failures. There is no doubt that this concern for educational quality increased local expenditures for education and, in the process, undoubtedly increased state aid for education. Most of the increase, however, appears to have come in the suburbs rather than in the city.

This concern for the quality of education also produced the federal National Defense Education Act. Designed to improve the educational systems offering in fields related to national defense, it authorized aid for specific purposes and provided it to those school districts with sufficient initiative to apply for it. Again the result was primarily aid for suburban districts, since it was these districts which had the necessary initiative and professional competence to make the required effort."

Despite these modest improvements in the support provided education, the concern was not great enough to overcome the political resistance to a more general kind of federal aid. That resistance reflected the sharp division in the country over the issue of public support of parochial education. Although the public opinion polls showed a clear majority of voters favored federal aid to education, that majority disappeared whenever the preference had to be stated for or against aid to parochial schools. The political resistance was finally overcome with the landslide victory of the Democrats in 1964, a compromise on the parochial school issue, and the obvious decline in the quality of central city education."

The aid provided, therefore, was not general aid but rather aid for all the educationally disadvantaged. Within this context the program had special meaning for the central cities of the country. The deteriorating relative position of central city schools began to become clear in 1957. That year marks the point at which expenditures per pupil in the suburbs caught up with and began to pass expenditures per pupil in the city. In that year, for the 35 largest metro

1 P. 11, November 25, 1966.

Paul E. Marsh and Ross A. Gortner, Federal Aid to Science Education: Two Programs (Syracuse Syracuse University Press, 1963): Frank J. Munger and Richard F. Fenno, Jr., National Politics and Federal Aid to Education, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1952).

3 Munger, Op. cit.

For an analysis of the constellation of political forces which produced the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 see Philip Meranto, The Politics of Federal Aid to Education in 1965: A Study in Political Innovation (Syracuse Syracuse University Graduate School, unpublish doctoral dissertation, 1966).

politan areas, current expenditures per student were $303 in the suburbs and $310 in the city. By 1962, however, the suburbs had forged considerably ahead. Current expenditures per pupil for the suburban areas were $439 compared to $376, a difference of $63 per pupil. Although later data is not available for all the 35 largest metropolitan areas, a check on some of those areas for which data is available does indicate that the gap is still there. Whether it is growing or remaining about the same is not yet clear.

TABLE 1.-CURRENT EDUCATIONAL EXPENDITURES PER STUDENT, TOTAL EDUCATIONAL EXPENDITURES PER CAPITA AND TOTAL NONAIDED EDUCATIONAL EXPENDITURES PER CAPITA (TAX PROXY) FOR CENTRAL CITY AND OUTSIDE CENTRAL CITY AREAS, 1962

During this period of suburban educational improvement, research concerning the disadvantaged made it clear that the educational problems for this group of students was much greater than for those who went to school in suburban communities. Careful studies have demonstrated again and again that the single best predictor of educational achievement is the family background of the pupil. On the average, the higher the income of parents, the better the performance of the students. Income is undoubtedly a proxy measure for many other family characteristics."

For a review of these studies see Jesse Burkhead, Thomas Fox and John Holland, Inputs and Outputs in Large City Education, to be published by Syracuse University Press, 1967; Thomas G. Fox, "A Study of Educational Resource Transformation within a Larg City Public High School System" (Syracuse Syracuse University Graduate School, unpublished doctoral dissertation, 1966).