One important piece of this, and I want to make sure the record shows it, is that in addition to the planning that we are doing for NIE, the Commissioner has asked me to put together a more effective way of carrying out the Office of Education responsibilities along these lines.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Dr. Martin, did you want to add something?
Dr. MARTIN. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

I think the point you are making and that you made a moment ago on the question of redundancy or feedback into the system is at very important point. I think that Dr. Burchinal's national center being in existence is perhaps the first key to the Office of Education answer, that is a 1-year-old operation which is specifically designed to get at this problem and to put some resources in it.

I think that is what has been missing before, that we haven't had that kind of resource.

In the Bureau, while we have a long way to go, we have been able to develop maybe a third of our research budget in this area of dissemination, and that is a much higher percentage than has been reflected in some other places. We are also at the early stages of having a dissemination system, Jim Moss here began several years ago, to fund a federally supported IMC or Instructional Material Center.

When we first got into it, we thought it would be a one-way street; we would get materials out and make them available to teachers of handicapped children.

We have learned that after they have caught on, 300 are now supported locally by States and local districts, they are still not linked together in systemlike characteristics, but they are beginning to be. What they do is provide us with a tremendous amount of information coming back up through that system about what they want and what they need, so that I am very hopeful that we can do two things.

One is, as we put in an increasing amount of our resources into dissemination, that we will have a system developed which will allow us to carry this out to the teachers; and the second and very important thing is that you get back then from the teachers information about what they need.

One of our projects, for example, is designed to try and pick out materials that might be helpful in teaching a certain concept to a certain kind of handicapped child. What we are doing now on a computer is logging when this material is used and how it is used and what the teacher says about it, and that becomes part of the record, so when the next teacher asks about that material, she gets not only a recommendation as to what the material might be used for, but what others have said, and this is where I think your point is very well taken and that whole question of dissemination has got to be seen as a feedback system in a sense rather than as a one-way street.

Dr. BURCHINAL. Mr. Chairman, may I make one comment, please! Mr. BRADEMAS. Yes, of course.

Dr. BURCHINAL. Several of our other panelists have referred to the National Center of Educational Communication being quite new. That is true. Still, we can provide several illustrations of the kind of coop eration mentioned by Dr. Davies.

For example, we have been working closely with Dr. Silberman's group and have identified three major products from the R. & D. effort

that are ready for widespread installation. We have used a large proportion of our new funds for this year for installation of these products. One of these is the multiunit school, a strategy for organizing instruction and staffing and individualized instruction, developed by the Wisconsin R. & D. Center. In cooperation with Bureau of Educational Personnel Development about 250 multiunit school programs will be installed around the country.

Here is one example of how two of the units under Dr. Davies' direction already are cooperating with the R. & D. unit to insure that its products are much better known and in a credible setting so that school people can see it operating and can make their choices as to whether or not they choose to use it.

A second type of product is the set of mini courses developed by the Far West Educational Laboratory for pre- and in-service training of teachers. NCEC is supporting development of 8 to 10 model sites around the country where the first five of these mini courses will be used and will be taken on a circuit to the school districts in those several State areas.

By the end of the year, many local districts with in-service programs will have had an opportunity to have at least some of their staff trained under these programs, and then they can decide whether they want to use mini courses as a regular part of their in-service program.

Here are two illustrations where presently validated research materials are being widely demonstrated. These projects were just funded, so the results from this kind of effort will not be available until about mid next year. These efforts illustrate ways we have developed planning and cooperative funding arrangements to insure that the R. & D. based materials are in fact used.

Further, these illustrations point to the types of larger scale and more intensive activities OE will be able to provide to the National Institute by drawing upon an even broader range of authorities such as Dr. Davies has suggested.

Mr. BRADEMAS. I appreciate that observation. I would simply reiterate my own judgment, but this question of dissemination is not one that you gentlemen should look at lightly. That is the payoff. That is going to tell, so far as we in Congress are concerned, whether or not this is all sound and fury or whether we are really serious about it; and I am, for reasons that I will explore in another connection shortly, still up in the air.

I still remain skeptical about how you are approaching it, and I hope that your approach proves effective, but I would want to see more evidence than I have so far seen.

I think the main proof of the pudding so far has been the fix we are in. The fact that we are here right now talking about the need for dissemination is an indication that we have not done an effective job.

Now let me turn, Dr. Silberman, to put a question or two to you, if I may.

You use the phrase, "No year funding." How long do you think we ought to authorize the NIE?

I assume that behind the "no year funding" language was a point. of view, which I strongly share, that this is not a short-run enterprise in which we are engaged.

Dr. SILBERMAN. Yes; I think if we are going to establish an organization to provide the leadership for R. & D. in the country, it ought to be with the intention that it is a permanent organization.

Mr. BRADEMAS. You made the point at the outset of your statement describing the process of planning and projecting that is now going on or that you hope to carry out which process will result in the production of a number of documents in some detail spelling out alternatives for research activities. I believe my recollection of that is correct. Is that correct?

Dr. SIBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. BRADEMAS. And the kind of process and planning and projecting that you describe seem to me to be eminently sensible. Why can't you do this right now? That is to say, why have you not been able to engage in such planning up to this point in time?

Dr. SILBERMAN. Are you referring to our doing this as a part of the NCERD activity?

Mr. BRADEMAS. As part of the NCERD activity or part of the Office of Education. The kind of process you were describing in your earlier remarks seemed to me to be so eminently sensible that I was puzzled as to why it has not been undertaken up to this point in time?

Dr. SILBERMAN. I think you are putting your finger on the reasons why we wanted NIE. We have been able to attract three outstanding people into the office to work on a NIE planning unit who might not otherwise have come if it had been to join the ranks of NCERD. We have also attempted in the past months since I have been at the Office, to initiate the program planning activity which I described in my testimony, and that is to develop an analysis of the problem of unemployability and to deduce from that analysis a systematic program which we hope to establish shortly.

Mr. BRADEMAS. I guess what surprises me is that so modest is the amount of money that is being contemplated for planning for the next fiscal year, $3 million, and so essential, indeed indispensable, are the kinds of activities of planning and projecting to which you were addressing yourself, I should have thought that the OE would have found moneys in that modest order of magnitude a long time ago to carry out such activities, but I take it we are not disagreeing.

Dr. SILBERMAN. No.

Mr. BRADEMAS. On page 1 of your statement, you describe the various research programs of NCERD-basic, applied, and regional. You then give us an instance of applied research; namely, the University of Pittsburgh project to plan ways for an urban university to change the emphasis of its program from highly academic to activities that solve community problems.

I read this part of your statement in connection with another statement on page 3 of your testimony when you say that nearly all of NCERD's budget and functions will be transferred to NIE.

Would that kind of a program be transferred to NIE?

Dr. SILBERMAN. Yes; it would.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Then would you tell me how in the world you justify this separate National Foundation for Higher Education, where I should have thought that this project-which you say you would transfer to the NIE-would be precisely the kind of activity that would be undertaken by the Foundation?

Dr. SILBERMAN. Well, as I perceive the National Foundation for Higher Education, it is designed to make some improvements to existing institutions across the country.

The way I have conceptualized NIE, its primary mission is to build basically new alternatives, modifying the structure of institutions, perhaps inventing new institutions for providing educational services in the country. Clearly the NIE will be establishing new alternative models but not attempting to install them in all of the institutions of the country. That would require an extremely large budget.

I see the primary mission of the National Foundation for Higher Education as providing fairly large-scale support for improving large numbers of existing institutions. I would expect that the Foundation would act as a foundation and provide support to institutions that might well emulate developments that have been initially developed and demonstrated by NIE.

Mr. BRADEMAS. That is an exercise in thomistic metaphysics that I have not heard for some time before this subcommittee.

Do you want me to take that response seriously, Dr. Silberman?

I am not trying to embarrass you, but I turn to Dr. Binswanger's testimony in this connection, and I note that he tells me that the experimental schools program will be brought over to the NIE; is that not correct, sir?

Dr. BINSWANGER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BRADEMAS. I note that he says on page 1 of his testimony that the experimental schools program is a bridge from research, experimentation, and demonstration to actual school practice by supporting a limiting number of large-scale projects of comprehensive design.

Now, if you were simply to exchange the word "school" in your opening statement, Dr. Binswanger, for "college and university," I should have thought that this would be an accurate description of the purpose of the National Foundation for Higher Education with respect to university level education; would it not?

Dr. BINSWANGER. My feeling is that experimental schools as a title for a program is probably a misnomer. We are not talking about schools. We are talking about education and higher education is conceived as part of the program we are presently developing.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Do experimental schools involve universities also? Dr. BINSWAGER. It can involve, I think, education from point zero to one's death. I hope education is continuing.

Mr. BRADEMAS. So experimental schools are not strictly limited to elementary and secondary schools?

Dr. BINSWANGER. Yes; in terms of design in our first year we are focusing on a K-12 criteria for a program to be operational this September.

It was impossible really to deal with any other configuration than the existing kinds of systems, whether they were public or private

schools.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Well, I suggest, if you will allow me to say so, if you read your own statement, that it would be very difficult for the lay reader to appreciate that you are dealing in your experimental schools program with other than elementary and secondary schools.

I don't see the word "university" mentioned or "college level" mentioned once, unless I have missed something. You use phrases like "school day," "school year."

Don't we, in normal, common American practice, when we use such phrases, have in mind elementary and secondary schools?

Dr. BINSWANGER. I am talking about the program that we have just funded, and I would say I would be glad to add to the testimony an addendum that would carry the kind of broad scope that not only is envisioned but is part of the process of experimental schools.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Again I am not trying to be difficult, but I think your statement is terribly misleading.

Your paragraph 2 says, "The failure of so many schools to educate and of so many children in school to learn." It seems to me obvious that the way you employ your rhetoric would not lead the man of commonsense to appreciate that you are talking about anything but elementary and secondary schools.

So let me establish that. As I understand it, you are engaged in administering a program which conceivably could provide support for experimental educational institutions at every level; is that

correct?

Dr. BINSWANGER. Yes, and not even at every level. It might be community wide.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Maybe outside of formal institutions of learning; is that correct?

Dr. BINSWANGER. Definitely.

Mr. BRADEMAS. I wish you would get a statement up here as fast as you can that tells members of this committee what the experimental schools program is. I can tell you in all candor, as a member of this committee for some time, that this is the first time I have ever known that it included higher education as well as elementary and secondary. Dr. BINSWANGER. I will do my best to get a statement immediately. Mr. BRADEMAS. On the other hand, I am not all that distressed to learn this, because what you have just said in your paper only lends support, in my judgment, to the criticism I have been making all year in this committee of the administration's proposal for a Foundation for Higher Education. As I understand the presently represented mission of the Foundation for Higher Education, it is to stimulate precisely the kind of experimentation and demonstration in colleges and universities that I had, up until this point in time, thought it was the purpose of the experimental schools program to support for elementary and secondary schools.

Why are we having a Foundation for Higher Education for such purposes if that is what is in large measure the purpose of your experimental schools program?

Dr. BINSWANGER. Our program is a very, very small one in its design. It has no more than three to five starts, each of 5 years, and if we are trying to investigate comprehensive ways to improve educa tion, I don't see it in a way duplicating or competing with what the higher education program might be.

Mr. BRADEMAS. I am not talking about the size of the program. I am talking about the integrity of the conceptualization of the program. So the fact you don't have much money to spend doesn't have the faintest thing to do with my question. Do you understand what I mean? I am asking you what the purpose of your program is. I am not asking you how much money they gave you to run it. You are telling me the purpose of the program is to serve as a bridge from research ex