Evaluation on a second level is also specific to an individual site but it is carried out by an evaluation contractor who is external to the project staff. For example, the Human Action Research Institute, Los Angeles, California, has a $748,316 thirty-month contract to evaluate and document the Berkeley site; the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Portland, Oregon, has a $523,236 thirty-month contract for evaluation and documentation of the Franklin Pierce site; and the Aries Corporation, Minneapolis, Minnesota, has a $526,051 thirty-month contract for evaluation and documentation of the Minneapolis site. The third level of evaluation includes an omnibus evaluator whose activities take in all projects and all sites and whose concerns include replicability of practices and programs, assessment of the second level evaluation activities, and the success of the Experimental Schools program as a whole. The Experimental Schools program is designed as an evolving program in order to encompass the newest educational ideas as well as avoid the administrative rigidity and program inflexibility that seems to accompany the creation of new units. It is designed as a terminal program yet constantly revising and reviewing its annual focus. Thus, in the fast start accomplished in FY '71 two competitions were necessary: the first, for projects to be operational in September 1971, and the second, for projects to receive sufficient planning and development time to be ready for operation in September 1972. On March 31, 1971, a second competition was announced by the Experimental Schools office. The second competition broadened the Experimental Schools program by soliciting proposals for comprehensive projects which represent significant alternatives to existing school organization, practice and traditional performance. Applicants were asked to shift their focus and look anew at what students ought to learn, how to make different use of time and space, to rethink staffing patterns and personnel requirements, to consider alternative ways to organize and administer the schools, and to include the community in active participation in educational decisions. The second announcement was sent out nationwide and more than 300 substantive letters of interest were submitted. An independent selection committee chose the following to receive $30.000– $40,000 four-month planning grants to prepare a complete proposal: Chicago Public Schools, Chicago, Illinois City School District of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, New York Federation of Independent Community Schools, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Public School System of Gary, Gary, Indiana School District of Greenville County, Greenville, South Carolina University of North Dakota, Grand Fork, North Dakota Vermont State Department of Education, Montpelier, Vermont On December 1, 1971, several of these applicants, after a review of their proposals by an independent panel, will be selected as Experimental School sites. Prior to receiving five-year operational grants in June, each will receive appropriate development funds for the interim. The Experimental Schools program itself is experimental-it is testing significant alternatives to present government and pedagogical practices. Most notably : Funding is for something longer than a year, alowing for continuity and internal integrity while testing and retesting possible alternatives; The target population is large enough to allow for sufficient experimentation but small enough to be thoroughly evaluated and documented; The choice of curriculum, organization, staffing patterns, and internal evaluation measures are all the choice of local personnel and the community; Each applicant is required initially to send in a simple letter of interest rather than a professionally prepared proposal; Once a letter of interest is chosen by an independent selection committee as a possible contender for an operational grant, the U.S. Office of Education provides a planning grant to allow for any necessary technical assistance: Instead of the evaluation and documentation coming after a project has been completed or well under way, it is an integral part of each Experimental School site from the beginning; Documentation includes not only the narrow components in a project, but the project itself and the total environment of which it is a part and which it is shaping; The independent evaluators will use anthropological and sociological measures to identify both what is appearing to succeed and what is appearing to fail sharing both the "hard" and "soft" data with the U.S. Office of Education and the project staff; The three levels of evaluation ensure integrity in the reporting systems; and Each site will provide an information center for visitors which will not impinge on the experiment itself yet fully inform all interested parties on the results of the experiment. Five 12-month grants were awarded July 1, 1971 to five applicants whose letters of interest presented a uniquely promising component which, when further developed, could later become a significant part of a comprehensive program. The one-year grant winners are: School District #9, Browning, Montana; Seaford School District, Seaford, Delaware; Davis County Community School District. Bloomfield, Iowa; West Las Vegas and Las Vegas City School Districts, Las Vegas, New Mexico; and the Greene County Board of Education, Eutaw, Alabama. In FY '71 and '72 the Experimental Schools program awards were limited almost exclusively to existing K-12 public school agencies as those deemed most ready and able to design comprehensive projects that encompassed the best of promising practices. From the outset, the planning for Experimental Schools resolved to interpret "schools" broadly to include all of education. Thus, future comprehensive projects, restricted to five new starts in a given year, would be developed and designed in the field to take into consideration such relationships as early childhood education and its linkage to K-12 programming, post highschool education and its linkage to K-12 programming, community-based education which may encompass all ages in given community, higher education and its extension as well as new forms of education designed to improve and reform the present practices. There are already available a number of sources of funds to conduct basic research and pilot or model projects. Many of these activities will be part of the proposed National Institute of Education (NIE). But there are almost no funds available to support the extension of research necessary to build the bridges between basic research and common practice; between clinical testing of an educational theory and its natural use in a real-world educational setting. In recognition of the large number of important completed basic research experiments and the large time lag between their completion and any large scale operationalizing of their ideas and procedures, a limited number of such experiments will be selected to serve as the basis for the development of large-scale comprehensive experiments with emphasis on developing the means for broad implementation including approaches to financial support, staffing, training, organization, and community participation. (Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, subject to the call of the Chair.) MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1971 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Chicago, Ill. The Select Subcommittee on Education met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., in room 204-A, Everett McKinley Dirksen Building, 219 South Dearborn, Chicago, Ill., Hon. John Brademas presiding. Present: Representatives Brademas (presiding) and Hansen. Also present: Jack Duncan, counsel; David Lloyd-Jones, subcommittee professional staff; Martin La Vor, subcommittee minority legislative coordinator. Mr. BRADEMAS. The Select Subcommittee on Education will come to order for the purpose of further consideration of bills H.R. 33 and H.R. 3606 to establish a National Institute of Education. The Chair would like to observe at the outset of these hearings, I am very pleased my distinguished colleague, a gentleman from Idaho, Mr. Hansen, and I are to be in Chicago today for the purpose of hearing the viewpoints of expert witnesses on the legislation under consideration. The Chair might also observe, for the benefit of those in the Chicago area that the Committee on Education and Labor of the House of Representatives is divided into seven subcommittees, three of which deal with education. The chairman of one of the three Education Subcommittees is Mrs. Edith Green, of Oregon, a subcommittee which handles higher education legislation. The chairman of the second subcommittee, which handles elementary and secondary education and vocational education, is an outstanding Member of the House from Chicago, Congressman Roman Pucinski. The third Education Subcommittee, the Select Subcommittee on Education, the one which I have the honor to chair which is here today has within its jurisdiction a variety of educational and other measures. This subcommittee has jurisdiction over the Library Services and Construction Act, the Environmental Education Act, the Drug Abuse Education Act, the National Center on Educational Media and Materials for the Handicapped and the Vocational Rehabilitation Act, the Commission on Libraries and Information Sciences Act, the Older Americans Act, and the National Commission for the Arts and Humanities Act. We are considering as well the two pieces of legislation this year in addition to the ones I have just enumerated. These are all bills which emanated from this subcommittee in the last Congress and have been enacted into law. 65-510-71-27 The subcommittee has before it two very important bills. The Chair would like to take advantage of the fact we find ourselves in Chicago to say a word about one, a bill which is the subject of a very lengthy article in this morning's New York Times. It is a bill on which this subcommittee will be meeting tomorrow afternoon in Washington, for the purpose of continuing what in the legislation. process we call marking up the bills. Marking up the bill is the stage of the legislative process, which follows the hearings and which represents the actual writing and amending of the bill. The bill to which the Chair is now making reference is the Comprehensive Child Development Act. The purpose of this bill is to provide educational help, instructional and related services for the very young children in the United States, regardless of their family income. If one were to put it in oversimplified shorthand one might describe it as Headstart for all children. There are very many cosponsors in the House of Representatives, and about a third of the Members of the Senate are sponsors of similar legislation. This is a measure on which the subcommittee conducted hearings last year, in Chicago, in this building. The Chair invites the attention of witnesses and members of the media to this legislation because it has enormous longrun significance for the people of a great industrial State like this. Now, the legislation to which we are giving our attention today to establish a National Institute of Education grew out of a message on educational reform, sent to Congress in March of 1970 by President Nixon in which among other measures, the President proposed the establishment of a National Institute of Education. Its purpose would be the support of research and development with respect to all levels of American education from preschool through graduate school including both formal institutions of learning and extra formal institutions of learning. This subcommittee has heard a number of witnesses in Washington, D.C., beginning with Daniel Patrick Moynihan. We have in the last month or so visited educational research centers in Paris, Oslo, and Great Britain. It is our hope later this year to visit Poland and the Soviet Union for the purpose of learning how, in that part of the world, change and innovation are built into their educational systems. Here in Chicago today we are looking forward to hearing from a variety of witnesses, including Dr. Michael Bakalis, superintendent of public instruction for Illinois; Dr. Theodore W. Schultz, professor of economics, University of Chicago; Mr. Sam Mercantini, representing the Indiana superintendent of public instruction, Mr. John Loughlin. We are looking forward to hearing our first witness today, Mr. James Parton, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corp., who I believe will be presenting a statement on behalf of former Senator William Benton, publisher and chairman of Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corp. Mr. Parton, we are looking forward with great interest to hearing what you have to say because we are well aware of the contributions |