further Federal intervention into education. Centralized decisions to cure the ills of education certainly should not precede the diagnosis of the effects of previous Federal prescriptions. In any event, the national chamber does not believe that the Federal Government should or can effectively doctor American education in the indiscriminate fashion of S. 580. FEDERAL VERSUS LOCAL-STATE DIRECTION Instead, we believe that the responsibility for and the prerogative of evaluating the accomplishments and needs of our diverse State school systems should remain in the hands of State and local authorities. The decisions about the extent and the priority of needed changes in education can and should be made by these authorities with greater validity than through Federal agencies. In contrast, S. 580 proposes not only to maintain but to extend Federal decisionmaking about the course of American education into many new areas. The power of the Federal purse would require State and local and private agencies to adapt their views about the purpose and direction of their schools and colleges to the views projected by the Congress and enforced by the offer of Federal subsidies. Federal direction of the evolution in American education at all levels is inherent in the programs proposed in this legislation. S. 580 would establish 15 new Federal programs as well as extend and/or expand 10 existing programs now operating under the Vocational Education Acts and the National Defense Education Act. These 25, combined with recommended increases for National Science Foundation programs in education, would create new obligational authority in excess of $6 billion to be spent in the next 3 to 5 years (including phaseout of fellowship and loan programs). $1.2 billion of this new obligational authority is requested in S. 580 for fiscal 1964. Of this amount, $831,930,000 would be allocated by formula to six new programs and the extension and expansion of five existing programs, as shown in table A attached. Table B reveals that four-fifths of this sum would merely be a return to each State of revenues collected from it. Table B also reveals that the other one-fifth of the total would be collected from 14 States to be distributed among the other 36. However, 6 of these 36 States approximately break even in the redistribution; that is, receive only a few thousand dollars more than they would contribute. A long series of Federal aid proposals have been before the Congress since World War II, employing formulas assuming the need for redistribution of wealth. A review of these many proposals reveals the continous decline in any justification that once might have existed for the Federal Government to make such a redistribution of wealth; and conversely, it reveals that an increasing proportion of the funds proposed are not a matter of redistribution but purely one of return to the States of revenues collected from them. The least wealthy region of the Nation, for example, in 1930, had per capita income only a little more than 50 percent as large as the Nation's average, and the most wealthy region almost 150 percent of the Nation's average. In contrast, the per capita income in the least wealthy region in 1960 was 75 percent of the Nation's average and that of the most wealthy region was only 118 percent of the Nation's average. Thus, a natural equalization process is taking place in this country, making it less and less logical for the Federal Government to finance education on the thesis that the less wealthy States could not provide adequate school systems. This conclusion is further evident in the rising enrollment pressures which are most pronounced in States best able to increase school revenues. The Congress can best provide money in those communities experiencing rising school costs by leaving it there, that is, by lessening Federal taxation rather than increasing it. It would appear logical to permit higher income States to retain (or regain) control over the course of education (in their own State) for which they are and would be paying the total costs (as well as contributing to other States). Even if the Congress were to feel justified in compelling the 30 States receiving net aid to spend it in the several ways mandated by S. 580, no such justification exists for compelling the higher income States to do so. Unquestionably, they have both the wealth and the leadership to run their own school systems. The expansion of existing educational programs and initiation of 15 new Federal programs in education conflicts with the President's avowed intention to "limit severely" expenditures for fiscal 1964 in order to make tax reductions feasible. While only $143.6 million of expenditures for these new programs are budgeted for fiscal 1964 (see table C), this is but a fraction of the total cost of $1,215 billion authorized to be obligated in 1964. Expenditure programs such as these FEDERAL PROGRAMS DISCOURAGE PRIVATE INITIATIVE The most obviously unnecessary program proposed in S. 580 is that in the field of commercial student loans. The private sector has created and is expanding an effective program to increase the availability of commercial loans for students by building a large fund to insure repayments. The voluntary efforts of busi ness and community leaders in this field is well illustrated by United Student Aid Funds, Inc., which already has caused loan funds to be made available to students through thousands of banks. These private undertakings are already struggling to compete, however, with a Federal program (National Defense Educa tion Act, title II) in which interest rates are subsidized, conditions of repayment are uncertain, and 50 percent of any loan is convertible into a grant through teaching. If this present Federal loan program is enlarged and a new program of Federal guarantees of commercial loans is begun, private effort in this area will be thwarted and will diminish. Private effort to provide funds for graduate fellowships would also he discouraged by the multiplicity of Federal fellowships proposed not only in S. 580 but by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Atomic Energy Com mission and other Federal agencies. Several corporations that contribute to edu cation have already reported increasing disinterest among college authorities in private fellowships because of the general availability of Federal funds paying greater stipends and awarded on less discriminating bases. Similarly, many States, communities, and private agencies have been estab lishing and planning the further establishment of community colleges and broader opportunity for vocational-technical training beyond the high school. The administration's proposals in these field of education and training are an invitation to delay, modify, or drop such local, State and private action pending de cision by the Congress about new programs as well as the extension and expan sion of existing programs. FEDERAL PROGRAMS THREATEN PROFESSIONAL FREEDOM S. 580 would not only compound present disservice to local and State initiative, but would increase the current controversy in several areas of education. Differ ent programs proposed in S. 580 would, indeed, subsidize approaches to diverse educational "improvements" based on conflicting views about the purpose, or ganization, and operation of State and local school systems, i.e. the priority of the cultural versus the vocational, the priority of faculty responsibility for instruc tion versus research, the efficacy of public versus private education in a free society. Existing Federal programs now operating through the Office of Education, the National Science Foundation and other executive agencies of the Federal Government are already exerting a controlling influence on the curricular empha sis and instructional personnel and methodology in many schools and colleges. These programs, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, have become a major influence in the choices which both undergraduate and grad uate students make in their career planning. This same study indicates the concern of many college leaders about the overemphasis in science and mathematics at both secondary and higher education levels at the expense of the humanities and social sciences. Federal research fellowships and professorial interest in Federal research contracts are causing the majority of our more brilliant graduate students to plan careers in these research fields rather than in teaching. according to the report. Federal programs are thus accentuating the age-old dichotomy between the research and teaching functions of college faculties, and are encouraging college administrators to give preference to those faculty members able to secure re search contracts. Does the Congress wish to accentuate the research functions of higher education at the expense of quality in instruction? Does the Congress wish to encourage or discourage the trend toward more public higher education and less private and parochial education? Does the Congress wish to encourage tuition rates more nearly approaching the costs of higher education or deter this trend? Does the Congress believe that voca tional-technical education should be a part of our present elementary-secondary education or an extension downward of the more functional aspects of higher education or a new dimension of education independent of both? Does the Congress wish to encourage comprehensive high schools for vocational-technical FEDERAL STANDARDIZATION OPPOSED These questions are posed because the several existing and proposed Federal programs in education are influencing and will further influence local, State, and private decisions that are now being made about the functions and organization of school systems. If the Federal Government continues to decide through subsidization of selected areas and aspects of education what the "right" or "best" answers are to those questions, the people in the several communities and States may gradually accept a standardization and structuring in education to fit the image of the perfect school system that is conceived in Washington. The approval of S. 580 would be a major step toward such a national standardization of American education. Yet it was the avowed intention of the Congress and of President Eisenhower in signing the National Defense Education Act that the programs therein should be stimulative, but not permanent, in nature. The several programs of the National Science Foundation similarly were said at their inception to be a temporary intrusion into State and local school systems. We sincerely urge the Congress not to perpetuate and broaden this trend toward centralized decisionmaking and standardization in education. The philosophy of a nationalized school system is not in the American tradition. The continuation of our highly pluralistic society requires that educational institutions adapt to the people rather than that the people adapt to them. DIVERSITY VERSUS CONFORMITY Whatever the problems of American education may be, its productivity has been manifest in the standards of living that have been attained and appreciated by the adult population which these schools produced. To believe that their contributions to our society in economic, political, or social terms would be enhanced by greater conformity to any single image or meaning of education is to deny that America has evolved anything unique in its educational processes. EFFECTIVENESS OF LOCAL-STATE-PRIVATE ACTION S. 580, in essence, is a broad-scale declaration that the American people are not succeeding and cannot succeed through local, State and private action in developing the educational processes and institutions required in our changing and competitive world. This we vigorously deny. The response of the American people through local, State, and private action to the need for more and better schools has been phenomenal. Sixty percent of all classrooms now in use have been built since World War II, 25 percent in the last 5 years. Instructional personnel for the schools have been developed even faster than enrollments have increased, with the net result that the ratio of pupils to teachers is the lowest in history, less than 25 to 1. At the same time, the remuneration provided for American teachers has risen rapidly and teachers' associations are being pressed to devise means by which their more competent members can be given even greater rewards. The quality of teachers has also improved more rapidly than at any other time in our history, with certification standards being raised in virtually all States. BUSINESS SUPPORTS LOCAL-STATE-PRIVATE ACTION Chambers of commerce throughout the Nation are continuing to provide leadership in encouraging improvements in the educational systems of their communities. They are cooperating in campaigns to prevent dropouts through the improvement of guidance programs and the development of work-study courses and other opportunities appropriate for non-college-going youth. They are helping school boards study the needs of communities for additional educational facilities and, in the vast majority of cases, are supporting efforts to pass bond issues or increase tax revenues required for better schools. These many local and State expressions of determination by the American people to provide good schools for their children are not lessening but rather increasing. We urge the Congress to acquire much more comprehensive and much better researched knowledge on the processes, achievements and ongoing activities in American schools and colleges before embarking on the multitude of measures proposed in this bill and others relating to manpower development. The Federal Government's proper role in improved education lies in realistic functioning by the Office of Education in a research and service capacity and as a clearinghouse for information concerning innovations being tested throughout our many systems of local, State and private education. There is convincing evidence that, with such continuing enlightenment about tested processes and procedures, our diverse public and private approaches to school improvement |