We have some 3,400 children who go out into industry, into commercial establishments, into scientific laboratories, working and learning the real practical reason why they should be studying the abstract material back at school. I think this Office of Resource Development is the kind of facility, the kind of organization that should be present in every school system so that the great resources of universities are not plugged in haphazardly. Our Resources Office focuses all the potential of these various opportunities for supplementing and expanding the educational opportunity for our children, focus it according to our own objectives, and we begin to deal with our agenda rather than others.

INNOVATION ON SCHOOLWIDE LEVEL

The "New Notions for Excellence" program is a program where we took $100,000 and we said to teachers "You may apply for grants up to $10,000" and we earmarked 30 percent of it for teachers. We earmarked another 60 percent for schoolwide projects; and this was a part that shocked a lot of people, and 10 percent for students. These were not prizes. These were funds that could be used to help people implement their notions for making their situation better.

It was amazing the change of attitude that it brought about toward the administration because we were saying that all ideas do not have to proceed from the top down. We need to hear ideas from the bottom and let them flow up from the situation, and we received some 500 applications. The beauty of this was that we were able to show people how they could do their ideas simply by reorganizing within their school and using their resources and getting ahead without giving them additional money. Others we could redirect to other sources of funds.

The place where we had trouble giving that $10,000 and applying it to stimulating student ideas was right there at that area, with the students, because they had not been accustomed to having people say to them, "Here is a block of money. If you have a creative notion we will find it." Now, the first time around we were short and we had about $2,000 left over. Then we readvertised that we had this $2,000 left over and on the second go-around when the students. were convinced we meant it, we were deluged with something like $10,000 worth of requests just from students.

Again, I want to emphasize the significance of this operation as it shifts the power relationship, that people do not look to the administration building; they look within, to their own resources. If you think of the thousands of conferences that must have gone on between students and teachers and administrators as they worked up their schoolwide projects, the conversations that went on with students themselves as they developed their projects, you can see the different attitudes that were developing about their own sense of power. That relates to what I was saying, that people have to have a sense of power that they can change things by their own activity. This is one way of helping to give them that sense of being in power.

59-411-71-pt. 12- -2

ADVOCATE SYSTEM

I would say too, and this was left out of the prepared text, that one of the major areas that urban education has to move on is more effective preservice and inservice training of teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals. We need a special breed of administrator today, a new breed, a new breed of teacher, if we are going to meet all of these problems of urban education which I cited earlier in describing the nonachievement of many of the students in our school district. I can get it into probably four themes. One is that the administrator has to become an advocate, an advocate for the people he serves. This switches it completely around from what it has been. Traditionally, administrators have been protectors of the system. They made excuses for superintendents who did not get the materials out when they should have been. They operated on the principle that the reward system told them it was appropriate to operate on. The reward system has said to principals and teachers that the way to get ahead in the system is to get along with your immediate superior, do not make too many waves, and just sit still as you float to the top. Somehow we have to change that reward system so that people understand that those who dare to be advocates for their community, for their teachers, for their students, will be rewarded for that effort. Here again, we begin to change power relationships. It becomes more painful for some people but in this case I think it is absolutely essential that we put people in jobs of responsibility who have the courage to stand up not for the system but for the people they serve.

VULNERABILITY

Another one is the concept of vulnerability. I think we need to have administrators that understand that concept. I can remember taking over a high school and going through that school the first day and looking at the occupational level shops and one of those shops dealt with upholstery. I do not know a thing about what you do when you upholster so I went and got a friend of mine who was an upholsterer and he said, "Marc," almost with tears in his eyes. "You do not have a single machine in this shop that is currently being used in industry." And I cite that to say that the school was vulnerable on that point and somebody presided over it without crying out about that condition. Then when the community comes in and discovers that shop that has been running a cruel hoax on children, proclaiming to be preparing them with job skills, and then begins to scream and say, "We want that changed," then we are reacting to community pressures and we go to work and clean it up. What I am saying is one who understands the concept of vulnerability develops an agenda to change those things in which the school or the school system is vulnerable. Our employment practices in Oakland have resulted in a terrible imbalance of minority groups in high echelon jobs and in the teaching force. It represents a disaster area and when a group of Chicanos came to the board meeting and began to express their concern and their rage I was in a position to say, "These are the things that we have done," because I looked at

that as an area of vulnerability and had done several things that made progress for that particular group and could say to them "I want you to help me to make further progress," and a situation that started to be terribly confrontive turned out to be supportive. "When can we meet and help you?"

We need administrators who understand something about the idea I just mentioned, something about conflicting utilization. People cannot be traumatized by conflict. We are not going to be seeing less of it; we are going to see more of it in the 1970's. Those who would dare to run schools or classrooms have to understand how to utilize the tremendous energy that is released in conflict and move that energy toward constructive resolution of problems so everybody gets a payoff and some benefit.

If time permitted I could give you a number of examples of how we were able to utilize what was a traumatic experience for some principals, but we were able to take that energy and move it not in the manipulative way but in an expansive way of looking beyond the narrow precipitating cause to the underlying wrongs that needed to be adjusted.

Then the fourth area I think we need to train our administrators and teachers in is social interpretation, because in these ghetto schools, if the perception of the community is that nothing is going on in the schools-and many I know have that image-then there is much going on that is positive, but the principal has not, and the teachers have not, and the children have not, and all connected have not become skillful enough in how to interpret what is happening in that school. I would submit then that this is another area of critical need in urban education.

Now, to sum up

Senator MONDALE. I think we had better suspend right there because we must go over and vote. We will be right back.

(Recess.)

Senator MONDALE. Dr. Foster, had you concluded your statement?

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR URBAN EDUCATION

Dr. FOSTER. I was just about to get to the conclusion.

In conclusion, and in keeping with your committee's request for specific recommendations for the improvement of urban education, I would offer the following points for your careful consideration:

First, with respect to integration, I would recommend that significant amounts of additional Federal incentive funds be made available to school districts willing to enter into regional arrangements for the purpose of developing quality integrated programs. These incentive funds should be of two types:

Categorical funds for supporting all student transportation costs. and necessary remedial, human relations, and other specialist services. necessary for facilitating the integration process.

Modest general fund grants to all districts involved in the regional program for overall program improvement use.

Second, significant amounts of additional funds are recommended for the general support of urban school districts. The ingestion into

our urban schools of large amounts of unrestricted funds similar to those provided through Public Law 874 for general program improvement use is desperately needed. Further, with the availability of such funds it would be possible to establish such new and unique school programs in the urban setting that they would serve as attractions to suburban students, thus assisting in the integration process. Third, I would recommend that additional categorical funds be provided to improve upon and expand already established federally funded programs. I have in mind particularly those programs such as ESEÂ Title I for disadvantaged students, bilingual and vocational education, and the dropout prevention programs.

Further, I would strongly recommend that significant amounts of new Federal funds be committed each year for the purpose of urban area school construction projects. Here again, it is likely that millions of urban children will continue to attend World War I vintage, and earlier, school facilities unless Federal funds are provided for replacing such intolerable educational environments.

I also recommend that additional funds for preservice and inservice programs for teachers and administrators be made available.

And finally, I would urge that additional moneys be provided for programs such as the experimental schools program currently being administered by the U.S. Office of Education. It is through programs of this nature that it will be possible to develop and perfect new, innovative, and effective procedures for educating urban children.

With a well-funded general and categorical aid program, with the establishment of a realistic capital development program, and with a program fostering innovation and experimentation-all supported by the Federal Government-urban education will surely survive and flourish. Without this support, however, there is every likelihood that urban education will continue to erode and deteriorate. I trust that every member of this committee will mobilize every ounce of influence and power at his command to guarantee that urban education will, in fact, survive and flourish in the immediate months and years ahead.

Thank you, gentlemen, for the opportunity to address your committee on these important matters today.

Senator MONDALE. Thank you, Dr. Foster. I think I am going to hear from the full panel and then we will ask questions collectively. Our next witness is Dr. Gordon McAndrew, superintendent of schools, Gary, Ind.

Senator Bayh had hoped to be here personally to introduce you but was not able to return. He wanted to personally welcome you to the committee and he also had an article on the Gary schools from the prestigious educational journal, U.S. News and World Report, which we will include in the hearing record.*

STATEMENT OF DR. GORDON MCANDREW, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, GARY, IND.

Dr. McANDREW. I appreciate the opportunity, Senator Mondale, to testify before the committee, and for the interest of this committee in the problems that we are discussing today.

*See Appendix 2, p. 5677.

The most important question to be asked about our schools is how well do the children learn? By this criterion urban schools are failing. The majority of children who attend them are not achieving according to any reasonable definition of that term. The best evidence of this is inadequacy in the basic skills (the 3R's if you wish) which are the essential foundation for later learning. In fact, poor children of all colors, concentrated in urban areas, fall farther and farther behind their more affluent counterparts each year. It would appear the longer such children are in school, the duller they seem to get.

This problem has been analyzed many times. Fundamental to it is the home background of the child. It is now quite clear that traditional school inputs (for example, teacher training, classroom. size) have very little effect on the relative achievement of students, most of which appears to derive from family background defined in fairly traditional social class terms.

This fact has led some to feel that the school is powerless to correct the situation. Such a conclusion unfortunately has gotten in the way of seeking educational solutions to mitigate environmental influences over which the school has little control. We have been quick to explain why schools are not more effective. We have been less attentive in questioning public school practices which may account for at least some of our problem. For example, granting the inadequacy of our financial resources, are we allocating them in a way to guarantee maximum educational return? Given the fact that the schools cannot be all things to all men, have we defined priorities in such a way that what we do is for a better reason than that is the way it has always been done?

GARY POLICY STATEMENT

Two years ago the Gary, Ind. Board of School Trustees adopted a policy statement which states its priorities as follows:

The School City of Gary seeks to assure that no student of normal mental ability will leave the Gary school without acquiring certain skills and knowledge. Considered most important among these is the ability to use and understand the English language; to listen and to read with enough facility to profit from the ideas and discoveries of those who came before; and to speak and write with enough facility to transmit to his fellow men his own ideas and discoveries.

The Board believes every youngster should be taught to understand and employ the basic concepts of mathematics and science. Further, the Board believes that every American child should be taught the facts of his own country's birth and how it relates to human history in general; the contributions and the sources of the contributions which have been made to America and world society; and the antecedents and relationships involved in today's world and local events.

Finally, the Board seeks to instruct the children of Gary in the manner outlined above toward the end of preparing them for the responsibilities of adulthood-whether they go on to higher education, find their places immediately in the working world, or assume the responsibilities of family life.

The Board views the average thirteen years of experiences Gary children have within the context of the public schools as a period of preparation for the years that will follow; and it, therefore, believes that every young person who graduates from a Gary high school, on that day, be competent and confident enough to begin the next phase of his life with a sense of well-being and an appreciation of himself and his fellow man.