And she said, well Senator, they never were the envy of the country when it came to poor children. The disadvantaged children had been ignored. It wasn't a case of dealing with them, they were just ignored.

And she pointed out that in 1970 there were three times as many slots in elementary schools in New York City as there were in high school. It just was assumed that poor children never made it even to the high school. Although when we get so enormously frustrated with our inability to see clear answers today-and we should be frustrated by that because a just society must have these answersit is, as you point out, an enormous step forward that American school districts and the Federal Government are now concentrating on the long overdue issue of how the children who have been cheated in the past can get a fair chance.

Do you agree with that?

Dr. HowE. Certainly I would, and of course it is a fact that at that time you refer to, there were lots of fifth grade dropouts, as opposed to 10th and 11th grade dropouts we have now.

I think that the legislation has put on the agenda of many, many school districts some specific practices that hold great hope and have achieved some success.

For example, it seems to me that the new thrust across the country in emphasis on early childhood affairs has been in part influenced by this legislation, and in part influenced by other legislation that has passed the Congress. The whole Headstart operation, originally under OEO, an adventurous and good program, stimulated this program in many ways. I can recall during the years of my commisionership pushing very hard to persuade school districts that one of the ways for them to plan good programs under Title I was to give preference in the use of these funds to early childhood activities, feeling that differences made in those years were probably more significant differences than could be made in later years.

That kind of interest has been much expanded, and you now have before the Congress appropriations and legislation concerned with day care and special early childhood legislation of various kinds. Although I am not actually up to date on all of this, it seems to me that that kind of thinking that is now going on in the Federal Government depends in part on the fact that this early legislation tended to emphasize preschool programs.

USE OF TITLE I FUNDS

Senator JAVITS. If I may, Mr. Chairman, before you go ahead. Title I is causing Senator Mondale, myself, and others a lot of worry. We are its most ardent protagonists, but we run into a lot of evidence that its funds just get thrown in the hopper and used for general school budget purposes, whatever may be the labels on the bottle.

And that it really doesn't zero in to help the disadvantaged children with special projects, remedial reading, special instruction, and many things that we had hoped for which deal directly with this question of equal educational opportunity. Because that is a very important part of our target population.

59-411 071 pt. 12 10

So we appreciate your just having come back, et cetera, but I would hope very much, sir, that you and perhaps Dr. Smith with you, as a team, could take a more continuing interest in this matter and perhaps before we close the record would be able to give us some critique on Title I which could be very helpful to us in this field.

I'll tell you frankly that I am very worried about it. It involves large sums of money. The only justification for it originally within the doctrine that Senator Morse laid down was for the disadvantaged children. It was extended to them even if they were educated in nonpublic schools. And we have reason to be very concerned about what is happening..

Dr. Howe. Senator, I share your concern. And Dr. Smith and I would be glad to help in any way we can. I think however, that comprehensive studies of Title I and of compensatory education and its effects are a very large job. And I don't think that any individual in his spare time is going to offer this committee a real perspective on the matter.

Now this committee has done a great service in the type of study it has already done of the flow of funds for compensatory education. I refer to the study by Steve Bailey, who happens to be a friend of mine, and Seymour Saxe, and Allen Campbell, and others. This kind of study can be refined. Examples can be looked at on a sampling basis across the country, and this committee can find out more about what works and doesn't, and what is wrong and what is right. But I think that a major assessment is probably going to take the design of large role studies, rather than the off-the-cuff reactions of people like myself.

Senator MONDALE. Let me follow Senator Javits on this point. The two of you are in a position where you can help this committee enormously in pointing up major problems, and hopeful strategies, as you see them. Both of you have worked in crucial positions, and I would hope that while you might respond with data and technical analysis, which are very important, that today you might hit hard at where you think the key problems are and where the key hopeful strategies might be found.

PROBLEMS WITH TITLE I PROGRAMS

Dr. Howe. Let me go quickly to the problem areas. Let me mention first of all that I think there are some success stories in Title I. in local cities. No question of that.

I reviewed quickly, before coming down here, the publications of the Office of Education about success stories in title I. Some of them are impressive.

There is debate about many of these. The More Effective School program in New York City, Senator Javits, has been disagreed about by authorities. Some people are saying it is proving a great deal; others say it is not. The publication that the Office of Education puts out in regard to this indicates that it is a successful program. You find in the realm of education a less measurable kind of activity than you do in some other realms. It is therefore hard to come to facts and figures even when you are talking about reading achievement scores.

When you get to other issues about what kinds of values children are learning, attitudes they are developing, that sort of thing, it is very difficult to measure these components. So it's a tricky business deciding whether Title I projects are really succeeding or not.

In the realm of problems, I could speak about this very broadly and also somewhat narrowly. Very broadly, the essential problem is that, we are trying to change a whole set of institutions, the schools. And institutions are very difficult to change. The Congress is aware of this. Institutional change always takes more time than is expected, and in connection with Title I, we are working against a background of expectations about the effectiveness of the program, which is probably unrealistic. Yet it is important to observe that I don't believe you can get a billion dollar program through the Congress of the United States without raising expectations beyond a reasonable point, to be very direct about it.

So that let's concede that expectations have been inflated. And let's say also that there are a set of definite operational problems in connection with this legislation.

This legislation says there should be concentration of these funds. There has been too much dispersion, and there is evidence of that. There are places where they have been spread around by the counties to which they go rather than focused on the children of the poor, who should benefit under the formula.

They have been used in some instances for things that they should never have been used for. I can recall in my period of responsibility for all this that somebody built some swimming pools with Title I

money.

Senator MONDALE. All white.

Dr. Howe. An improper thing to do.

Senator MONDALE. Known as the "Howe pool."

Dr. Howe. Yes, sir. You have studies by Ruby Martin, well-known studies, which point to some of the abuses that have existed under Title I. I think it's a mistake to generalize those criticisms into all the activity supported by Title I, because again I believe there are success stories.

COMPARABILITY

So I think we have to keep in balance on this. The differential financing of city as compared to suburb, and of white school versus black school in the city, as developed in this publication [study by Barley and others], shows some of the real problems connected with Title I, and I understand that Commissioner Marland is now working on the problem of what people can call comparability. I applaud that. As school districts have evidence about what they are spending on particular schools and can begin to equate district expenditures from school to school, it will become possible to make Title I money a real add-on, rather than simply a catch-up device which helps schools for poor children get as much as the schools for rich children in the same district.

I will say just one word about the assessment business, which was in your letter to me. I raise the question of whether we don't, at this point, after some 512 years of actual operation, really need a new

comprehensive look at disadvantaged children in the United States and at their performance in the schools. I don't think that the socalled national assessment really provides us this in the kind of focus we require.

COLEMAN REPORT

I think the national assessment is a useful device to educators generally, but I don't believe it really comes into focus on the issues raised by title I. I don't think that the Coleman study, which was done before title I, had much impact or provides us any useful evidence about its operation. Indeed a restudy of the Coleman data has continued to raise issues about the validity of some of the conclusions the report reached.

So that about all I can tell you of what really comes from the Coleman study is simply that it documents the fact that as children. progress through school, the gap between the rich kids and the poor kids grows greater. It documents that very well.

But in terms of really telling us what the cause of that is there is now much argument by researchers about the implications of the Coleman study.

I am not criticizing Alex Mood or Professor Coleman, who worked so hard on this. They were subjected to very serious difficulties of data gathering. They were subjected to time deadlines created by the Congress, and the Civil Rights Act, the timing of which operated in the way to handicap the study.

I tried at one time to get the Coleman Study delayed, so that we could do a better job on it. We concluded, in the administration, that we would ask Congress for another year to work on that study. I now think we were mistaken about that, but we did review that possibility at that time, back in 1966, when we were doing a crash job of bringing the Coleman study to a conclusion.

You might recall that we presented it to the Congress 1 day before it was due, and that Senator Ribicoff suggested that I was doing this because it was the weekend of the 4th of July, and it wouldn't receive any publicity. That was not the case. It was just 1 day before it was due.

In other words, we do have a real assessment problem, and perhaps one useful thing this committee could address itself to is the possible design of another major look at this whole area in a time when there is a lot more friendliness in local school districts to collecting data about children than at the time of Coleman.

One of the effects of title I has been to open up the whole business of willingness to release achievement data and find out about this thing.

Senator MONDALE. When you first started Title I, there was enormous resistance.

Dr. Howe. Yes.

Senator MONDALE. And now there seems to be a growing willingness to release data.

Dr. HowE. Right. Let me conclude this summary, and let Dr. Smith proceed.

Senator MONDALE. Thank you very much, Dr. Howe. Dr. Smith?

STATEMENT OF DR. CHARLES H. SMITH, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES, THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, NEW YORK CITY

Dr. SMITH. Senator Mondale, Senator Javits. I do have a prepared statement which I will go through very quickly. And then perhaps if it is your desire, we can zero in on some of the specific questions that you might have.

I do not appear before you today as an official of the Rockefeller Foundation, but as one who became involved in many programs which were established to increase and improve educational opportunities for the poor and alienated. I was involved in Job Corps, community action programs, New Careers, consultant-advisor to the National Advisory Council for the Education of Disadvantaged Children when it decided to take a look at what was happening in Title I across the country.

I also appear as one who spent a couple of years in the U.S. Office of Education in various roles. The last year having been spent as an Assistant for Urban Affairs to former Commissioner Howe.

I have observed and participated in the hopes, struggles, frustrations, failures, and successes of the several ESEA programs intended to increase and improve educational opportunity. It is in this capacity that I would like to discuss briefly from a national perspective those hopes and struggles, frustrations, successes, and failures.

REPORT ON TITLE I

In 1966 with the National Advisory Council for the Education of Disadvantaged Children, I supervised a team of consultants and participated in all the field visits to a number of cities across the country. The objective was to report to the Council what was going on in those cities. Those reports were published and widely circulated. However some of the things that were learned were as follows.

Title I was forcing many school systems to focus on a population that had been neglected. Millions of dollars were spent on equipment. and materials which were placed in the hands of people who were the most responsible for the neglect. We saw equipment and materials in storage rooms unused because school personnel did not know how to use them.

Many programs were very quickly and loosely designed and implemented. In many cases the programs were an expansion of programs already in operation such as remedial reading and after school recreation.

Community people knew that Federal money was coming in, but did not know the purposes and objectives nor were they involved in many of the programs.

Teachers in only a few systems were involved in training and retraining. In the second year we observed that the more innovative summer programs had not continued through the regular school year.

More money had been available for the preceding school year— especially summer programs.