small inadequate districts, on the basis of a State-wide plan, are being merged into single administrative areas which will be large enough to to have resources sufficient to provide a modern educational program and an economical administration of school funds.

In support of that statement, the Council of State Governments has recently issued a comprehensive report on school conditions in which it makes a sweeping recommendation that this organization must be carried on in the States which do not have it. A number of States, of course, have county units, and in a number of States the reorganization has progressed, but this report endorses the reorganization movement, and undoubtedly it will be a part of the picture.

If the Federal agencies are permitted to bypass the State department of education which, with the aid of representative committees of citizens, is directing the reorganization program in a given State, the result will be to waste the taxpayers' money and to condemn succeeding generations of children to attend school in school buildings whose educational limitations may make the offering of a modern educational program out of the question I said the taxpayers' money would be wasted. It would be wasted in two ways. First, because school buildings would be built on the basis of political maneuvering in unjustifiable locations. Second, because thousands of "rotten borough" school districts with expensive, inefficient school operations, which ought to be merged with larger areas, would be perpetuated by the mere fact that an impressive building had been made possible through a Federal grant.

The conditions I have described are neither myth nor fairy tale. We had plenty of examples during the depression years when certain Federal agencies were permitted to go directly to school districts without regard to planning within the State. There are plenty of instances where efficient, economical administration was made impossible because some local political prestidigitator had succeeded in securing a Federal grant for a nice new building that entrenched for at least 50 years an expensive, inefficient program of instruction. Senator HILL. Pronounce that word again.

Dr. McCLURE. Prestidigitator. I practiced that for. 5 minutes. [Laughter.]

I think this is one of William Jennings Bryan's words, if I remember correctly. I thought it was a good one.

We had instances present in Washington and all over the country. I am not condemning those agencies. They did not set the policy, and we had an emergency to take care of people and give work, and it had to be done fast.

Senator HILL. That is right.

Dr. MCCLURE. Now the situation is different. We have had the benefit of that experience, and that is what I am pointing out here. Why should the United States Office of Education be concerned with the distribution of Federal funds? Because the Federal Government is concerned with equalizing not only the instructional opportunities among the States, but also in safeguarding those instructional opportunities through the provision of school buildings which will facilitate and not handicap the operation of an instructional program which can be continually adapted to changing needs of the times. The Thomas-Hill bill, which proposes Federal aid to the States for the operation of schools, would channel Federal funds through the United

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States Office of Education and through the various State departments of education. Funds granted in aid for schoolhouse construction should likewise be channeled through the United States Office of Education and the various State departments of education, in order that the program of school building in the interest of safeguarding good teaching may be coordinated and go forward hand in hand.

The American Association of School Administrators is on record by resolution in favor of legislation of the type of S. 287 which provides that funds granted in aid of schoolhouse construction shall be channeled through existing State and national educational agencies. Our members voted for that resolution because many of them had tragic experiences during the old days when hundreds of school buildings were erected, not because they fitted any particular educational plan, but because they had been secured through political influence. Had the funds for these buildings been channeled through State departments of education on the basis of state-wide plans, we should be relieved at the present time of at least a part of our present tragic shortage of school buildings.

And so, speaking for the National Education Association and the American Association of School Administrators, I favor strongly the adoption of S. 287.

Senator HILL. Well, Doctor, I do not have to tell you, because I think you know, that I thoroughly agree with the premise of your statement. The truth of the business is when we say "Federal aid," we use Federal aid in contradistinction to Federal program. This is the Federal Government simply aiding the States and the local communities and districts, is that not true?

Dr. MCCLURE. That is true.

Senator HILL. And the control and administration of your programs for school construction should be exactly where the control administration of your operating funds is put under the bills to which you have referred which we passed in the Senate not long ago.

Dr. MCCLURE. It is important that we strengthen State and local governments, and this type of bill will do that.

Senator HILL. That is right.

Dr. MCCLURE. It will make it possible for them. That is the best safeguard we have against overcentralization.

Senator HILL. It is indeed, and when you strengthen them, you also stimulate and challenge them to do their best.

Dr. MCCLURE. That is true..

Senator HILL. In other words, you want to help them, but you also want them to help themselves as much as possible; is that not true? Dr. MCCLURE. That is very true.

Senator HILL. Well, you have made a very strong concise statement here which is, I think, very fundamental. I want to thank you, sir, very much.

Dr. MCCLURE. Thank you very much for the opportunity, Senator. Senator HILL. Does anyone else wish to testify? That completes our list of witnesses for the morning. We will stand in recess until next Monday morning at 10 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 11:35 a. m., the hearing was adjourned to reconvene on Monday, June 13, 1949, at 10 a. m.)

FEDERAL ASSISTANCE FOR CONSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC

SCHOOLS

MONDAY, JUNE 13, 1949

UNITED STATES SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON

LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 a. m., in room 135, Senate Office Building, Senator Elbert D. Thomas of Utah (chairman of the full committee) presiding.

Present: Senator Thomas.

Senator THOMAS. The committee will be in order, pelase.

Mr. Hecht is our first witness. Mr. Hecht, for the record, will you state your full name and what you represent, and then proceed. If you have a written statement, you may leave that with us and just talk extemporaneously, if you wish.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE J. HECHT, CHAIRMAN, AMERICAN

PARENTS COMMITTEE

Mr. HECHT. My name is George J. Hecht. I am a businessman and I am publisher of Parents' magazine, which has a monthly circulation of 1,200,000, and I am also publisher of a magazine called School Management, which has the largest circulation among school executives of any magazine on school administration, but I appear here today as chairman of the American Parents Committee, a committee of parents who joined together 2 years ago to work for the welfare of not only their children, but the welfare of the children of the Nation.

The vice chairmen of this committee are Dr. Henry Noble MacCracken, president emeritus of Vassar College; Mrs. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, novelist and education authority; Walter Disney, motion picture producer; and Dr. Robert L. Johnson, president of Temple University in Philadelphia.

Last year the committee, aroused by the stories of acute need for more adequate school space coming in from all over the country, gave a grant to the United States Census Bureau for a study of the future enrollments which could be expected in the public schools for the next 10 years. The Census Bureau had no funds of their own that they could devote to this study, and so we gave them an unrestricted grant to make a survey.

Senator THOMAS. How much has that grant amounted to, Mr. Hecht?

Mr. HECHT. A little over $500. They had the basic data, but they had not compiled it into school enrollment. They had made predictions on the increase in child population of various ages, but they had not translated that child population study into a school enrollment study because a certain percentage of the children do not ever get into school for one reason or another, so they made a very scientific study, and it pointed out a most alarming picture showing the lack of capacity in the existing schools, and I would like to submit for the sake of the record the data that the Census Bureau produced. I have not got a separate copy of this, but it is included in a reprint of an article that I wrote. On the second page it is given by figures, and on the first page it is charted out a little more graphically. (The document referred to is as follows:)

(Article reprinted from Parents' Magazine)

OUR DESPERATE NEED FOR MORE SCHOOLS-AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT The United States Census Bureau, using a special grant from the American Parents Committee, has prepared a new, vitally important table on future school enrollments, which should stimulate every parent, every PTA and every school administration to action.

(By George J. Hecht, publisher, Parents' Magazine and chairman, The American Parents Committee)

Bad as conditions are now in many public schools-particularly in poorer communities and in States with the least taxable wealth-the school crisis throughout the United States is likely to get much, much worse.

Many

Four million children of school age are not attending school at all. children are going to school only 6 months of the year, instead of the normal 10 months. In some communities no public schooling is provided beyond the eighth grade. A large percentage of textbooks are in a filthy condition and are out of date. In many communities schools are already terrifically overcrowded. In other communities the buildinsg are unsafe some schools are merely one-room ugly wooden shacks.

* * *

During and since the war, more than 350,000 of our 850,000 teachers have left teaching, in addition to the normal turn-over. There is a particularly alarming loss in men teachers. More than 110,000 "emergency" teachers are now employed who do not have the proper qualifications. Seventy-five thousand teaching positions remain unfilled. Fewer young people are going into teaching as a profession, largely because of the low pay offered.

Many people do not realize that the school situation is not likely to get better but actually is likely to get much, much worse during the next 10 years. Never was the future so dark for American school children as it is today. In 5 years we are apt to look back upon 1948 as an educational utopia—unless a tremendous effort is made all over the country to meet the crisis.

This prediction is based on the fact that during and since the war a million to a million and half more children were born each year than were born on the average before the war. These extra "war babies" are growing up, and will increasingly flood the schools. This fall the "war babies" born in 1942 will be entering the first grade. Next year these "war babies" will be promoted and will swamp the second grade classes and the large numbers of children born in 1943 will flood the first grade classrooms, and so on. Which means that for at least the next decade, school enrollments will speedily grow larger and larger. Before the war the annual birth rate varied from 2,200,000 to 2,500,000. ing and since the war it rose to 3,500,000 and even to 3,900,000 last year. Communities all over America are faced not only with the necessity of maintaining existing schools and repairing and modernizing school buildings that were neglected during the war years, but also with the frightfully expensive task of building more schools to accommodate the extra millions of children born during and since the war. And all this at a time when, due to the increased cost of living, teachers' salaries must be increased and all other costs are going up.

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