schools of education did not respond to the research which has been done in reading methods, replied: "We only train teachers to use the reading methods which the schools use." In my own estimation-and I do not have a background in the teaching professionbut I think we should be flexible enough to not only use the reading methods that the schools use, but also open ourselves up to new methods, or old methods if, in effect, they are proven better.

Dr. SMITH. Senator, I agree with you. I would also like to observe I think that the issue surrounding phonics and intensive phonics is being miscast. I know a few professors of education whose area of specialty is reading-and mine is not-who would argue that any one method will work to the exclusion of any other method; they would argue that a comprehensive reading program requires phonetic analysis skills, and that it also requires contextual clues and other reading skills, as well. And to cast it in polar extremes is, I think, not fair to the question of effective teaching in our schools. If the quality of teaching in our elementary schools had seriously declined over the last 20 years, this should clearly be reflected in national reading achievement scores, and that is really not the

case.

Senator ZORINSKY. Well, I appreciate your comments, and certainly, will pay very serious attention to them. But I would hope that you do understand that the intent of this legislation is to do nothing more than to analyze and evaluate why we have to spend more to receive less in the ability of our children today in being able to read and write and all of those basics.

A lot of people think all of these new, innovative programs is the way to go. My mother thought I grew up pretty decently and pretty fairly, educationally, and we did not get into many of these fancy programs that the children today are being taught.

Dr. SMITH. Senator, I agree-we cannot expect more and receive less. But again, I think there is a question of explaining what has happened throughout the world. In a 10-year cross-cultural study where literacy was involved, there were less than a dozen nations in the world that reported 96 percent or greater literacy. The United States reported 98 percent. I would agree that the Soviet Union reported a higher percentage; they reported 100 percent. Apparently, this is the only Nation in the world that has nobody who cannot read, regardless of any mental handicap which they might have. But that was the report we received relative to the Soviet Union.

I think it is very important that we distinguish between functional literacy and the question of literacy so that we are comparing apples with apples and oranges with oranges.

Senator ZORINSKY. Thank you, Dr. Smith.

Senator STAFFORD. I would say that the Russian problem may not be a lack of literacy as the material they are allowed to read. [Laughter.]

Senator ZORINSKY. And the degree they are required to read it. Professor Groff, do you have any comments to make on Dr. Smith's comments?

Dr. GROFF. I think Dr. Smith's comments represent a couple of things that I have been distressed by in the past one is the apparent kind of objection that the education establishment has toward

any sort of outside criticism. We seem to always be very reluctant to let any kind of objective body, say, a body that has no vested interest in education at all, to come in and look at what is going on. I think this is one of the bad things that can happen in any kind of industry or business. Oftentimes, industry calls in people who have nothing to do with the company, to come in and make as objective a decision as they can. I think that your Commission on Teacher Education Act is designed just to do that for teacher education.

I would prefer having the Commission made up of people who have no vested interest at all in the teaching of reading, those who are not professional educators, people of that nature. These people are intelligent. They are concerned. They know how to understand information and data. They will obviously be highly educated, college-educated people. Educators do not have any particular qualifications to judge data any better than anybody else, just because they have been around schools a little bit longer. Sometimes, I think being too close to the scene, we actually become oblivious to what is going on.

The next point I inferred from what Dr. Smith was saying was that there is a certain advantage to traditionalism, that if we just keep doing things as we have done them, it is better to do it that way. I disagree.

I have made quite a long list of things that have caused the literacy crisis. Dr. Smith's point that there is no such thing as a literacy crisis, I think flies in the face of a mass of evidence on which I compiled my list.

I mentioned "Education Under Study," which reports on 54 studies-not all directly concerned with literacy, but probably every one of them, indirectly, Any time you negatively criticize the schools and their achievements, you are getting to the basic, fundamental thing that schools teach, and that is literacy. Without literacy, you cannot do anything else. So if schools are failing in any respect, one of the fundamental problems has to be literacy. To just say that we are doing fine with literacy and do not worry about it, as Dr. Smith does, does not seem to me to be reasonable. Obviously, Dr. Smith and I do not agree about the extent of illiteracy in the Nation. The need to resolve our differences seems to me the prime reason we need a National Commission on Teacher Education. Senator ZORINSKY. Thank you.

Senator STAFFORD. Thank you very much, gentlemen. You have been very helpful to us, and I express appreciation for the entire subcommittee.

Unfortunately, at least four other committees are meeting today, and the Senate itself is now 2 hours into debate on DOD, and that is why I have to say I am speaking for the others who are not able to be here. But thank you very much, indeed.

Senator STAFFORD. The next panel is Mrs. Marva Collins, director, Westside Preparatory School, Chicago, IL, and Mr. Dennis Van Rokel, who is president, Arizona Education Association, of Phoenix, AZ. Please come forward.

As we told the first panel, your entire statements furnished to the committee will be made a part of the record as if read, and we

would appreciate it very much if you could each summarize your statements in the five available minutes.

Mrs. Collins, is Westside Preparatory School a public or a private school?

Mrs. COLLINS. It is a private school.

Senator STAFFORD. All right. Mrs. Collins, if you would go first, whenever you are ready.

STATEMENT OF MARVA N. COLLINS, DIRECTOR, WESTSIDE PREPARATORY SCHOOL, CHICAGO, IL, AND DENNIS VAN ROKEL, PRESIDENT, ARIZONA EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, PHOENIX, AZ Mrs. COLLINS. I appreciate having the opportunity to address this subcommittee today because American education and the present failure of American children is truly a very frustrating concern for

me.

We at Westside Preparatory School have perhaps one of the most spartan facilities in the Western World, yet despite those obstacles, our children seemingly have managed to do what seems almost impossible today, and that is to learn to read, to write, and compute. And I think we perhaps have benefited from the fact that we have less things and gimmicks, because we have not benefited from Federal funds. It seems that Americans, the more Federal funds we receive, we innately seem to know nothing more to do except to buy more machines and gimmicks.

I attest to the fact as to why we presently have been labeled a nation at risk because somehow, children became so dependent on machines that they forgot the basics. And I certainly think it is fine to be creative, but we certainly cannot get away from the basics.

I travel about 14 times per month. In the last 6 years, I have visited 1,896 schools. All of those schools have benefited from more elaborate machines and things than Westside Preparatory School shares. But I find that these children are so busy drawing lines from here to there, on sheets that are run off on mimeograph machines, that they cannot put a literate sentence together.

First of all, we have to realize that we do have to be able to have cognitive skills to be able to analytically think. There is very little teacher/pupil dialog anymore in the American classroom. Children today have grown up in a society where they no longer have dialog with many adults. There are machines that shuttle candies out, or when they go into the average store, there is no one to talk anymore, and then they come into the American classroom, and they are either plugged into a machine, or they sit there with things. In the classrooms I have visited in the American cities, I have found that the good teachers' children excel, and the poor teachers have more and more excuses.

I think what we are going to have to realize is that we have to somehow forget the paper-pushing 101 courses that we had in teacher training institutions, and begin to realize that we have to deal with real, live children in the classroom. We have as many as 53 children in one classroom, without teacher aids. We have all of the things that people say cannot be done. Yet, despite the odds, we have been able to do it.

I think one of the great resistances to the phonetic method is that we cannot use more and more gimmicks and sheets to do this. It means that there must be a real, live teacher there, utilizing one of the most underutilized facilities in the classroom—and that is the blackboard.

It seems that teachers are almost afraid, or do not want to interact with the students anymore. The experts have said that children must read silently and then answer the questions at the end of a selection. Well, the sad thing is that they never learn to read in the first three grades, and by the time they are in third grade, we say they should be independent readers. If there is no teacher there to say to a child, "Give me a synonym for that word," or, "Tell me what you have just read," or, "Give me another word that means the same thing," these children sit there silently, and the word, "capacity" becomes "capa-city"; the word, "diary," becomes "dairy"; the word, "angle," becomes an "angel," et cetera.

I think again, we have to, though we yield so painfully to change, there is a time when we must realize that all of the illiteracy in this country certainly can no longer be blamed on the children. We must begin to look at the people who are perpetuating the illiteracy, and I think that is-I am not criticizing teachers, but we certainly now have to face the stark reality that we are doing something wrong.

Senator STAFFORD. Does that conclude your statement?

Mrs. COLLINS. Yes.

Senator STAFFORD. Well, thank you very much indeed. As I have said on some other occasions, the brevity with which you have summarized your statement will cause me to make you an honorary northern New Englander.

Senator ZORINSKY. Even a Member of Congress. [Laughter.] [The prepared statement of Mrs. Collins follows:]

ARTS AND HUMANITIES RE: S. J. RES. 138 REGARDING
TEACHER EDUCATION

Prepared by Marva N. Collins

The government actually paid for our title: 'A

Nation at Risk'. School systems across the country never would have had enough monies to pay for such massive failure. The more monies became available, the more the "tagging and labeling" perpetuated itself. Children were labeled and put into leaming 11.ables rooms becaUDO Federal dollars had to be used somehow, and, therefore, more federal dollars bought more and more gimmicks, more and more "things", easy-to-teach, easy-to-read junk", and thinking, reading, and writing, and computing became extinct. After all the federal dollars bought more and more prepackaged lesson plans written by people who have never taught a day in their lives, and children all over America were recruited for failure. After all, all they had to do was to draw lines from here to there guessing at "True and False" questions, and checking multiple choice questions. Not one lofty thought was . required to complete such

mundane tasks, and as a

result we reaped our present 23 million illiterates, 35 million functional illiterates, and two million illiterates being added to that already dismal figure each year. The government actually practiced and paid for recidivism.

All of the baleful assessments of our schools will not provide solutions. The problem is that we do have a PROBLEM, and now what are we going to do about it?