From the Council of Chief State School Officers/ POLICY STATEMENTS 1976 III. State and Federal Relations Establishment of U. S. Department of Education A Federal Department of Education should be At the hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight Procedures held If one assumes that each of the 188 school systems in Georgia spends only Thank you for your concern over the administration of educational programs in the Nation, and the seemingly growing insatiability of information needs of the federal government. I am very pleased that Georgia has contributed Congressional leadership and efforts toward curbing the increasing demands of the federal bureaucracy. With warm personal regards, I am Sincerely Jack Jack P. Nix State Superintendent of Schools JPN:msc Congressman LEVITAS. This model that you referred to, I believe, title I, and could require over 30 million items of data. What type of data are you talking about? Dr. Nix. This relates, Congressman Levitas, just to reading and mathematics. It does not relate to all of the things. It relates to the number of children, their section, the number of classes they are in, the teachers, things of that nature, where they are, where they are in one level of reading or another level of math, if you move them one level. Congressman LEVITAS. We have had some experiences in our Governmental Operations Committee in the House for agencies which have required substantial recordkeeping, information to be furnished at significant costs and in going back over to determine what they did with that information I have learned that they have actually taken it and warehoused it and nobody has ever looked at it. The IRS is a good example of that. Dr. Nix. Let me say this. It seems to me like that, say, Dr. Crim. here in the city of Atlanta Board of Education would certainly know more about what type of administration it would take to serve the disadvantaged or handicapped child here at the John F. Kennedy Center than someone sitting behind a desk in Washington would know. Congressman LEVITAS. I think there is no quarrel with that. I might mention one other thing, interestingly, following on Senator Nunn's mention that the Commissioner Bell was administering what? Senator NUNN. It was something like a 400 percent increase in the number of individual programs from 37 that he had to administer in the Office of Education. Congressman LEVITAS. We recently concluded a hearing and issued the first in a series of reports by HEW and one of the first questions we asked the Assistant Secretary, Mr. Otina, I believe it was, how many programs does HEW administer and he said, he was not sure, but gave us a figure, I believe 320. A few weeks later, another witness on from HEW, at the same level, and asked him the same question and he was not sure but he thought it was 261. Five months later, we asked Mr. Otina and he came up with the figure of 287, if I remember correctly. HEW does not have a log on how many programs they are adininistering, much less what the implications are in terms of what it is costing people to comply. Dr. Nix. Let me make this comment, Congressman Levitas, concerning fragmentation and specificity, not only in recordkeeping but in the proliferation of programs. I think we have gotten to the point where the Federal programs are being so fragmented, that in many cases, when parents of children in a local community get concerned about something not happening out there in that school, it is too easy for the teachers and the principals to say that the State will not let me or the Federal Government will not let me do that. We need to, somehow, keep in mind that the responsibility and authority ought to be as close to the child as we can get it and then we can really get a handle on this business of accountability. Senator NUNN. Doctor Nix, we talked about this very briefly but we made some progress on the idea recently. I have been entertaining the idea for some time of trying to split the Department of Education out of HEW and make it a separate entity for the purpose of accountability so we can get a better handle on it. It will not solve the problem but I think it will give us a version through which we might begin to solve the problems. I have talked to Senator Ribicoff, chairman of the Government Operations Committee and former head of HEW and Senator Magnuson, who has jurisdiction over HEW appropriations. I have strong presentments that both of them may join me in sponsoring such a bill. If we get that kind of cosponsorship, we would have a good chance. I would like your observations on that. Dr. Nix. Mr. Chairman, last year, as president of our council, we worked on a position paper on this particular concept that you have alluded to here. Our council, composed of all of the 50 States and the 6 territories superintendents or commissions, has unanimously gone on record that one of the finest things that could happen for the education of the people of this Nation would be the establishment of a cabinet-level position, for administration of education on a Federal level and to pull into that operation the educational programs that are now somewhat fragmented over a number of different agencies on the Federal level. So certainly, I think it would help us in the administration. As I mentioned earlier, the present commissioner, I know for a fact, is somewhat tied down on many occasions in doing what he wants to do to help us because of the bureaucracy above him. Senator NUNN. Right. If you could send me a copy of that resolution that you all adopted, I would appreciate it just personally. Thank you very much, Doctor Nix. We apologize to you for having kept you waiting so long. I know you have a busy schedule. We appreciate your patience. Dr. Nix. Mr. Chairman, the State board is in session and when I left them they were delighted you were giving me this opportunity. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Dr. Nix follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF JACK P. NIX, GEORGIA STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, ATLANTA, GA. Senator Nunn, Members of the Committee. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to appear before the Senate Government Operations Subcommittee on Oversight Procedures to testify on some of the difficulties we have experienced with Federally assisted programs for education. Before mentioning specific problem areas, I wish to state that the Federal assistance available for education has been a great help to Georgia as a supplement to our state efforts, and has enabled us to do certain things that would not have been otherwise possible with the limited state and local resources available. Educators of the state are appreciative of the efforts of the Congress to improve the quality of education available in this Nation for all citizens, and have striven to utilize the Federal aid available in an efficient and effective manner. Unfortunately, due to the spcific mandates of Congress in passing new statutes and the stringent interpretation of these statutes by the Executive Branch's rules and regulations, educators have at times been hampered in their efforts to effiiciently and effectively use Federal aid. In fiscal year 1965, according to the State Auditor, the State Board of Education received $14.5 million in Federal grants for the public schools of Georgia. During this same year, the Georgia General Assembly appropriated $233.8 million for the education of children of this state. By fiscal year 1975, Federal grants received by the State Board of Education had increased almost ten times to $140.1 million, accompanying a two and one-half times increase in state appro priations for education to $597.0 million. These figures do not include the local school systems' financial contributions, nor do they include direct Federal grants, such as Impact Aid, made to the local systems of the State. Over this ten year period, the reporting and record keeping requirements imposed at the Federal level on state and local officials have far outstripped the tenfold increase in funds. Much of this increase is due to the seemingly ever increasing specificity of Congressional Acts, while much can be attributed to an overzealous interpretation of Congressional mandates by the executive branch. Funds originally intended to help the children of our State have been slowly diverted to fulfill reporting requirements, most of which have little or no bearing on the child in the classroom. With the Committee's permission, I have included as Appendix A1 a listing of the forms required by the U.S. Office of Education for Federal educational activities in Georgia. This listing reflects the content of this 24-pound, 11-inch stack of forms and instructions for programs under the Office of Education. As you can see from the size of this document alone, much of our time and money is expended in reporting information to the Federal level and not directly affecting quality educational changes in Georgia. Please note that this represents only the information collected by the U.S. Office of Education. If forms required by the Department of Labor's CETA activities, the Department of Agriculture's Child Nutrition Activities, the Office of Civil Rights and other Federal agencies that impact education were included, this mass of documents would be increased substantially. Both Congress and the Administration seem at times to have forgotten that education is a state responsibility. Each of the fifty states, according to the desires of the citizens of that state, has established a unique legal structure responsible for education. Many times, these unique arrangements for education are ignored by Congressional Acts and the Executive rules and regulations arising therefrom. An example of such a violation in Senator Pell's board for vocational education proposed in S. 2657 as are mandates for other boards and advisory committees which usurp the authority of statutory or constitutionally established state structures for education. Congressman Levitas is aware of some of the difficulties we encountered with the proposed rules and regulations governing the duties of the State Advisory Council for Title IV, Consolidation of Programs, under PL 93-380. As presented by the U.S. Office of Education, the proposed regulations implied that the State Advisory Council mandated by PL 93-380, the Educational Amendments of 1974, would approve each local school system's application for assistance. This, I felt, was not the intention of Congress, and represented a serious erosion of the duties and responsibilities of the Georgia State Board of Education. Congressman Levitas agreed with this view, and on May 5, 1975, was kind enough to write USOE Commissioner Bell expressing his concern over the implied role of the Advisory Committee as well as other concerns with the proposed regulations. I am happy to report that in this instance. the public comment period allowed on proposed rules and regulations was effective, and that the final regulations as published on November 18, 1975, in the Federal Register clarified the role of the State Advisory Council in offering advice to the State Board of Education on the types of local applications the Council deemed approvable. A further example of problems experienced by state and local educators is the proliferation of a nine-page enactment by Congress. Title IV of PL 93–380. designed to consolidate and simply certain categorical educational programs, into ten pages of executive rules and regulations, plus a proposed guideline book over 200 pages long. This information was distributed by USOE last year as "training material." In addition to these, a nineteen-page document was distributed on August 23. 1975, purported to be the minimum data requirements needel by USOE for Title IV. Commissioner Bell, in response to my concerns over the mass of data to be collected for a program designed to simplify stateFederal relations, pointed out USOE could have required over 4.000 items of information for this title alone. He pointed out that the nineteen page document of August 23 presented the minimum requirements of 402 pieces of datum. and that further reductions by USOE had brought the proposed list down to only 239 items. With your permission. I have included as Appendix B1 this list and resultant correspondence. 1 Available in the subcommittee files. |