Over the past 2 years, I have shared the unhappy experience of parents of a 3-year-old girl, who may have a serious visual impairment, or she may not; sometimes she acts as though she can see considerably, and at other times as though she cannot see at all.

This little girl may be severely mentally retarded or she may not be retarded at all—she will accurately repeat what is said to her, but she seldom initiates an idea, or responds to a question with the expected

answer.

This little girl may be severely crippled in her legs or physically weakened in some other way, although no crippling condition is apparent-still, though the little girl is more than 3 years old, she crawls from place to place-she has never taken a step unaided.

The little girl I speak of and her family live here in the Washington area. I am familiar with the sad searchings of the little girl's parents for answers, for intelligent, informed help with the difficulties of their unfortunate child.

I am acquainted with their fruitless task of trek from doctor to clinic to hospital to institution-but their questions remain unanswered; the little girl remains unhelped in her desperate need.

Mr. Chairman, the National Federation of the Blind endorses and supports section 152 of H.R. 6230 which is directed toward increasing the number of persons entering the field of special education-as teachers, psychologists, therapists, social case workers, research specialists. It is not merely enough to determine the educational needs of handicapped children, to devise educational programs, to develop specially required tools and equipment, new methods and ingenious techniques

For all this will be lost, wasted, and unavailable in the education of the handicapped children if teachers in substantial numbers, if supportive personnel in all specialties, cannot be induced to prepare for entry into the special education field, cannot be persuaded to seek employment in special education programs once they have acquired the requisite training.

Section 152 of H.R. 6230 as Federal law, will make it possible to accelerate and expand present efforts to recruit college and university students, general education teachers, and other general education specialists to enter the special education field.

The National Federation of the Blind endorses and supports section 155 of H.R. 6230, to include Interior Department operated schools for Indian children, and Defense Department operated schools for overseas dependents within the scope and benefits of title VI of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

It is our belief, Mr. Chairman, that physically and mentally defective Indian children, that physically and mentally defective children of military and Defense Department civilian personnel stationed at bases outside of the United States, have the same right to receive and accordingly should receive the same equality of educational opportunity provided through special education programs available and afforded to American children resident in the United States.

The National Federation of the Blind endorses and supports section 156 of H.R. 6230, to expand existing instructional media programs to include all handicapped children.

By authorizing the conducting of research in the use of educational media-by serving to stimulate, encourage, and promote the discovery and devising of new and better instructional instruments, tools, equipment, and apparatus-by authorizing the production and distribution of educational media for the use and benefit of handicapped children and adults-by authorizing the training of persons in the use of educational media for the instruction of the handicapped, and in the use of the newly devised and developed educational instruments, tools, equipment, and apparatus--by making all of this possible, Mr. Chairman, section 156 of H.R. 6230, as Federal law, should result in greatly improved educational progress and programs for the handicappedfor physically and mentally defective children and adults-it should result in greatly advancing and equalizing their educational oppor

tunities.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, visually impaired children, children with hearing difficulties, children with malformed limbs, the mentally retarded, the emotionally disturbed, each disability grouping of children presents uniquely different categories of problems and special needs, problems to be resolved, special needs to be met and satisfied, by specially trained and qualified teachers and supportive personnel.

Adequately educated and equipped by these specialists, many disabled children will develop into self-sufficient adults.

Properly prepared to cope with life under adverse circumstances all disabled children will be able to live fuller lives.

President Kennedy once said, in connection with a pending medicare bill, that a nation is judged by the care and consideration it shows its elderly citizens.

But even more, Mr. Chairman, I believe a nation should be judged on the extent to which it assures equality of opportunity to its children made unequal by physical and mental impairment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman PERKINS. Thank you very much, Mr. Nagle. We appreciate your appearance here this morning. You have made a most eloquent statement. I am most hopeful that we will be able to follow some of your suggestions.

Before we get into questioning, I notice the first witnesses here this morning are Andrew Biemiller and Carl J. Megel of the American Federation of Labor. Do you have any other people with you, Mr. Biemiller?

Mr. BIEMILLER. Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman PERKINS. Let me state for the record that I doubt whether there is a Member in the Congress in or out of Congress who has been a more diligent advocate of Federal aid to education over the past 20 years than Andrew Biemiller.

I make this statement inasmuch as I served with him in the 81st Congress and know of his good work in the 81st Congress on behalf of the Federal aid to education and the old Taft bill, which had passed the Senate and was before the House Committee on Education and Labor in 1949.

Andrew Biemiller was most helpful in trying to get that legislation to the floor on that occasion and he was trying to get legislation through

the Congress also through the 80th Congress. In every successive Congress since the 81st all through the years he has come before this committee repeatedly urging the Committee on Education and Labor to approve Federal aid to education.

I doubt that anyone is more familiar with the obstacles that we have been confronted with over a period of years than Andrew Biemiller, and I am delighted to welcome him here this morning, and I am likewise delighted to welcome here Carl Megal of the American Federation of Teachers.

Both of these distinguished gentlemen have appeared before our committee frequently when we were writing the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965 to give us the benefit of their views.

Mr. Biemiller, do you want to introduce anyone who is with you today, and you may proceed in any way you care to.

STATEMENT OF ANDREW J. BIEMILLER, THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR & CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS, ACCOMPANIED BY WALTER DAVIS, DIRECTOR OF THE AFL-CIO DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION; AND JACK SESSIONS, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE AFL-CIO DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, AND A MEMBER OF THE SCHOOL BOARD OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Mr. BIEMILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your kind and generous remarks. I am accompanied by Mr. Walter Davis on my immediate right, director of the AFL-CIO Department of Education. He succeeded Mr. Rogen, whom you will remember has been here in past years. Mr. Rogen accepted a position at American University.

Further to the right is Mr. Jack Sessions, who is an assistant director of our department of education and a member of the School Board of the District of Columbia. I trust as the dialog develops that they may be permitted to participate at an appropriate time.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Andrew J. Biemiller. I am the director of the AFL-CIO Department of Legislation.

The American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations is pleased to have this opportunity to meet then with this committee, to pay testimony to the significant benefits which the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 has brought to millions of America's children and young people, and to discuss the various amendments to that act proposed in H.R. 6230.

We are proud to have played a major part in shaping the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and in helping to secure its passage. In every part of the Nation, this Federal support is being used to bring new educational opportunities to the children who most need them, the children from low-income families who must have excellence in education if they are to break out of the poverty cycle which has entrapped their families, in many cases for several generations.

Other features of this measure have placed books in previously empty school libraries, financed innovative educational courses and programs, and strengthened the support for long needed educational research.

Experience has shown that there is need for improvement and extension of the original legislation, but this should in no way detract

from the fact that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 has brought to millions of America's children and young people, and to discuss the various amendments to that act proposed in H.R. 6230.

We feel that the Congress, if it were to appropriate less than the full authorization under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, would do an injustice to the wisdom and vision of this committee.

This committee carefully studied the needs of our Nation's schools and based the authorizations in the act upon those needs. We congratulate the committee for the excellent job it did.

The proposed authorization for fiscal year 1968 is more than $1.5 billion under the present authorization. The requested appropriation for title I is only 49 percent of the full authorization and for title III, which has done so much to stimulate new and innovative educational programs, the proposed appropriation is only 47 percent of the full authorization.

There are also substantial differences between the fiscal year 1968 authorizations and appropriation requests under titles II, school library resources and textbooks, and V, strengthening State departments of education.

The AFL-CIO is deeply concerned over the clear possibility that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act will not be adequately funded. Any congressional action appropriating funds below the authorized amounts will severely damage State and local programs now underway or just getting out of the planning stages.

We are convinced that the great breakthrough in the educational field accomplished by the 89th Congress received overwhelming support from the American people. The enactment of Public Law 89-10 brought with it the promise of new educational opportunities for our youth.

For the 90th Congress to appropriate less than half of authorized ESEA funds is to make a mockery of this promise and to destroy the hopes of those seeking to solve the complex problems in our present school system.

The AFL-CIO is not impressed with the argument, involving title I, that under the fiscal year 1968 appropriation request, no State will receive less money than it received in fiscal year 1967. First of all, this Nation cannot afford to stand still on the educational front. Secondly, under this suggestion, States will be penalized for not using their full 1967 entitlement even though they are now prepared to utilize such funds.

Finally and perhaps most important, while the States themselves may not receive cuts, the same cannot be said for local school districts. Application of the 1966 title I formula will require a reallocation within the States which, it appears to us, will necessitate fund cutbacks to fast-growing and already crowded suburban school districts. For all of these compelling reasons, the AFL-CIO cannot overemphasize its conviction that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act must be fully funded.

While we recognize that this committee does not have jurisdiction in this area, the AFL-CIO strongly recommends that the House Education and Labor Committee past a resolution calling upon the

House Appropriations Committee to provide Federal funding to the full authorization permitted.

We turn now to the specific amendments included in H.R. 6230. Title I of H.R. 6230 moves the National Teacher Corps from the Higher Education Act of 1965 wherein it is presently authorized to the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965. We feel that the change is an appropriate one considering the central purpose of the legislation. The AFL-CIO was enthusiastic in its support of the legislation which originally created the Teacher Corps. Now that we have seen the program in operation, even on a somewhat limited basis, we have every reason to reaffirm our original support.

The Teacher Corps has been able to recruit able young people and to train them in techniques of reaching children in slum schools and poverty stricken rural areas. It has brought into the inner city schools something of the same spirit that the Peace Corps previously brought to underdeveloped areas in other parts of the world.

The Teacher Corps has made these inner city schools a teaching challenge, rather than an ordeal to be avoided. To say this is in no way to reflect discredit upon the teachers who have long been working in the slum schools. Reports from many communities tell of the enthusiasm with which teachers have received the Teacher Corps interns.

The problem which these teachers have wrestled with for so long have often seemed frustrating and hopeless. The Teacher Corps interns to bring to these situations a spirit of challenge and adventure and in most instances this spirit has proved so contagious as to infect the teachers around them with new hope and determination.

Because the Teacher Corps program includes special teacher training in the colleges and universities near their assignment, an additional result of the program has been to stimulate these institutions of higher education to turn their attention with new vigor to the problems of training teachers in the special problems of inner city schools and impoverished rural areas. This effect has already had an influence far beyond the Teacher Corps interns themselves.

The Teacher Corps gives promise of injecting new vitality into the schools and at the same time maintaining the important principle of local control of education. The program is available only in those school systems which have specifically asked for it; the interns are assigned only subject to the approval of the specific individual by the school system; and the institutions of higher education which provide the training have the right to turn down individual interns. The school system has the right to make all assignments of interns, to make transfers, and to determine the subject matter to be taught. This is all in accord with local control of the school system.

We therefore welcome the proposal in H.R. 6230 to place the Teacher Corps under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and to provide it with adequate financing.

Also included in title I is a provision which would add to title V of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act funds for statewide educational planning. We believe that in this proposal there is identified an important educational need. In a sense Congress has helped to create that need by the very actions which it has undertaken