I would now like to call on my colleague, Mr. Roth.

Chairman PERKINS. Thank you very much, Mr. Megel I want to compliment you on a fine statement. I feel just as you feel that we should go much further in the area of Federal aid to education, in the area of school construction, and expand the present programs.

I first want to address some questions to Mr. Biemiller. I notice you concluded your statement by suggesting that we extend that we make an extension of the loans, not only of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act but 815 and 874. The testimony has been most impressive all through these hearings, and if we are unable to impress the Congress this year, and if this committee fails to extend these programs for a reasonable duration of time; I think we will be derelict in our responsibility because the chief complaint seems to be these local school agencies throughout the Nation cannot do any effective and wise planning because there is no stability in the legislation.

They just do not know whether it is going to be in existence or not for the next school year. I am hopeful, Mr. Biemiller, and I certainly agree with your suggestions, how long should we give this program some stability so that the Appropriations Committee may act early in the school year so the total educational districts can do their employing in April and May long before the end of the fiscal year.

It will be of great assistance in this legislation if we can put a reasonable duration period on these bills. How long would you suggest we should extend title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act beyond June 30, 1968, and all other titles of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in order to get this program moving and to give the program confidence throughout the Nation?

Mr. BIEMILLER. I would think Mr. Chairman it would certainly not be a mistake to extend the impact bills for at least a 5-year authorization. Certainly in the foreseeable future there is not going to be any great diminution of the concept of Federal impact.

That law has been on the books now for a decade and a half or so. I think it has been demonstrated time after time both in terms of extending the authorization and in voting the appropriations for these two bills that the Congress is overwhelmingly in support of this proposal and, hence, I don't think that the Congress would be at all amiss to a making of a 5-year extension of the authorization.

Chairman PERKINS. I notice that you dwell on the Teachers Corps and the important principle of local control of education. Do you see anything wrong with the operation of the corps from infringing upon the rights of the local educational agencies, as the proposal is presently written, by permitting the Office of Education to do the recruiting? Mr. BIEMILLER. I certainly see no difficulties there.

I would like to ask Mr. Sessions who is a member of the District of Columbia School Board to comment on that proposal.

Mr. SESSIONS. I am John Sessions of the AFL-CIO Education Department and as Mr. Biemiller said a member of the Washington School Board. Our experience has been very favorable with this. We have something in the neighborhood of "Teacher Corps" interns in our school system and like all teachers they are attached to the appropriate division of school system, those working in the secondary schools being directed by our division of secondary schools, and those

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working in the elementary schools are attached to that division of the school system.

The experience has been very favorable. The teachers have been very happy to have these interns in their situations. They are being used in some of the lowest income schools in the District and are having a very good effect. Incidentally through the training program that involves some of the universities, they have done a great deal to involve the universities and the resources of the universities in our school system.

This has been sort of a spillover effect that has been very helpful. Chairman PERKINS. Does your knowledge of the universities assume the responsibility of doing the training? Have they ever had any pressure on them from the Office of Education or have they ever been interfered with in any way?

Mr. SESSIONS. I am quite sure they have had none.

Chairman PERKINS. Have the Board members in your school system had any suggestions from the Office of Education in the way of interfering with the curriculum or in any other manner?

Mr. SESSIONS. Not at all.

Chairman PERKINS. You tell me that you have about 40 teachers who were recruited by the Office of Education through the National Teachers Corps recruiting system in your District of Columbia school system?

Mr. SESSIONS. That is right.

Chairman PERKINS. Do-just how effective have these teachers been?

Mr. SESSIONS. I can tell you of at least one school in which several of these Teachers Corps interns were working in elementary schools which most people feel was one of the most ineffective schools in the District and today within a year the parents tell me they feel they have one of the best elementary schools in the District of Columbia.

I don't think that is entirely the result of the Teachers Corps but I think they have made a great contribution to the improvement in this particular school which happens to be the Anthony Bowen School.

Chairman PERKINS. I know we have an explosive situation here in the District of Columbia but I have felt for several years if we are ever going to do something about the real problem existing here in the District of Columbia it is through the elementary and secondary educational system. I take it that you feel that the educational system here in District of Columbia has been immensely strengthened as a result of the Teachers Corps.

Am I correct in that statement from your testimony?

Mr. SESSIONS. Yes, I think I should emphasize for the Teacher Corps interns don't go very far in a school system and we have concentrated these in a few.

Chairman PERKINS. Are they working with the people in the disadvantaged areas of the city where the income is the lowest and where the need is the greatest.

Mr. SESSIONS. These are exactly the schools we put them in. I think I should emphasize they don't just teach during the schoolday. They run tutorial programs after school and work with these kids in the evenings. We are having a very real impact in some of these

areas.

Chairman PERKINS. Have you been able to notice some results as a result of the interns in these areas, favorable results?

Mr. SESSIONS. Of course, it is early to measure the impact of this on the learning experience of the children but I think it is quite clear that they have made contact with these children and I suspect in too many cases our school systems have not really made that much progress yet.

Chairman PERKINS. Have you had any problems recruiting qualified teachers at the present time to put them in the areas where we have real problems in the District of Columbia?

Mr. SESSIONS. We have some problems, and we have a rather novel program. I can underline what Mr. Biemiller was saying about the importance of long-term and long-range facilities and fiscal planning in a school system. Our whole school budget, not just the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the impacted aid part of it but the whole scale program has to be acted upon by Congress and unfortunately does not usually get done until after the school system gets started and it is very difficult to employ teachers after the school year has already started.

So I can tell you from my own experience the real importance of being able to plan ahead on these things.

Chairman PERKINS. Thank you.

Now, Mr. Biemiller I want to ask you a basic question more or less on your past experiences and observations in our efforts to obtain Federal aid now throughout the years. I notice that you go ahead and mention the local control that is involved in so many of these programs and you give a history of the categorical aid approach in various pieces of legislation that have been enacted.

There are members on the committee at the present time who feel that we should go in the direction of a general Federal aid bill today as a substitute for what they term "categorical approach" even though we have not been successful in getting the general aid approach enacted for some 20 years.

Would you feel if we undertook to substitute the general aid approach and get away from the categorical approach in this legislation that we would have real problems in getting the bill enacted?

Mr. BIEMILLER. Mr. Chairman, it is my considered opinion that the Congress having tried or rather I should say the education committees of both Houses and having tried general aid bills for many years and having them defeated for a combination of reasons which were quite understandable when you analyze the voting habits and the backgrounds of the Members of the Congress, that the Congress has been very wise indeed to have turned to the categorical approach.

It is quite obvious that by this approach we have obtained the consent of a majority of both Houses of the Congress in authorizing and I hope eventually in appropriating considerable sums of money badly needed by our educational system. For whatever my view is worth I still believe that an attempt to return to a general aid system would run into difficulties that would probably make it impossible to pass legislation.

Chairman PERKINS. I only make mention of that fact because I know there are members on this committee who have not followed the history of the enactment of this legislation throughout the years.

Considering the fact that vocational education was categorical in approach and that the NDEA when we zeroed in in the field of foreign languages, mathematics, and so on, and broadened out to other categories and at present we are zeroing in in some areas of the country under the Elementary and Secondary Act in the most disadvantaged areas of the Nation, where people reside with low income, giving them special educational programs.

I have one other question I want to ask you. I notice that you made mention of the handicapped legislation and the regional centers which would assist schools in meeting the needs and helping parents find the appropriate schooling for handicapped children. I have had correspondence all along through the years calling on me to see if I could give some advice where they can put their handicapped child in school. I think this is a great amendment. The only difficulty I find with it is that it is not broad enough and it is not financed to the extent that I would like to see it financed but I agree with your statement there and I don't think there will be any objection to that amendment.

You gave excellent testimony, Mr. Megel and we appreciate it. Mr. Scherle.

Mr. SCHERLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My first question would be: Are all of you at the table here affiliated with the AFL-CIO? Mr. BIEMILLER. That is right; yes.

Mr. SCHERLE. I think I have one question for Mr. Sessions. The chairman asked whether there had been any intervention or problem concerning the Teacher Corps in regard to the university; is that right? You said "No"; is that right?

Mr. SESSIONS. I can't speak authoritatively for the universities but I think the answer would be "No" from what I know of their work. Mr. SCHERLE. As long as this is partially funded by the Government, would there be any intervention?

Mr. SESSIONS. I did not quite get the question.

Mr. SCHERLE. As long as some of this money is being funded, would there dare be any intervention or problem occur along that line?

Mr. SESSIONS. The question as I got it from the chairman was: Had there been intervention in this program by the Office of Education, and I think here the answer is clearly "No."

Obviously the limits of the legislation in a sense are a kind of intervention. That is, you cannot use Teacher Corps interns in high-income schools, and this is a kind of intervention but I don't think that is what was meant.

Mr. SCHERLE. I noticed in the testimony here that there has been quite a bit of reference made to the inner city poverty. Are you as concerned about the rural areas as you are the inner city?

Mr. BIEMILLER. We are most certainly concerned about rural problems. We simply testify in our formal statement on the question of the inner city because obviously our own experiences as far as the AFL-CIO are concerned are closer connected to that problem.

But the whole question of rural poverty, of the difficulties of many rural school systems have long remained-received our attention. As the chairman was kind enough to say, for more than 20 years we have been up here trying to get attention paid to rural problems just as much as we have to city problems.

Mr. SCHERLE. For the many hours that I have sat through testimony here I have heard very little mention of the rural poverty stricken, and coming from a State that has the highest literacy rate in the Union, Iowa, many of the programs innovated here we do not have, but we do have areas that could stand and use additional help.

Your organization is represented there just as well as it is here. I can find no area or no means of support that you have given back there, as you are emphasizing here in your testimony here today.

Mr. BIEMILLER. Congressman, I would be very happy to talk to our Iowa people. I can tell you in terms of the State where I had the pleasure of not only being a general organizer for the movement but a member of the legislature in 1939, 1940, and 1941 in Wisconsin we paid a great deal of attention to rural education as well as city education.

Mr. SCHERLE. What were some of the things you did?

Mr. BIEMILLER. We worked very closely with the farm organizations. We certainly were always in favor of getting an equalization formula that would pay special attention to rural problems and I represented a city of Milwaukee district here from my own constituents who felt I was leaning over backward in terms of some of those equalization programs and the State federation of labor was always behind that program in our State.

I can't testify for recent years because I have not been there but I can certainly tell you what was going on in that period.

Mr. SCHERLE. There is a great deal of publicity this year throughout the Nation in regard to the series of teacher strikes. Were they basically in areas where the AFL-CIO or A.F. of T. were prominent? Mr. BIEMILLER. Mr. Herrick Roth can speak to that.

Mr. ROTH. There have been strikes of both kinds of organizations that represent teachers, both the association and the union. Most of these have been in cities. Most of them have been over difficulties of determining who the representing authorities would be for collective bargaining or collective negotiations purposes, but both organizations have been involved.

Mr. SCHERLE. Do you think this is a healthy situation for the children involved for the teachers to strike?

Mr. ROTH. I think the position of our organization is that the strike is the very last resort that anybody uses including the teachers. We heard an excellent statement at a conference which we attended yesterday by the Under Secretary of Labor in which I think he put his finger on the problem.

The problem is that the frustrations of teachers get so great at a point where all reason and logic fail that is at that point is where they actually leave the classroom.

I would like to refer to a statement by the Association of American School Boards where he pointed out that there were more days lost in schools for going to special athletic events and for legalized including your State for teacher conventions, that have been written into law for some time than have ever been lost in teachers leaving the classroom but the greatest loss is in the great turnover of teachers.

The statistics in the Office of Education are extremely good on this. Only 11 percent of all of the people who are certified to teach ever