this hearing and it probably was snowed under by much of the mail that you receive.

When Dr. Niemeyer and Dr. Klopf reported to us on March 15 that you did not have this material, we sent you the five new profiles and indicated that if you wished to have the first 10 which had already been sent to the members of the committee, we would be happy to send a repeat order.

This went out on Thursday air mail special delivery to all of you. Chairman PERKINS. We will withhold any questions until all of you ladies have had a chance to make a general statement.

STATEMENT OF MRS. NATHAN W. LEVIN, CHAIRMAN OF THE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES SECTION OF THE CITIZENS COMMITTEE FOR CHILDREN

STATEMENT OF MRS. NATHAN W. LEVIN, CHAIRMAN OF THE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES SECTION, CITIZENS' COMMITTEE FOR CHILDREN OF NEW YORK, INC. Your Committee plays a decisive role in establishing the educational pattern for present and future generations. Citizens' Committee for Children, a community agency which has for twenty years worked for the improvement of New York City's educational system, is honored to appear before you. We hope that you will exercise to the fullest the power that the Congress has invested in you to assure that the resources of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 are used to provide the greatest benefit to those whom it was enacted to help. We believe that amendments are needed if this goal is to be reached. You have been examining how present appropriations have been used-whether for "add on" programs or whether the emphasis has been put on programs to create change in education. We share with you the opinion that the legislative intent of the Congress was not that ESEA serve as general aid to pay for "more of the same" by simply relieving states, counties, cities, towns and local school boards of their financing problems. We realize, of course, that these local governmental units are hard-pressed financially with a narrowing tax base, but we also know that federal aid to education was not designed to solve this problem. We fear that this message has failed to reach lay boards of education throughout the land. Our close observations of Title I programs in New York City leave little doubt in our minds that almost all the money has been used for general support of the school system.

In the two years of Title I operation in New York City, approximately twenty percent of the total has been allocated for the reorganization of grade levels to a 4-4-4 system. This "reorganization" has been mandated as a way to effect racial balance in the schools by the New York State Department of Education in 1964, before ESEA existed. But when ESEA money was made available, $28 million went for this purpose-the largest segment ($17.6 million) for the creation of Comprehensive High Schools, whose actual inception is not yet scheduled. The funnelling of this money for routine school expenses seems to us inappropriate and a deliberate misreading of the educational intent of Title I that you wrote into the law.

That infusions of federal aid are needed may not be disputed, but it is a cruel hoax upon the children of the poor that these funds are used to maintain and strengthen the system that has failed to educate them. It is not the children who need remediation, but the system. Our present course suggests that if the prescription fails, we throw the patient out.

It is obvious that the only redress is legislative. Accordingly, we appear before you to express our hope that you will be bold enough to mandate needed changes in the Act to communicate unmistakably that the legislative intent is to break with old patterns wherever they no longer are useful.

We are aware that the local educational agencies raise the spectre of federal domination and that this properly gives pause to some legislators. But urban America, particularly the largest cities, cannot wait for concensus among educators as they veer from crisis to crisis, half-paralyzed by the fear that their autonomy will be destroyed.

As we have observed ESEA in New York City, and particularly Title I, the following legislative mandates seem necessary to us:

1. We ask that you mandate that changes in budgeted program amounts approved for funding by the Office of Education exceeding 10% of their original budget be resubmitted through the same approval cycle. The appended list of New York City's Title I projects shows the comparison of the original budget as passed in a public hearing and two subsequent modifications made without public review. Projects were modified up to 400% from the original allocation. These comparisons were obtained only by extensive digging in the records of the Board of Education, since no procedures for review of modifications exist in the system. Such administrative changes, remote from public scrutiny, we understand to be widespread throughout the country.

2. We ask that you strengthen the role of community participation in planning in order to provide at least some checkpoints on Title I allocations. The present loose consultative relationships of the New York City Board of Education and the Council Against Poverty are ludicrously insufficient to relate planning for Title I to other educational projects and they make a mockery of community involvement and comprehensive planning. They invite deception on the part of the Board of Education and are, therefore, potentially dangerous.

3. We ask that you make explicit the functional relationships between the several Titles of the Act, particularly Titles I and III. It is our hope that some of the innovative spirit of Title III might find its way more easily into the school systems, through the cross-fertilization of shared ideas from educators and the communities together.

4. We ask for amendments to render the required evaluations of Title I projects meaningful. The Act states that evaluations must be made, not that they be utilized in future planning. In New York City this year, projects were recycled before last year's evaluations were submitted. To be made more useful, evaluations should have built into them alternatives and the recommendations of the evaluator. What is now an expensive exercise should be made a function to provide service to local school boards having the responsibility for making policy based on experience. American business would not survive if its consultants did not supply management with alternatives after reviewing the efficacy of programs.

5. We ask that you mandate 15% of funds for innovative projects to be set aside for retraining and orientation of new staff for the goals of the new programs. We think it would be fruitful to explore training possibilities outside the schools. In-service training now often amounts simply to the transmission of outmoded skills and the perpetuation of ineffective methods.

6. We ask that you reinforce other new legislation calling for the creation of non-professional career development by amending the Act to cover training and salaries for indigenous personnel. Under ESEA, they are presently limited solely to custodial tasks-hall duty, cafeteria duty, yard duty-with the substitution of federal for local funding being the only change. We think it essential to evolve new roles and new training vehicles to produce clear non-professional development lines for paid classroom auxiliaries. We need also to provide education for the classroom teacher to understand and to accept such help as an adjunct to his own professionalism.

Federal aid under ESEA amounts to over 7% of New York City's school expense budget, but its potential, intended by Congress to cause profound change in the system has thus far not been realized. A great deal of federal money has been poured into the system. Two years of experience have demonstrated that money alone-without the creation of new approaches and new skills-will not lead to better education for those children whose shocking educational neglect led to the enactment of Title I.

We strongly believe that the training of adults, both as neighborhood classroom aides and as teachers trained in the dynamics of change will have the longestlasting effect upon our schools. The children of the year 2000 will thank you for the quality upgrading of the system they will inherit.

We have given you as succinctly as possible our suggested amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. We have other less critical changes to recommend about the day-to-day operation of ESEA in New York City and the role of the State Education Departments which have failed to transmit the directive for change. We reserve these for further exploration and discussion with you.

ESEA has failed so far in the largest city in America, with the largest Title I appropriation--where one might expect leadership, boldness, and a great sense of

urgency in view of its school problems reported daily in the press. Despite widespread community insistence upon the development of a comprehensive plan for the children in close to 900 public schools and 200 non-public schools participating in Title I projects, the pleas fall on deaf ears. If the present drift continues without legislative clarification, it will be difficult to determine the effect of appropriations of billions of dollars beyond aid to perpetuate old patterns of failure.

Mrs. LEVIN. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Scheuer, and other members of the committee, I should like to say on behalf of the citizens' committee that we are honored to be here today and we appreciate and welcome the opportunity to bring to your committee our observations on the use of the funds provided by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in New York City.

We share with you the opinion that these funds were not for the purpose of general aid but rather to provide additional moneys which are so essential if we are going to reach and provide effective education for our culturally and educationally deprived children.

In the testimony which has been distributed to you, we make six points as recommendations for legislative amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I should like to amplify to some

extent.

No. 1. We ask that you mandate that change in budgeted program amounts approved by the Office of Education that exceed 10 percent of their original budget be resubmitted through the same approval procedure.

I should like to refer to the appended sheets which will bear out and demonstrate the reason for this suggested amendment. The first column which shows a total of over $50 million represents the final allocation projected in the expense budget as of July 1, 1966, as presented at a public hearing.

There were numerous subsequent hearings at which there were fragmentary considerations of proposals. There was never an opportunity to get a picture of a comprehensive overall plan but, rather, it seemed to us a patchwork of bits and pieces without design and without pattern.

In December the budget request of the superintendent of schools showed changes reflected as of October 19. These figures are represented in the second column.

As of January 31, 1967, by dint of extensive and intensive digging on the part of our staff, we were able to get from the office of business affairs of the board of education the modified budget figures listed in column 3.

A cursory glance alone reveals something rather interesting. Pages 3 and 4 have in the first column a series of zeros indicating that there had been absolutely no provision made at the outset for these programs, which were added on later without benefit of a comprehensive listing, when it became known that more funds would be available. Review indicates that some of the figures that appear in the final column represent increases up to 400 percent.

We have been following the prekindergarten programs in New York City and have issued two reports on them dated June 1965 and October 1966 and, therefore, have a special interest in how funds are expended for early childhood education. May I call your attention to the prekindergarten expenditure. There has been an increase of 80 percent in the original allocation of July 1, 1966.

We are delighted to see increased funds channeled into prekindergarten education because, on the basis of what we have seen, we believe in its potential wholeheartedly. If you will look immediately below under "Kindergarten," you will see that the original allocation of $1,039,503 was eliminated as of January 31, 1967.

It was reduced to a cipher. I should like to refer for a moment and quote from the President's special message to the Congress on health and education in which under special programs for special needs educating poor children, and I will excerpt:

Let us begin new efforts like the Headstart, Follow-Through program which can carry forward into the early grades the gains made under Headstart.

There is no provision made for "Follow through" in this budgetary analysis. As a matter of fact, thence are 50,000 youngsters in New York City who have gone through a prekindergarten program, a Headstart program and are drop outs because there has been no provision for a continuation into kindergarten for them.

Mr. SCHEUER. Do you have any figures on the percentage of chil dren in New York City or New York State who are eligible for kindergarten-in a State where kindergarten is mandated to be available if a parent wished to place his child in kindergarten-but who are not there even though their parents prefer that they be there? Mrs. LEVIN. I do not have it but I can find out.

Mr. SCHEUER. Almost half of the children in my district are not in kindergarten and I have had repeated reports from parents who have taken their children to kindergarten and are told there are no facilities available.

Under the State law there is a mandate for all children to be in first grade and a mandate for all children to be in kindergarten if their parents so desire. To me this is an outrageous situation.

Mrs. LEVIN. We concur absolutely.

A further analysis of these figures indicate that the upper grades get a disproportinate flow of funds and prekindergarten and early childhood education are left short changed.

No. 2. We ask that you strengthen the role of community participation to provide checkpoints on title I allocations.

When the veto was eliminated from the original act, the community action agencies were left powerless.

In New York City, the Council Against Poverty, beginning August 8, 1966, asked specific questions of the board of education about 1966-67 proposals; they renewed their request for information on subsequent dates in August, September, and October.

The information was still lacking on October 20 when everybody agreed that this should not happen, but, in point of fact, the programs had already been put into effect as of the September opening of schools, so it was all rather meaningless.

I should like to make a final point with regard to the reduced effectiveness of the New York City community action agency with the removal of the veto:

The Council Against Poverty's Education Committee reviewed the latest title I tentative projects just this past week. A letter dated March 14 was addressed to the president of the board of education in whch the council went on record criticizing the lack of meaning in its consultative role for programs had actually started prior to the requested endosement of the Council Against Poverty. For example, they were consulted in regard to a pilot education program for pregnant school-age girls. Endorsement was sought at the end of February for this program which had been started in January.