FEDERAL PROGRAMS DISCOURAGE PRIVATE INITIATIVE The most obviously unnecessary program proposed in H.R. 3000 is that in the field of commercial student loans. The private sector has created and is expanding an effective program to increase the availability of commercial loans for students by building a large fund to insure repayments. The voluntary efforts of business and community leaders in this field is well illustrated by United Student Aid Funds, Inc., which already has caused loan funds to be made available to students through thousands of banks. These private undertakings are already struggling to compete, however, with a Federal program National Defense Education Act, title II) in which interest rates are subsidized, conditions of repayment are uncertain, and 50 percent of any loan is convertible into a grant through teaching. If this present Federal loan program is enlarged and a new program of Federal guarantees of commercial loans is begun, private effort in this area will be thwarted and will diminish. Private effort to provide funds for graduate fellowships would also be discouraged by the multiplicity of Federal fellowships proposed not only in H.R. 3000 but by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Atomic Energy Commission, and other Federal agencies. Several corporations that contribute to education have already reported increasing disinterest among college authorities in private fellowships because of this general availability of Federal funds paying greater stipends and awarded on less discriminating bases. Similarly, many States, communities, and private agencies have been establishing and planning the further establishment of community colleges and broader opportunity for vocational-technical training beyond the high school. The administration's proposals in these fields of education and training are an invitation to delay, modify, or drop such local, State and private action pending decision by the Congress about new programs as well as the extension and expansion of existing programs. FEDERAL PROGRAMS THREATEN PROFESSIONAL FREEDOM H.R. 3000 would not only compound present disservice to local and State initiative, but would increase the current controversy in several areas of education. Different programs proposed in H.R. 3000 would, indeed, subsidize approaches to diverse educational "improvements" based on conflicting views about the purpose, organization, and operation of State and local school systems; i.e., the priority of the cultural versus the vocational, the priority of faculty responsibility for instruction versus research, the efficacy of public versus private education in a free society. Existing Federal programs now operating through the Office of Education, the NSF and other executive agencies of the Federal Government are already exerting a controlling influence on the curricular emphases and instructional personnel and methodology in many schools and colleges. These programs, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, have become a major influence in the choices which both undergraduate and graduate students make in their career planning. This same study indicates the concern of many college leaders about the overemphasis in science and mathematics at both secondary and higher education levels at the expense of the humanities and social sciences. Federal research fellowships and professorial interest in Federal research contracts are causing the majority of our more brilliant graduate students to plan careers in these research fields rather than in teaching, according to the report. Federal programs are thus accentuating the age-old dichotomy between the research and teaching functions of college faculties, and are encouraging college administrators to give preference to those faculty members able to secure research contracts. Does the Congress wish to accentuate the research functions of higher education at the expense of quality in instruction? Does the Congress wish to encourage or discourage the trend toward more public higher education and less private and parochial education? Does the Congress wish to encourage tuition rates more nearly approaching the costs of higher education or deter this trend? Does the Congress believe that vocationaltechnical education should be a part of our present elementary-secondary education or an extension downward of the more functional aspects of higher education or a new dimension of education independent of both? Does the Congress wish to encourage comprehensive high schools for vocational-technical education or the creation of separate vocational and adult education schools? FEDERAL STANDARDIZATION OPPOSED These questions are posed because the several existing and proposed Federal programs in education are influencing and will further influence local, State, and private decisions that are now being made about the function and organization of school systems. If the Federal Government continues to decide through subsidization of selected areas and aspects of education what the "right" or "best" answers are to those questions, the people in the several communities and States may gradually accept a standardization and structuring in education to fit the image of the perfect school system that is conceived in Washington. The approval of H.R. 3000 would be a major step toward such a national standardization of American education. Yet it was the avowed intention of the Congress and of President Eisenhower in signing the National Defense Education Act that the programs therein should be stimulative, but not permanent, in nature. The several programs of the National Science Foundation similarly were said at their inception to be a temporary intrusion into State and local school systems. We sincerely urge the Congress not to perpetuate and broaden this trend toward centralized decisionmaking and standardization in education. The philosophy of a nationalized school system is not in the American tradition. The continuation of our highly pluralistic society requires that educational institutions adapt to the people rather than that the people adapt to them. DIVERSITY VERSUS CONFORMITY Whatever the problems of American education may be, its productivity has been manifest in the standards of living that have been attained and appreciated by the adult population which these schools produced. To belive that their contributions to our society in economic, political, or social terms would be enhanced by greater conformity to an single image or meaning of education is to deny that America has evolved anything unique in its educational processes. EFFECTIVENESS OF LOCAL-STATE-PRIVATE ACTION H.R. 3000, in essence, is a broad-scale declaration that the American people are not succeeding and cannot succeed through local, State, and private action in developing the educational processes and institutions required in our changing and competitive world. This we vigorously deny. The response of the American people through local, State, and private action to the need for more and better schools has been phenomenal. Sixty percent of all classrooms now in use have been built since World War II, 25 percent in the last 5 years. Instructional personnel for the schools have been developed even faster than enrollments have increased, with the net result that the ratio of pupils to teachers is the lowest in history, less than 25 to 1. At the same time, the remuneration provided for American teachers has risen rapidly and teachers associations are being pressed to devise means by which their more competent members can be given even greater rewards. The quality of teachers has also improved more rapidly than at any other time in our history, with certification standards being raised in virtually all States. BUSINESS SUPPORTS LOCAL-STATE-PRIVATE ACTION Chambers of commerce throughout the Nation are continuing to provide leadership in encouraging improvements in the educational systems of their communities. They are cooperating in campaigns to prevent dropouts through the improvement of guidance programs and the development of work-study courses and other opportunities appropriate for non-college-going youth. They are helping school boards study the needs of communities for additional educational facilities and, in the vast majority of cases, are supporting efforts to pass bond issues or increase tax revenues required for better schools. These many local and State expressions of determination by the American people to provide good schools for their children are not lessening but rather increasing. We urge the Congress to acquire much more comprehensive and much better researched knowledge on the processes, achievements and on-going activities in American schools and colleges before embarking on the multitude of measures proposed in this bill and others relating to manpower development. The Federal Government's proper role in improved education lies in realistic functioning by the Office of Education in a research and service capacity and as a clearinghouse for information concerning innovations being tested throughout our many systems of local, State, and private education. There is convincing evidence that, with such contiuing enlightenment about tested processes and procedures, our diverse public and private approaches to school improvement will best increase and protect both the achievements and the freedom of education. 94173-63-70 |