Mr. SICKLES. I have no comment, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from New York. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Nebraska. Mr. MARTIN. No. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania? Mr. DENT. I would like to welcome the Secretary and to assure him that I am very vitally interested in his remarks on this legislation, and will be glad to listen to them at any opportunity that I have. I am sure that it will be enlightening; I am sure that it will be helpful to the committee, and the question of time is one, of course, that each individual must make up for himself. I am willing to hear him at any time that I can be here, and whether we start today or start tomorrow or we start next month, it makes no difference: the work has to be done. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from California? Mr. BELL. No. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Celebrezze, we welcome you to proceed. STATEMENT OF ANTHONY J. CELEBREZZE, SECRETARY OF HEALTH, Mr. CELEBREZZE. I am Anthony J. Celebrezze, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and my two associates are Mr. Frank Keppel, Commissioner of Education, and Mr. Wilbur J. Cohen, Assistant Secretary for Legislation. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you and to present the administration's legislative proposals for Federal financial assistance to American education as embodied in the bills introduced by the chairman, Mr. Powell, and by Mr. Perkins, Mrs. Green, Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. Sickles. Mr. Chairman, may I request that I be permitted to complete my statement before going into questions? The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, so ordered. Mr. CELEBREZZE. I appreciate, too, the early consideration which this committee is giving to the Federal Government's responsibilities in education—a matter which President Kennedy has called "of paramount concern to the national interest as well as to each individual." The proposal which we have presented is designed to carry out the recommendations of the President's message on education, transmitted to the Congress on January 29, 1963. It proposes a comprehensive program of Federal aid to meet selected and urgent needs of American education. It would assist in the improvement of education on all levels from elementary to graduate school, would promote educational quality, would expand individual opportunity for achieving educational self-fulfillment, would help our educational institutions to absorb the oncoming enrollment increases of millions of students, and would enable the Nation to better meet its critical needs for skilled manpower, accelerated economic growth, and strengthened national security. It is a comprehensive bill which addresses itself to the entire complex of needs in American education. No single part can be properly assessed without consideration of the whole. For the structure of education in our society is such that every level is built upon another and weaknesses in one area are inevitably reflected in another. What we do or do not do to assist higher education, to expand the capacity of our institutions of higher education, to improve the quality of teacher education, to develop strength in specialized fields will have a direct and forceful impact on the quality of education at the elementary and secondary levels. And what we do or do not do to aid our public elementary and secondary schools to meet their problems of crowded classrooms, underpaid teachers, and changing curriculum needs is of direct consequence to the continued growth and strengthening of higher education. And just as the parts of education cannot be separated one from the other, the total well-being of our society cannot be measured apart from education. President Kennedy has said that "Education is the keystone in the arch of freedom and progress." It is a primary, essential factor of economic growth and national security. It is the means to achievement of personal growth and happiness. It is the bedrock of a free and open society. I do not mean to imply that our schools and colleges offer a cure for all the social and economic ills that now confront us. But the vital role of education in our complex and dynamic society is such that no attempt to treat these other ills can possibly ignore education's deficiencies. The more than 50-percent increase in the school population within the past decade has been carefully watched and measured. Its inevitable effect on education was long ago foreseen. What was predicted last year and the year before, today is becoming fact: Our colleges and universities are not now prepared to receive and educate the tidal wave of students who will be waiting at their gates when the number of college-bound students reaches its crest in 1965-only 2 years hence. The classrooms and laboratories so urgently needed are still only paper on the drawing board. Without substantial and immediate financial aid, they will not be built in time, and our colleges and universities will not be able to provide the quality and quantity of higher education-the skilled hands and trained minds-that the Nation so urgently needs. The difficulties of our schools and colleges in keeping their curriculum up to date with expanding scientific knowledge have long been known. Important measures were initiated under the National Defense Education Act to improve teaching and curriculum in the fields of science, mathematics, and foreign languages. The success of these programs is already apparent in classrooms across the Nation. What is being accomplished in these specialized fields through the active partnership of State and Federal forces can and should be accomplished in other fields as well. The educational deficiencies of a larger percentage of our population were long ago diagnosed as a serious contributing factor to our heavy rate of unemployment. The tragedy of a million youth out of school and out of work, the restricted lives led by more than 23 million adults with less than an elementary education, the forced idleness and dependency of able men and women whose skills have been displaced in the swift march of technological progress-all these problems are rooted in education. Hope for the millions of individuals who suffer from educational handicaps and hope for the Nation which needs their lost talents rest on our ability to meet their educational needs. Neither can we continue to allow the high cost of education to close the door of opportunity to able and talented youth. As we become increasingly dependent on skilled and highly trained manpower to meet the needs of national growth and national security and to meet the needs of individuals in a free but complex society, we must provide increased opportunity for students of limited financial means to advance their education to the highest level they are able and willing to attain. We cannot afford, as a nation, to limit the promises of democracy to only a part of the people. We owe equal opportunity for educational achievement to all our citizens so that each citizen, in turn, may bear his fair share of the responsibilities of democracy. And when educational deficiencies become so serious that they limit the productive capacity, economic growth and security of the Nation, restrict the scope and progress of scientific investigation, and hamper the building of our national defense-then education is a matter of national concern. The dilemma presented to the Nation by the inadequacy of local resources to support education and the urgent need for strengthened education must be met and must be resolved. Dependence on traditional sources of financial support to education will no longer suffice in every community. Until new sources of revenue are developed, however, and the States and local communities are able to meet their obligations for education, the Federal Government has a responsibility to aid them during this period of transition. There is nothing new about Federal aid to education. The earmarking by the National Government, under the Survey Ordinance. of 1785, of a parcel of land in each township for schools set a precedent for the recognition of education as a national concern which has persisted throughout our history. Certainly last year's centennial observance of the passage of the Morrill Act-the Land-Grant College Act of 1862-clearly accorded to Federal aid to education the hallmark of a national tradition. When the Congress in that act aided in the creation of colleges to provide instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts, it responded to a crucial educational need and to the national interest of that time. When the Congress passed the Vocational Education Act of 1917, the GI bills of World War II, and the National Defense Education Act of 1958, in each instance it responded in a timely and direct way to the recognized needs of the American people and to the requirements of the national interest. The assistance to education which we propose in this bill would carry on this well-established tradition of Federal support in educa tion. It does not seek to preempt the rights of the States and communities to control the education of our youth. Neither would it lessen the responsibility of the States to meet this important obligation to its citizens. Rather, it would enable the States and our institutions of higher education to meet those responsibilities and fulfill those obligations which, for a number of reasons, they are now unable to meet. It would shore up the structure of education until the States and private institutions of higher education are able to support it alone. The States would be enabled, as a first step, to survey their educational needs. They would have an opportunity to establish a plan of action to meet those needs and to determine priorities and price tags for specific categories, such as emergency school construction, limited goals in teachers' salaries, and various special projects. This planning is essential to the orderly improvement of education. In every case, Federal support would be designed to stimulate local action. It would enable the States to improve the quality of their schools while, at the same time, giving them an opportunity to adjust their financial systems to meet their requirements for support of education when the period of Federal assistance is completed. In part A of title IV, for example, which proposes grant assistance to strengthen public elementary and secondary education, the States would, each year, be required to shoulder an increasingly larger proportion of the cost of raising teachers' salaries. Let me now turn to the specific proposals of the bill itself. They are addressed to six major categories of educational needs: first, to the expansion of opportunities for individuals in higher education; second, to the expansion and improvement of higher education facilities; third, to the improvement of the quality of education at all levels; fourth, to strengthening elementary and secondary education; fifth, to improving vocational and special education; and, finally, to the expansion of opportunities for continuing education beyond the formal school years. TITLE I-EXPANSION OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDIVIDUALS IN HIGHER EDUCATION To help realize the American dream of educational opportunity at the highest level for which each individual is capable, the bill provides in title I for expansion of the successful National Defense Education Act student loan and graduate fellowship programs and for additional opportunities to finance a college education through the initiation of a program of work-study campus employment and a program of Federal insurance for commercial loans to students. Soaring costs of higher education in the presence of an upward spiral in the college-age population pose for many American families today the vexing and expensive problem of providing young people with the education necessary for tomorrow's demands on their knowledge and productive capability. |