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student" who is inquisitive and wants to study a given subject in depth, I note that nothing in H.R. 1138 stands in the way of further use of regional educational centers. Regardless of level or form of financing, in fact, many school districts are too small at the present time to serve students with specialized intellectual interests: there are too few who are interested in the same subject in the district to make up a "class" and the cost of obtaining teachers of advanced knowledge is too great, etc. Regional centers could offer courses in depth on an optional basis, using released time and afternoons. To promote diversity in offerings for its own sake and to help ease us into a condition of basic expenditure equality in schools would urge a share, say 15 per cent, of equalization grants to the states be set aside for the development or further development as the case may be of regional education centers, with emphasis that the new money be spent on courses to allow students to explore their academic and applied intellectual interests in greater depth than they are able to do in a typical school district. There are two additional changes I would like to see in

H.R. 1138.

I

(1) School districts do not necessarily enter the market for resources on equal terms. Some may have to pay higher "prices", i.e., salaries, to employ teachers of a given level of competence than other districts have to pay. There may well be other price differences, but teachers' salaries are such a big part of the

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school budget that this one instance is enough, to establish the basis of an argument. Where price differences for educational resources can be documented, one set of districts to another, they represent a cause for allowable expenditure differentials, just as characteristics of students and cost differences (See 204 (b) (3)(4). I hasten to add I refer to real price differences, not to differences, say, in salaries actually being paid at any given time. The measurement of real price differences is difficult, but work is being done on the measurement problem.

(2) I would like to see basic expenditure differentials allowed in favor of certain of our central city systems. This would be in addition to recognizing their continued need for categorical assistance. The greatest single shame of American education in the second half of this century is the decline in standards of performance in central city schools. But this is not true in all central cities, or certainly not in the same degree. It might be appropriate that Federal educational authorities, in consultation with national educational groups, and using standard educational indicators, establish a broad taxonomy of central city school systems, e.g., "in great difficulty, in moderate difficulty, in no unusual difficulty at the moment," etc., and, at the least, to establish in H.R. 1138, basic expenditure differentials accordingly, favoring those

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most who are in the worst shape.

This would allow states,

particularly the heavily industrialized, urban states, to participate in equalization grants without abandoning whatever efforts they may be making toward their central cities. I close with one additional comment: for the Federal government, possessing financial resources far beyond those of any democratic government the world has ever known, and leadership as well, to put its blind eye to what is happening in the schools of New York, Newark, Boston, and Detroit, to name a few instances, is callous disregard for the welfare of millions of children who are in no way to blame for the conditions in which they are being brought up.

Charles A. Benson

Charles S. Benson

Professor

University of California

Berkeley, California

I am writing to request information from the Department in connection with the hearing held by the Subcommittee on September 29th on H. R. 1138 and equalization efforts, at which Dr. Joel Berke and Dr. Alan Ginsberg testified. Although both Dr. Berke and Dr. Ginsberg included in their testimonies a few options for Federal activity to further the goal of equalization, I believe it would be very useful to the Subcommittee if the Department could provide us with a memorandum listing a more extensive range of options in this area.

We would like this memorandum to encompass options ranging from those of low cost to the Federal Government which might stimulate State activity, through options of moderate expense intended to partially reduce existing inequities in school finance, to options of high cost, such as the program proposed in H. R. 1138, intended to promote wide-scale reform. I understand, of course, that since the Administration has not as yet adopted a position in this area, your listing and discussion of those options should not be interpreted as an endorsement of any or all of them.

We would suggest that in developing the memorandum

some of the following criteria be considered:

Dr. Mary Berry
Page 2

October 3, 1977

whether the option would result in greater

fiscal neutrality within a State

whether the option would aid in reducing the disparity in expenditures between local districts in a State

---whether the option would take into account the needs of children with greater educational costs and of districts with greater educational costs.

In order that this memorandum be made part of the hearing record, we would appreciate receiving a response by October 31st. Thank you for your cooperation, and I look forward with a great deal of interest to your