The cliche that " You can the country from Washington " is as relevant to education as to other fields of domestic endeavor. It is utterly impossible for any Federal department or agency to administer effectively a fragmented system of over a hundred separate categorical aid programs dealing with a single subject matter field education in this instance and to deal with several thousand 1- 1 education agencies in the process. The re narrow the purpose the more likely it is that the grant will have to be administered on a project, rather than a formula basis, and project grants carry with them the attendant problems of case-by-case evaluation and decision. This is not to say that project grants and categorical formula grants do not have a proper place in the array of fiscal tools available to the national government. But to be effective, they need to be used selectively and not for urposes of large-scale financial support. Consolidation Necessary for State and Local Policy Making and Administration As our grant-in-aid system has grown more fragmented, the state and local agencies have found their flexibility increasingly inhibited, because as programs have multiplied, it has been necessary to create additional compartments for new programs with attendant problems of coordination among similar activities. Also, this fragmentation has placed a growing premium on grantsmanship, since most of the newer, more specialized programs have been of a project nature. One fact often overlooked about grantsmanship, is that it rather automatically favors affluent over poor districts. For example, in nearby Montgomery County, Maryland a small unit in the school system is concerned with seeking out, obtaining, and implementing Federal aid projects. The pavement between Rockville and HEW is kept fairly warm by this aggressive and highly competent group and not surprisingly, their 97-457 O 73 pt. 4 -- 39 batting average is quite high. A less well-staffed system would not be able to keep up on all the new programs and regulations. In brief, consolidation of categorical programs that have largely served their initial stimulative purpose into broad functional grants enables the state and local educational agencies to fit the available funds to their immediate detailed priorities and to change the priorities without fear of losing Federal aid. As new problems arise that in the view of the Congress or the President require a precise targeting of funds, a new categorical program can be enacted, but with older programs folded, on a continuing basis, into broad bloc grants. Grant Consolidation Essential to a Viable Federalism Unless we are to continue trying the impossible with a multitude of detailed and minor decisions cast up to Washington administrators, we as a country and as a governmental system need to devolve to State and local levels of government a major share of responsibility for policy initiation, program development, and day-to-day administration. The pattern of administrative organization for providing public education varies considerably among the States and between each State and its local education agencies. We should not try to mandate these matters from the halls of Congress or the "regulation factories " of the Executive Branch. A hallmark of federalism as conceived and practiced for two centuries in this country is to assure union while encouraging diversity. In this connection, one section of S. 1319 might be construed as restrictive upon the relative roles of the Goverhor, State legislature, and State education agency in carrying out the provisions of the Act. Language such as the following would permit interstate diversity and is suggested for your consideration: "Sec. 9(a) Responsibility for administering the provisions of this Act in behalf of the government of a State shall vest in accordance with the constitution and laws of that particular State and with administrative action of the governor pursuant to such constitution and laws; in the absence of contrary provisions of State constitution or law or gubernatorial action pursuant thereto, such responsibility will be deemed to vest in the chief State school officer or such other officer as is charged under State law with responsibility for elementary and secondary education. (b) Within the framework of (a) above and of Sec. 204 of the Intergovern- (c) Funds otherwise available under Section 4(d) (2) (C) of this Act may be used for the strengthening of the policy and administrative capability of local education agencies and of those parts of the executive and legislative branches of State Government that bear responsibilities for public elementary and secondary education in the State. Mr. Chairman and members, let me conclude by expressing the earnest hope that you will report S. 1319 favorably and that it will be enacted into law at an early date. Thank you for this opportunity to appear before you. Senator PELL. Dr. Duncan. Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, sir. My name is Merlin G. Duncan. I have served for the last year as executive director of the Southern Region School Boards Research and Training Center located in Tuscaloosa, Ala. This comprises the 13 Southern States and the Virgin Islands. I imagine that needs some description as to which ones are the 13 Southern States. We work with an area from Texas to Virginia, including Kentucky and Arkansas, and of course down to Florida. What we request is a group of State associations of local school boards that are made up of local school board members that have come together and formed a research and training center in order to provide information and training for local school board members. In doing this kind of work, we come in contact with many local boards, many superintendents, and we get an opportunity to take a look at their problems from a level that some of the other gentlemen do not usually see. We see the kind of things that are complex to them and are confusing. The hallmark of local control in our society has been the delegation of authority to local school boards from the State. There is a problem facing us. That is how you fund education. Local control necessitates that you have budget control, and it is very difficult to separate your programs from the budget. When the local school board finds itself given the kind of mandates that does not allow them to bring together all of their funds and focus them on the programs that face their unique and separate districts, they find it very difficult to operate. One thing that I thought we should point out, and I have not seen too much of this being said, is that the idea local control has been influenced by legal decisions, where the courts make decisions and tell us exactly what we are supposed to be doing. HEW writes regulations and guidelines. I might say that those regulations and guidelines obviously are effective and necessary, but they make it very difficult when you have a title I program and you end up with a title I typewriter that you must check to find out whether or not it was used, only to benefit those children that are included in the title I program. It is a great deal of extra recordkeeping and provides problems for supervisors who are attempting to harmonize programs. I want to point out that I was a professor of educational administration prior to this year, and I will return to teaching this coming year. I think colleges are partly to blame. We have not trained people in accounting, financial management, modern management tools, the things that make it possible for local school districts to schedule their activities, to integrate their kinds of programs, and to record the money in such a way that they can actually utilize it for program operation. Now what I am trying to say is that it is becoming very difficult for them to operate. There are a couple other issues that deal with this. they seem peripheral, but they are not, and that relates to the rise of collective bargaining. The administrators and board members are spending a great deal of time trying to work with different teachers' groups. This also has demands placed upon them for more money so they can pay their teachers salaries that are more in keeping with what people feel they should have. There is another thing that has happened. It seems to be the attitude I sense on the part of local board members and superintendents that the Federal Government-well they seem to take the position that the Federal Government feels it is higher than local government, and that the Office of Education can make better decisions than we can make at a local level, and I question this. One problem with this kind of idea is that the kind of people you find in the Federal Government are very much like the kinds of people that you find in local government. At our local school boards, they have a tendency to feel that they can make the decisions respecting the utilization of their funds better than some other people. Now what this leads me to is that all the things that the Office of Education and the other HEW enterprises have done are not all bad. We think, for instance, that probably the categorical grants have been effective. Since 1964 it was very difficult to try to move the local school districts to action, for instance, in desegregation in the South, and I am sure you people are aware of that. I am also sure it will not be too long before the North enjoys the kind of frustrations that the southern school districts have enjoyed over the last few years. I guess, being from the South, I would like to state that we hope that they soon meet our standards. We think that the disadvantaged aid, the handicapped aid, and so forth, categorical grants, have all been effective in beginning to make people aware of these kinds of problems. We think, however, that we are now aware of those problems. We think that it might be time for the Federal Government to begin to look at State education agencies being the entity that actually should manage the education process, and if they choose to do so, in a particular State, to delegate that to the local school districts. Therefore, what we support is not necessarily the Better Schools Act, and certainly not a continuation of what we presently have over the next long period of time, but we do support the idea of reducing the complexity so that when a fellow goes to Washington or he goes to the State education agency, he can figure out what kind of programs he might be able to use, what kind of dollars he might be able to get for these programs, and so we can put them together in a meaningful way to try to attack all of the problems that really face us. Now I had a couple of notes here that I thought should be said, too. I think that title III of ESEA has been a magnificent thing. I do not think it has been magnificent because all the projects are necessarily good. In fact, we have had trouble evaluating whether or not we met our objectives. But I think what it did do in 1964 was to stimulate the thinking of people excuse me 1965-and to get people to think in a broader range of terms, to think about innovation, to think about change, and this has been healthy and good. Of course it is very difficult to wake up the sleeping giant of the educational establishment, kind of like changing the Federal bureaucracy. I think Dr. Frank Hamblin said it beautifully. He said trying to move a large bureaucratic structure, whether it is the big school districts or the university or Federal bureaucracy itself is kind of |