Senator ELLENDER. An interpretation of that formula would necessarily take account of such a condition as that. What it could be interpreted to mean, and I am sure would be interpreted to mean, is the amount spent on a certain number of pupils in that locality. In other words, if you had at one time 1,000 and it later on decreased to 800, if the locality could show that it was spending per capita as much on the 800 as on the 1,000 they would come within the purview of that limitation.

Mr. HART. In the State of New York, Senator, we do not think we can go on indefinitely spending $140 a year per capita on education. You can compare the figures for the different municipalities of the State and you will find variations running as much as 30 percent, even more, between communities where supposedly the education is just as good as it is in the other place.

We have made quite some study of education. One organization which has reported very accurately-I have never heard its figures challenged-reported figures on the comparative per pupil cost of education in several States, and it reports that the cost in the State of Indiana, for instance, is not much more than one-half of what it is in the State of New York, and yet the education is said to be as good there as it is with us. I happened to do my college work in the vicinity of Boston, many years ago, and I recall there were no schools better in the United States then, public or private, than the public schools in the vicinity of Boston. I have inquired and I am told that those public schools are as good today as they were then.

Now, I mention that for this reason, just showing how the costs vary. In the city of New York they are paying $10,000 a year to nearly all of the 50 high-school principals, all but 7 or 8 with respect to whom there are some special circumstances, and those same people with the same responsibility over in Boston are drawing $5,000.

Now, I tell of these discrepancies to show what a wide variation there is between the two. If any business concern had plants in different centers and its cost of production in one place was 50 percent more than in another it would want to know the reason why. It would have to do it because of competition.

I say to you, sir, that we taxpayers, when we find another State right nearby, with conditions more or less like ours, getting a given article at a lower cost by a great deal, we feel that certainly we should be in a position to bring our costs down to where those other costs I can assure you, sir, that the very condition of the taxpayers in this supposedly "rich State of New York" is such that we will be compelled to bring that condition about, if it can be done, otherwise we may not be able to pay our Federal taxes down here that you gentlemen impose upon us.

are.

Another thing, the taxpayers of New York State have long suffered by laws that require a school community to spend within a given school year all of the money it receives as aid for that year from the State as a condition to its getting the same amount allotted to it the following year. I have known of cases where school boards have been put to it to devise means of spending all the funds in hand by a given date.

A friend of mine, a member of a school board of a certain village, was called down on the 25th of June by the chairman of the board, who said, "We have got $17,000 of State-aid money in the bank. If

we do not get rid of that by June 30 midnight we will not get that State aid next year." And this board member abandoned his job for 5 days in order to make sure that all this money was spent by June 30. Otherwise the district could not have gotten its full quota of State aid the next year. That case I know about and can privately give you the name of the man who figured in it. It is symptomatic. There are plenty of things like that.

This of course has not merely discouraged, but has prohibited, the practicing of economy. So would this provision in this bill. Indeed this particular provision is an indication to me that the bill was drafted utterly without regard to the well being of the taxpayers who must furnish the money.

The passage of this bill would in time add greatly to the number of Federal employees. That number has already grown so great that a few more or less may not seem to matter. But if we continue at anything like the present rate of increase we will approach the time when it may be difficult for the Federal Government to collect the money merely to meet the Federal pay roll.

Section 13 (b) provides:

No political or civil rights or activities of any teacher or school administrator shall be restricted or affected in any way because of any financial benefit accruing to such teacher or administrator from funds appropriated pursuant to this Act.

As this committee may be aware, we in New York City are rapidly becoming acquainted with the widespread existence of Communist activities in the schools and free colleges of Greater New York. The Rapp-Coudert committee of the New York Legislature has in recent months brought to light the names of fifty or more members of the faculty of the city colleges alone who are or have been members of the Communist Party. The Council of the American Federation of Teachers, with which the so-called Teachers Union and the College Teachers Union of New York City are affiliated, has recommended to the general membership of the Federation that the charter of these two unions be annulled, the ground being the widespread Communist activity among the members of those two unions.

It makes no difference to me whether a subsersive activity is Communist, Nazi, or Facist. All are equally reprehensible to me. But the Rapp-Coudert committee in its report to the Legislature stated that while it had found a great deal of Communist activity it had found very little Nazi or Fascist activity. Yet if these words in section 13 (b) mean what they seem to mean, they would prohibit any State or locality from interfering in any way with a Communist or Fascist or Nazi teacher. They would nullify the efforts of any State or locality to protect itself against the stooges of Moscow who might be on the school pay rolls, as they now are, or very lately have been, on the school pay rolls in New York City. Why is this provision in this bill, Mr. Chairman? What purpose is it expected to serve? This leads me to a few remaining observations.

The text of this bill, it seems to me, is a complete failure as a statement in justification of the bill's existence. It is a great success if what is wanted is Federal control of a propaganda machine. I do not know who drew the bill but I cannot help feeling that some of those who had a hand in it have a far-reaching purpose. I am completely opposed to that purpose. I believe that education, involving as it does the relation between the child and the teacher, the parent

and the teacher, and indeed the parent and the child, is essential a local, almost domestic, relationship. It is extremely personal. To inject this Federal control, which I insist would be the result of this bill, would strike a blow at public education. Even assuming that it succeeded in bringing education to some children who do not now get it, or better education than they now get to others, I do not think that benefit, substantial as it would be, would anywhere near offset the harm that would be done to education throughout the United States.

I cannot and do not claim to speak about education in other States. than in my own State of New York. But I do have some knowledge of what is going on in that State.

My work has taken me to every county in the State, most of them many times. Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt in his budget message of 1932 said that the fact that the per pupil cost of education had more than doubled in 10 years was "startling." Equally startling is the growing amount of educational machinery. So complicated is our State educational law that few understand it. Few are able to understand the intricate relationship between State and local educational authorities. This is bad enough as it is. But this bill would create additional machinery. If possible the educational machinery is to be gummed up still further. The increase would be not arithmetical but geometrical. You would have three different sets of educational authorities. The State would dictate to the locality and the national educational authorities, through giving or withholding money, would dictate to both. We are now spending more than $2,000,000,000 a year on education.

Prof. Harold Rugg, of Columbia University, said on page 231 of his book, The Great Technology, published in 1933:

A mammoth and creative program of educational reconstruction must be built. * * * This program will include: * * * the doubling, even quadrupling, of the national educational Budget.

Some people did not take him seriously. Since the country now spends over 2 billions a year on education, Professor Rugg would apparently not be disturbed by the spending of 4 or even 8 billions. I do not hesitate to predict, if this bill goes through, that within a few years we may be spending on education not $300,000,000 a year of Federal money but $3,000,000,000 a year.

It is the comment of intelligent men that one great fault with education is the devotion of too much time by the teaching profession to method and too little time to substance. The Educational Advisory Committee of the New York State Economic Council, made up of five nationally known educators, headed by Frank A. Spaulding, dean of Yale, and including such men as Henry W. Holmes, who was then dean of the Harvard School of Education, William S. Learned, of the Carnegie Foundation, Dr. Mann of the Council of Education, and A. B. Meredith of New York University, reported for us February 1, 1935, on an examination of the schools of the city of Niagara Falls, N. Y., which is considered a typical American city. This report itemized the following as some of the "items of weakness" that the committee had noticed.

Too much "teaching"; too little learning.

Too much class attendance; too little studying.

Too many things attempted; too few things perfected.

Too much paid to teachers who confine themselves to class manipulation; not enough paid to teachers who skillfully promote learning on the part of pupils.

Too much blurring of mental distinctions in the name of "democracy"; too little recognition and stimulus of superior mental abilities. Överemphasis on the individual pupil's right to such schooling as he may personally desire; underemphasis on every pupil's obligation to make profitable use of such educational opportunities as society provides.

A committee of citizens at Binghamton, N. Y., 2 or 3 years ago sent a questionnaire to some 10,000 employers in New York and Pennsylvania, asking several questions the purport of which was whether the product of the schools, as this product came to work for these employers, justified the cost. About 5,000 employers replied, and the overwhelming burden of their reply was that the cost was not justified. They found that hardly any of the pupils had learned to do anything well. They did not think the education obtained justified the huge cost. It does not mean, sir, that they were not for education, but they wanted better education.

Public education in recent years, at least in New York, has tended to spread out and to include too many subjects. As more subjects have been included, the teaching of many of them, notably of such elementary things as reading, has often deteriorated. As I stated earlier, at a conference on the cost and quality of education held in February 1940 in Albany, Dr. John L. Tildsley, former associate superintendent of schools of New York City, pointed out that about 20 percent of all pupils admitted to one high school in that city were unable to read well enough to read its textbooks in high-school courses. He said that to meet the situation, W. P. A. workers were brought in and trained to teach these pupils how to read.

I have a statement quoting Dr. Tildsley about the reading in New York, and I will send it to you, sir, for the record if you would like to have it, the exact quotation from the stenographer's minutes of what Dr. Tildsley said at that time.

Senator ELLENDER. If you send it in the next 2 days it will be put in the record in conjunction with your statement. Mr. HART. All right; I will do that, sir. (Statement referred to follows:)

EXTRACTS FROM CITIZENS' AND TAXPAYERS' CONFERENCE ON THE QUALITY AND COST OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

Held at Albany, February 5, 1940, at the Hotel Ten Eyck

Dr. John L. Tildsley, former associate superintendent of schools of New York City, made the following statements during his address to the conference:

Some 5 years ago I gave an intelligence test to the pupils entering the first term of the high school. I followed this up with a reading test for all the pupils who received a low rating in the intelligence test. We learned from this test, or rather learned again, that more than 20 percent of the entire body of entering pupils, all of them graduates from the elementary schools, were unable to read well enough to use as tools the textbooks in use in the first-year high school, and therefore almost certain to fail in their initial work in the high school. We found it necessary to establish remedial reading classes to enable these pupils to do the work in the upper school. We provided thus at a considerably higher cost, teaching that could have been done better by teachers especially trained for this

in the lower schools and done at a lower cost. That is, we had to take highschool teachers at much higher salaries to do the work that could have been done by teachers in the lower schools, especially adapted for this kind of work.

Now, here is a very interesting development. A little later Mr. Chatfield, director of attendance, and in general charge of Public Works Administration projects for the board of education, was also able to supply a large number of Public Works Administration workers who were then employed as assistants to a regular teacher in these remedial reading classes. You understand these Works Progress Administration workers were not teachers; they never had any training as teachers just run-of-the-mill people out of employment, picked up.

In the Theodore Roosevelt High School, for example, 37 of these unemployed were assigned to assist Dr. Center, the chairman of the English department, and her assistant, Miss Persons, in solving this problem. These two teachers selected the materials, devised the methods, and then trained these completely inexperienced workers to take groups of five pupils and make readers of them. In this school it was definitely proven that every one of these retarded readers, some of them retarded as much as 6 years, could be taught to read when meeting in small groups of five with especially planned techniques employed. In some cases of more serious difficulties, it was necessary to borrow from manufacturers special instruments and machines for detection of physical defects. Why am I telling you all this since this is not a teachers' convention? It is because I wish you to recognize that in the school.business, someone needs to be able to face difficult problems and find solutions for them just as you do in your business, and if someone does not find a workable remedy, a huge amount of money may continue to be wasted together with the waste of the children's lives.

I wish I could make you feel this picture. You all went to school and learned to read either at home or in school; you know perfectly well that in practically no occupation in life can a man or woman get along if they cannot read at a minimum rate. They do have to be able to read. And to realize that in New York City we are sending thousands of pupils from the elementary schools to high schools, although they cannot read well enough to do the work of high school. What an injustice that is to the children. Talk of an inferiority complex. And this has been going on for years. That is the important thing. It is not a condition that suddenly exists today.

Notwithstanding these discoveries (1) The presence of so many deficient readers; (2) means and methods of diagnosis of reading disabilities; (3) that there was frequently a physical basis for such condition which the use of newer instruments and machines would reveal-no centrally organized plan has yet been inaugurated throughout the elementary schools for remedying this known condition. Such a remedy would cost some money, but not in proportion to the saving that would result. It would involve the appointment of a director of remedial reading, the establishing of a clinic in each of the larger boroughs, equipped with apparatus for the detection of the more serious defects, and then the formation of classes (listen to this) in which the already appointed teachers could learn how to teach reading, when the fact has been clearly proved that we must have hundreds of teachers who do not know how to teach reading.

Mr. Chatfield, our director of attendance, a serious student of education, said, "The reason why your pupils fail in arithmetic is because the teachers themselves do not know arithmetic, and, certainly, not knowing arithmetic, they don't know how to teach it." I am getting very pessimistic, but do not believe that New York City is the Sodom and Gomorrah of education. I would back up New York City with any other city in the United States, as to quality of education. A little more about that later.

May I give you a few more figures? I wish to convince you that the question confronting you is not merely one of more or less State aid nor more or less expenditures for education. It is something deeper.

I saw this past week the records of the reading ability both of the pupils entering a certain high school from the eighth grades of the elementary schools and of those entering the second year of this same high school from the junior high school. Of the pupils entering the first year of the high school, according to the records they brought with them, 14 percent were retarded 1 year in reading; 21 percent 2 years; 5.7 percent 3 years; 3.1 percent 4 years. Of the pupils of the last 6 entering classes, numbering 2,890, 1,509 pupils, 52 percent, were retarded in reading 1 or more years; 118 pupils, 4.1 percent, were retarded 4 years in reading, and so could not possibly do the work of the first year of the high school. Of the pupils coming from the junior high last week, into the second year of this high school, 622 in number, 26.9 percent were retarded 1 year in reading; 16 percent 2 years;