nor to grant to any officer of the United States, or to any of its agencies, departments, or offices, any power or authority to approve or reject the educational programs in the States and Territories; nor to confer upon any officer of the United States, or of any of its agencies, departments, or offices, any power or authority to supervise or in any way exercise management and control of the educational programs of the States and Territories, it being the purpose of this Act to leave all supervision, management, control, and choice of educational means, processes, and programs to State, Territorial, and local governments. STATEMENT OF SIDNEY B. HALL, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION OF VIRGINIA

Mr. HALL. As the chairman said, I am the superintendent of public instruction of the State of Virginia and also chairman of the legislative committee of the National Education Association, that is sponsoring this bill before your committee and before the Congress. I appear before you as chairman of the executive committee of the National Association of State Superintendents and Commissioners of Education, of this Nation.

The legislative commission of the National Education Association is composed of 300 members from the several States, there being 3 or more from each State. The business of the legislative commission is transacted and its policies executed by the executive com-. mittee composed of the following individuals:

Sidney B. Hall, chairman, State superintendent of public instruction, Richmond, Va.

John Callahan, vice chairman, State superintendent of public instruction, Madison, Wis.

Ben G. Graham, superintendent of schools, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Frank L. Grove, secretary of Alabama Education Association, Montgomery, Ala.

George D. Stayer, director of institute of educational research, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, N. Y.

David E. Weglein, superintendent of schools, Baltimore, Md. B. E. Packard, commissioner of education, Augusta, Maine. The executive committee of the National Association of State Superintendents and Commissioners of Education is composed of the following members:

E. W. Butterfield, commissioner of education, Connecticut.

C. A. Howard, State superintendent of public instruction, Oregon. Sidney B. Hall, State superintendent of public instruction, Virginia.

H. E. Hendrix, State superintendent of public instruction, Arizona. Mrs. Inez Lewis, State superintendent of public instruction, Colorado.

Lloyd W. King, State superintendent of public schools, Missouri. M. D. Collins, superintendent of schools and director of State Vocational education.

W. W. Trent, State superintendent of free school, West Virginia. The Harrison-Black-Fletcher bill is actively supported by the two organizations I represent and has been sponsored by the legislative commission of the National Education Association since its first introduction in the second session of the Seventy-fourth Congress.

For several months before the present bill was introduced the executive committee of the legislative commission carried on an extensive investigation of the opinion of leading public-school offi

cials and experts in school administration to determine what should be the provisions of a bill to provide for Federal assistance to the States for public schools. The committee also made an intensive study of the best research done in this and related fields. This bill substantially represents the best conclusions of the committee and has the unqualified endorsement of each of its members-H. R. 5962– which is before you today.

With the kind permission of the chairman and members of the committee, the proponents of the pending bill expect to present evidence which we hope will be instructive to the committee in its deliberations. We wish to open our statements with a comprehensive statement of the arguments for Federal assistance to the States for the support of public schools and for the pending bill in particular. This statement will be made by Dr. Howard A. Dawson, director of rural service, National Education Association, who has been acting in the ex-officio capacity of personal representative in Washington of the executive committee of the legislative commission of the National Education Association, of which I happen to be the chair

man.

During today, and the 2 days succeeding, we desire that the following persons be heard to present the evidence indicated. Without reading the list of names I will read it into the record, with your permission, and introduce them to you as I come to them later.

First. Dr. Howard A. Dawson, director of rural service, National Education Association.

Second, Dr. James H. Richmond, president of State Teachers College, Murray, Ky., and formerly State superintendent of public instruction, Kentucky.

Third. Dr. Robert H. Montgomery, professor of economics, University of Texas.

Fourth. Dr. Walter C. Eells, professor of education, Stanford University, California, and representing the California State Education Association.

Fifth. Dr. William G. Carr, director, research division, National Education Association.

Sixth. Dr. J. R. Mahoney, president of Utah State Education Association and professor of economics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Seventh. Dr. Charles H. Thompson, professor of education, Howard University, Washington, D. C., representing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Coordinating Committee.

Eighth. Dr. Paul R. Mort, professor of education, teachers college, Columbia University, New York.

Ninth. Dr. James W. Martin, commissioner of revenue for the State of Kentucky.

In addition to that, as we go forward in these proceedings, there will be a large number of States represented by one or more persons coming from about 37 to 39 of the States in the Union, who are interested in this subject, and during the course of the hearing we shall introduce them and have them make very brief statements to show their position.

The following States will present one or more witnesses to the committee: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Con

necticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

With your permission I will now present Dr. Dawson, who will present in detail the features of this particular bill which is now before you.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not know whether Mr. Harris would like to make a statement right now.

Mr. HALL. We have him scheduled to make a statement later on in the hearing, after Dr. Dawson, unless he wants to go on now. The CHAIRMAN. All right. I notice Mr. Harris indicates that is agreeable to him.

STATEMENT OF DR. HOWARD A. DAWSON, DIRECTOR OF RURAL SERVICE, NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Dr. DAWSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, as the first witness for the proponents of the measure you have before you, the bill introduced by Mr. Fletcher, H. R. 5962, purporting to provide for Federal appropriations to the States to assist them in the improvement of their systems of public education, I desire to give you a brief explanation of the principles upon which the bill has been drawn, a brief analysis of the bill, and to present to you a comprehensive case for Federal assistance to the States and Territories for the support of public schools. Following me, there will be a number of expert witnesses who will present the facts brought out from the latest scientific investigations related to various specific arguments which I shall present in general without too much detail.

As Dr. Hall indicated, before this bill was drafted and introduced into Congress, an investigation was carried on over a period of several months by questionnaires and by personal conferences to find out what is the opinion of the leading experts in the field. of school administration and school financing as to whether the Federal Government should participate in support of education, and, if so, upon what principles should the legislation be drawn. We have found that about 85 percent of the leading opinion appears to be in favor of Federal assistance to education. We have found that not less than 85 percent of those opinions agree to the following six principles upon which the pending bill was drafted:

First. Federal aid in support of education should be provided by Congress.

Second. Support should be distributed to the States by method prescribed by Congress and not at the discretion of any Federal official.

Third. The Federal Government should grant funds to the States for the support of public education, the States in turn using these funds in accordance with their respective State constitutions and statutes. National welfare will best be served by leaving the control

of all educational processes to State and local governments as in the past.

Fourth. After the first allotment no State should receive Federal aid unless it maintains a system of schools uniformly throughout its territory open for not less than 160 days in each school year, epidemics and other emergencies excepted, and it is believed that should apply to every school.

Fifth. Federal funds must not be used unwisely to reduce the efforts of each State in the education of its children. For this reason each State in order to qualify for receiving Federal funds for the support of schools should expend from all sources, State and loca! combined, an amount of money per child for public, elementary, and secondary schools, not less than the amount expended in some specific year. The bill pending before you is based on the year 1936. Sixth. Additional Federal grants to the States should be made for education in general and not earmarked for specific purposes.

I would like to add that it was by far the majority opinion of the experts from whom those principles were derived, that the sixth principle is not in conflict with the policies already established by the Federal Government but any future grants made by the Federal Government should be to the States to be used by them in support of education in general and not earmarked for specific purposes.

The pending bill authorizes an initial appropriation of $100,000,000 by the Federal Government to be apportioned among the seyeral States and Territories to be used by the State legislatures in the support of public schools and the improvement of their public schools. The funds are to be apportioned to the States in the proportion which the number of their inhabitants aged 5 to 20 years, inclusive, bears to the total number of inhabitants aged 5 to 20 years of all the States and Territories. The appropriation is authorized to be increased $50,000,000 annually until a maximum of $300,000,000 is reached. As you see, this is merely an authorization, not an appropriation.

The manner in which the funds are to be apportioned to be used for the maintenance of public education shall be determined by the respective State or Territorial legislatures. The distribution and expenditure of the funds within the States and Territories "for the improvement of their public schools" are matters left to State or Territory law.

In order to qualify for receiving funds to be provided through this bill, when enacted, the State legislatures have to make three compliances. First, they have to enact a statute providing for the administration of the funds received and for their distribution and expenditure on some just and equitable basis to the several public schools of the State. The statute has to provide for the administration of it. For the most part the States unquestionably would use legislation already on the statute books, simply appropriating the funds to systems already established.

In the second place, each State after the first opportionment shall maintain in every school of the State an 8-months' school term.

In the third place, the State shall not use these funds to replace State and local funds; that is, after receiving these funds they shall expend from State and local revenues combined, per person 5 to 20 years old, for public elementary and secondary schools, not

less than was spent in that State or Territory for that purpose in the year 1936. The purpose of this provision is to insure that the States and Territories will use the Federal funds for the "improvement of their public schools" rather than to replace customary State and local revenues.

Finally, the bill specifically reserves to State and local communities all control of the administration of the public-school programs or the educational programs, the State educational program, of course, being what is defined by the State legislature. That is set forth in section 11 of the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. I note your state that it should be controlled by the States.

Dr. DAWSON. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Then you qualified that just now by local communities. Can you tell me how the local communities can have any influence at all if the State legislature has control?

Dr. DAWSON. It is a matter of constitutional provision, I mean State constitutional provision, that the State does have plenary power over the public-school system and all powers and prerogatives exercised by local school districts always come from the State constitutions or the State statutes enacted by the legislature so that when I speak of local control I mean whatever control the State constitutions and statutes may have allocated to those local communities and, as you know, in most States the broadest powers are left to the local communities but in the last analysis it is a power wholly in the hands of the State.

The CHAIRMAN. What I had in mind when you said local communities, is this. For instance, take a large city like the city of New York and the city of Baltimore, where more than 50 percent of the people of the State reside in that particular portion of the State, their voice in the legislative body is just about 25 percent. How can the people of those large cities have any voice at all if the legislature controls?

Dr. DAWSON. That is not anything that Congress could do anything about and should not, perhaps, if it could, because it happens under our system of Government that control of the public-school system is allocated to the State and that is something that would have to be worked out in each State. There is not anything we could do about it here.

Mr. MASON. In every State the legislature is the supreme school board of the State. Every power given to local communities over their schools is delegated power by the legislature to those local communities. Some States delegate more powers than others to local communities, but it is all delegated through the legislature as provided by the constitution.

Mr. DONDERO. Have you any information to present to the committee of any States that hold school years of less than 160 days?

Dr. DAWSON. Yes; there are approximately 1,000,000 children in the public schools that never have been to a session over 6 months in the year. There are eight States in which the average length of the school term, rural schools, is less than 612 months.

Mr. DONDERO. Then those States under this bill will be required to pass a law through their State legislature to increase the school year in order to participate in the Federal aid provided under the bill?