And also I think-this is a suggestion I made—I will look into how the present programs can be simplified and enlarged. For the next round of EASA legislation. That would be a very good idea indeed, that is something you could all work together to that end.

I congratulate you all on setting up your organization, I made a commitment at the time of the Court decisions, that I believe nonpublic schools should be helped, are deserving of help and will try to find the best way of doing it.

Perhaps what we have received from this hearing will not be so much the development of a new program but the making available of the present programs.

I thank you for a very informative hearing and look forward to staying in touch with you.

Mr. POTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

(Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m., the subcommittee recessed subject to the call of the Chair.)

AID TO NONPUBLIC EDUCATION, 1971-72

TUESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1972

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION OF THE

COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Providence, R.I.

The subcommittee met at 10 o'clock in room 316 of the Federal Building, Providence, R.I., Senator Claiborne Pell (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senator Pell.

Committee staff members present: Steve Wexler, counsel for the subcommittee; and Roy H. Millenson, minority professional staff member.

Senator PELL. The hearing of the Subcommittee on Education will come to order at this time.

Today, the subcommittee will hold its second day of hearings on the general subject of nonpublic education. The initial day was held in Washington on December 2, 1971. It was a most informative one, with both the administration and representatives of various groups discussing the general scope of nonpublic education. That hearing did not look into the legal and constitutional questions pertaining to the church-State relationship; rather we thought to understand what nonpublic education is, where it is, and what it does for the children. Contrary to popular belief, there already exists Federal programs in which nonpublic-school children participate. Because of the oft repeated constitutional question and the much discussed Supreme Court decisions, the fact that the Federal Government has recognized the value of nonpublic education and has provided a certain amount of assistance has been overlooked.

Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, some aid is available to nonpublic school children. The first three titles of that law provide financial assistance for the education of children living in the poorer communities of our Nation, library resources and textbooks, and educational centers and services to enrich the school programs. Children attending nonpublic schools are eligible to share in these programs. In addition, there are other programs which aid children in private schools through university based science institutes for secondary school students and various school lunch and milk programs. Once we understand that there presently are programs available to nonpublic schools, two methods of aiding such schools come to mind. The first is that we should fully fund presently authorized programs. With more Federal money going to the States for education, the nonpublic schools would share to a greater extent in the Federal benefits. For example, it is estimated that in the school year 1970-71, Rhode Island received $42 million in Federal aid to education. If the ap

propriation were 211⁄2 times greater, in other words, if the authorized figure was fully appropriated, that figure would grow to $12 million, and the nonpublic school children of this State would benefit commensurately.

The second point to recognize is that assistance to nonpublic school children in various categorical programs has not been challenged. Perhaps a greater use of this categorical approach could be studied to

make even more funds available.

This second day of the hearing, here in Rhode Island, should be informative and helpful. Our State has the largest percentage of school-age children attending nonpublic schools of any State in the United States. Studying Rhode Island nonpublic education at the local level will help us to further understand the national problem.

I regret that Senator Javits the ranking minority leader for the full committee could not be here he has submitted a statement. He says:

I very much regret that a conflicting engagement has prevented my joining Senator Pell at the hearings in Providence. The Education Sub-Committee at this time is conducting studies with hearings in key locations of problems besetting education of some 13 percent of all of our American youngsters who attend nonpublic schools. These programs are particularly acute at this time due to the financial crisis faced by non-public as well as public school systems and take on special significance in the light of recent Court decisions in the constitutional questions involved. I will review the transcript carefully as I'm sure will many others of all the points of view who are concerned with this question.

He is represented by minority staff counsel, Mr. Roy Millenson, who has come up here representing the minority and we have the counsel of the majority, Steve Wexler, with us for this hearing. I would add in a more personal note that I have an acute interest in this problem, not only as the Senator from Rhode Island but a man that believes in the importance of a dual thrust to our educational choice and one whose children, my own children went to nonpublic schools. Indeed my own family's house was given to the Catholic Church for a school which unfortunately is now broke and out of business because it had no more funding, no more support. I am particularly interested in the hearings today.

We will start out with the official witnesses and will hear from anyone who wants to be heard. I would hope that the statement would be kept around 5 to 10 minutes; longer written statements will be put into the record in full. We are very lucky that the first witness is Dr. Fred Burke. I should say here that although our State is small in size the Commissioner of Education for the State of Rhode Island has a truly national reputation. He has a mammoth responsibility in that he is the only chief State educational executive officer who has the responsibility for all the education from kindergarten through grade school and high school and the only man with this responsibility in the whole United States. I am glad to greet him personally as a man doing his job in a fine way.

STATEMENT OF DR. FRED G. BURKE, COMMISSIONER OF

EDUCATION FOR THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND

Mr. BURKE. Thank you very much.

Senator Pell, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on the subject and it is one of the more controversial subjects in education in the country today. We are all aware of the skyrocketing cost of edu

cation which afflicts not only the public section but the private schools and the whole range of nonpublic schools in Rhode Island. The question I think that we are going to have to face is should the schools continue their programs of total education or those of church related possibly put all of their effort into total religious education for all of the members of their congregations. There is no doubt that the Catholic schools in our State are in financial trouble due to the increased cost of lay persons on the faculty. We know for example, that the average salary of one lay teacher is probably equal to three sisters and the problem that we have, of course, is that the Supreme Court seems to view with great skepticism the various proposals put forth by States in order to find a way to utilize public funds to support church education, church-related education, and private education. The tuition of our private schools particularly the church-related schools is an effort to balance the educational budget and one of the implications of which I think concerns many of us is the process and the tendency to automatically exclude students from the low-income families and if there is a process whereby the decline in Catholic education affects the public schools it tends to channel children from low-income families more quickly into the public schools and, therefore, creating certain other kinds of problems. There is a great deal of concern within the church and within the educational divisions of the church but there seems to be no alternatives to this process at the present time. There are a number of options and I will try to touch upon them very quickly.

Some of them probably are questionable in terms of how they would be received by the Constitution. The first, of course, is the total withdrawal of the Catholic Church from the field of education leaving a monolithic educational complex in its place and a multimillion dollar education for the public sector in Rhode Island. Now, it is conceivable to me, in the long range, that this is exactly what is going to occur. My concern as one who has particular responsibility for public education is that if this does occur because of the Courts or because of the decision of the church itself it seems to me that it is the children that suffer and we should find a way to face these things and lighten the burden or this is bound to occur. I would say that the children from the lower income families are the ones that are hit the hardest. Another alternative is a limited continuation of the Catholic schools catering chiefly to the upper white middle class families of Rhode Island which seems to be not only detrimental to public education but to Catholic education as well. I would think this would be viewed with some caution particularly as has been designed for policy in the Cambridge, Mass. I have taken considerable time to study what the affects of the voucher system would have in Rhode Island, of course, on a decision made at the local level and I have serious questions about the voucher system. It raises many problems and it could lead to the dismantling of a considerable part of public education as well as private education and there seems to be no willingness on the part of those promoting the voucher system to provide a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together if the voucher system didn't work. The various tax credit programs would be a fourth option. We have some operations in Minnesota on the tax option program and because of the rela

tively little affect of taxes on low income families it discriminates between various categories of American citizens and this is neither in the interest of Catholic education or public education.

A scholarship plan would be the fifth and Maryland has a system such as this and I have not studied this carefully, but I believe would require significant changes in legislation and would raise, of course, some constitutional issues and may be just one more device that could be used in order to stay what many conclude to be the inevitable.

There are some more recent suggestions which I am not going into great detail here but which are appealing to me, would be the cooperative venture between public education and private education utilizing the facilities of the schools and resources in some kind of a cooperative venture. The extent to which education, particularly beyond let's say the elementary grades; that is, junior high school and high school are looking for alternative patents, moving education outside of the schools and utilizing education experiences other than a direct relationship with someone called a public school teacher and it seems possible that the extraordinary variety going on in the educational process might make it possible to develop some sort of cooperative relationship with private institutions which would enter into the public educational process, one of which will be the existing provision of education by the Catholic Church. This area needs considerable more study and I think our staff now is in the process of looking at this alternative. I would conclude, Senator, if I could, my statement by indicating that regardless of the schemes, regardless of what attitude we take toward the enormous problem-the problem of public financing, the problem of rapid changes in education and the implication of the decline in the variety of education that the last analysis we always bear in mind is, that what we do, we do with full consideration of the effect it has upon the children of the State and that should be the total measure, the sole measure of any decision we make because after all the future of us all is how well we educate our young people.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak.

Senator PELL. Thank you, Dr. Burke. I would like to ask what would be the effect on public education system, and the tax structure here in our state should the nonpublic school system actually go out of business?

Mr. BURKE. I think that we have seen the effect already. We have a $600,000 deficit in the school function program in Rhode Island this year. One of the reasons for this deficit is this assessment and the estimate that we made of the local school system is in error in part because of the fact that some property went off the tax base and the total number of children in some of the public schools increased drastically because of the declining enrollment in the Catholic schools. The effect on the State is increasing costs particularly from an educational point of view and I think the effect is not healthy. I believe there is a great deal to be said for variety in education. I think that public education may be the keystone to our system but private education and Catholic education are important in giving us the kind of vitality and variety in education that possibly contribute to the greatness of this country.