saying we don't stand for new ideas. Bureaucracies are all like in that respect.

But the Teacher Corps is especially important. Here we have a chance to expand a program that will bring young people into deprived schools, well enough trained to do the job well. These are young people who by and large never intended to teach.

Here we have a program, a proven success, that makes it possible for schools and teacher training institutions to innovate to change and improve in lasting ways the manner in which teachers are trained and children taught.

And we are just killing it. It won't do any good to change the director of the Bureau of Educational Personnel Development or Teacher Corps and leave them both in the same place because they are not oriented to the same mission.

So I think we have to do what the Congress said in the beginning. My question is: will you as commissioner do what the Congress has been asking and directing Commissioners to do for the last 5 years? I have always taken the word of the Commissioners that they believed in the Teacher Corps, that they would follow the direction of Congress. If the Teacher Corps does not get the independence Congress has asked for it. I will be on the Senate floor. If we have to wait and ask for 6 months there won't be an education budget unless the Office of Education does what the Congress asks.

Now my question is will you do what the Congress has been asking the commissioner of education to do for the past 5 years? It is a very short question I know.

Dr. MARLAND. I don't have a long answer. You have asked whether I would do what the law requires the Office of Education to do. I have said a number of times before this committee that I would accept the responsibility as nearly as I can of learning what the law is and enforcing it insofar as it affects educational policy and program in this country.

To the extent that my predecessors have failed so poorly to fulfill their statements as to what they would do about it, I am reluctant to say what I would do about their bad record until I know more about

it.

I can assure you of this: I happen to have been one of the superintendents early involved in the whole proposition of discovering ways to identify bright, able people coming out of liberal arts training and grooming them for teaching. This was then being done through a master in arts in teaching. I believe in it very deeply. I also believe deeply in the Teacher Corps, having been in one of the cities where it was first launched. I know it works. I know it is good. I know it is effective. As to its management and bureaucratic structuring in the Office of Education, I can assure you I will examine these very thoroughly.

Senator NELSON. The problem is that, perhaps, the Congress was too considerate. Senator Dominick has raised the question many times. The Congress is too considerate of administrative problems of the Office of Education.

We did not specifically say you have to create a separate bureau and make it the Teacher Corps but we showed it as our intent that it have special treatment because it is special. But we did not want to tie their hands.

Therefore, legally, the Commissioner preceding you was not prohibited in trying to stick it down there in the bureaucracy. I am not suggesting they were deceitful with us. I am sure they were not. I know it is a huge job and a Commissioner must handle the most pressing matters first. The Teacher Corps is just a $30 million program in a $4 billion budget. I am not saying they were deceitful. I know and respect these people. The Corps just sort of gets lost. When it got lost for 3 years we put in committee language because we did not want to put it in the legislation itself.

We discussed it with Commissioner Howe. Nothing happened. We put language in the committee reports again in 1969. Again, nothing happened. If expressing our intent in report language is so ineffectual then my view is we ought to put it right in the statute.

Let me review a little bit of the record. The Teacher Corps was created in 1965. Over 40,000 have applied for 7,000 places in the program since 1966 and they work for a stipend, $75 a week.

Eighty-six percent of the graduated corpsmen stay in education or related social service-over 70 percent in poverty school areas. You can't get teachers to go into poverty schools. They prefer the suburban schools with the swimming pools and the pretty trees.

These kids want to go in where they feel they can do something socially effective and important. I have a series of letters from various organizations in support of the Teacher Corps which I will ask to be printed in the record.

Here we have a program that is endorsed at the local level. It has the enthusiastic support from all sides. It meets two of the very most pressing needs of the Nation: Opportunity for young people and reform of education-and we don't do anything about it.

It ought to be a $100, $200, $300 million program. It is an investment that should be expanded. I am frustrated and dismayed at the lack of action. I hope you will take a long look at it and address yourself to the problem of the Teacher Corps and now it ought to be implemented and how its effectiveness can be expanded and its independence restored to the status to which the Congress originally intended.

Thank you.

(The material referred to follows:)

FACT SHEET ON THE TEACHER CORPS

Background. The Teacher Corps, authored by Senators Nelson and Kennedy, was passed by Congress in 1965.

Its purpose is to attract into poverty area teaching bright, able young people, and to help universities, schools, and communities innovate to improve the teaching available to children from poverty homes.

The program has been dramatically successful. During a time when many young people are turning away from government service in despair over 40,000 have applied for 7,000 places in the program since 1966.

86% of graduated corpsmen have stayed in education or related social service. Over 70% in poverty area schools.

The program has been praised by educators, heartily endorsed by the American Federation of Teachers, called the best bargain in American education in an editorial in LIFE magazine. The Kerner Commission recommended that it be expanded into a "major" domestic program.

In his campaign for the presidency, Richard M. Nixon said:

we will seek

a national teacher corps which would bring

carefully selected college and high school students into action as tutors in core city school . . .

This past April Congress added a Student Teacher Corps component-together with enlarged Indian Education and Corrections programs-to the basic Teacher Corps legislation. It increased its authorization from $56 to $100 million.

This year the Congress appropriated $30.1 million for the Teacher Corps. The Problem.-But the Teacher Corps is in serious trouble in the Office of Education. As its responsibilities have dramatically increased over the past few years, its staff and its funds for operating expenses have dramatically decreased. This is because the Teacher Corps has been forced to operate as a division within a bureau in the office, instead of reporting directly to the Commissioner as Congress intended. Its staff has been reduced from 75 to 42 positions since 1966.

The intended independent status of the Teachers Corps is spelled out :

1. In the basic legislation where the salary of the director is placed at the level of a bureau chief.

2. In committee report language in both 1968 and 1969 ... from the 1969 report:

"In drafting the Teacher Corps legislation in 1965 . . . it was the Committee's intention that the Teacher Corps be independent within the Office of Education reporting directly to the Commissioner." With the latest restrictions on salary and expense spending in the Office of Education, the bureau in which the Teacher Corps is a division has been cut back 35%, but the Teacher Corps has been cut back over 50%, making it nearly impossible to operate the kind of intensively supported "Corps" style program envisaged by Congress.

[Excerpt from the Elementary and Secondary Education Report of 1969, S. Rept. 91–634]

STUDENT TEACHERS CORPS

Section 804 of the bill amends title V-B-1 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which authorizes the Teacher Corps. The amendments—

(1) authorize a new component, the Student Teacher Corps,

(2) adjust the salary rate for members of the Teacher Corps, and
(3) increase the authorization of appropriations for the program.

In recent years college students have volunteered by the tens of thousands for tutorial programs. However, these programs have often lacked the careful training, selection and integration into school programs and community life essential for success in teaching children from poverty homes.

A new movement has also begun that uses high school, junior high school, and in some cases even elementary school pupils from the higher grades in tutoring their younger school mates. Careful research shows that such tutorial programs are very successful, both for tutor and tutee.

These amendments are designed to provide an opportunity to expand these programs at the local level in conjunction with local Teacher Corps projects.

The Teacher Corps is a suitable vehicle because its present structure requires universities, school systems and community groups to work together in designing and operating innovative training and teaching program under local control. Already a number of innovative programs involving both adult and young pupil tutors have been developed as part of ongoing Teacher Corps programs. This new legislation will provide the legislative authority necessary to carry on this work in the 80 projects now supported by the Teacher Corps and in the new projects that the increased authorization would make possible.

The amendment also increases the authorized ceiling for the pay of regular Teacher Corps members to $90 a week. The present level of $75 a week has been ruled taxable income by the Internal Revenue Service since Teacher Corps interns are paid by local schools systems (with 90% federal funds) for more than half time work. In several large cities the resulting take-home pay after deductions amounts to $50 to $60 a week. When Congress established the $75 per week rate, the amount was thought to be comparable to the non-taxable stipends under other teacher training programs. It is not mandatory that all Teacher Corps interns should be paid at the higher rate, but in cases where the costs of living are high the Commissioner would have the discretion of reimbursing school systems for compensating teacher-interns at rates up to the higher figure.

With respect to compensation for the student tutors the amendment provides that tutors and instructional assistants shall be compensated at rates consistent with the practice under comparable work study programs.

[Excerpt from the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare report on the Higher Education Amendments of 1968, S. Rept. 90-1387]

D-INDEPENDENT STATUS OF TEACHER CORPS

In drafting the Teacher Corps legislation in 1965, the committee took care to specify that the Director would be equal in pay level to the then current rate for bureau chiefs. It was the committee's intention that the Teacher Corps be independent within the Office of Education reporting directly to the Commissioner.

The committee intended that the Teacher Corps not be an ordinary teacher education program. It recognized that the Teacher Corps needed maximum possible independence and visibility if its full potential as a recruiter of new teachers and an innovator in teacher education was to be reached.

This is the way the program worked until this March when it was placed within the new Bureau of Education personnel development.

During the early years of the program, when funding was uncertain, the Teacher Corps was operated first as a Task Force and then was attached to the Bureau of Elementary and Secondary Education. The committee understands that during this period the Teacher Corps, in effect, reported directly to the Commissioner. Now, however, the committee understands that the Teacher Corps has been made an ordinary division of the new Bureau of Education Personnel Development.

The committee is concerned that with the severely limited independence of a division in a bureau in the Office of Education much of the promise of the Teacher Corps as conceived by this committee may be lost.

COMPARISON OF THE OVERALL OFFICE OF EDUCATION AND TEACHER CORPS RESOURCES, 1967-71

Note: While the Office of Education overall budget increased only slightly, the Teacher Corp budget tripled. Yet during the same time the Teacher Corps staff has been cut in half and its S. & E. funds cut to .

Secretary, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,
Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. SECRETARY: At this time, I would like to express my deep personal admiration and support for the National Teachers Corps.

In New York City, the 187 teacher corpsmen have performed invaluable services, often aiding children who had almost "given up" on the public school system. In these efforts, the corpsmen have far exceeded the narrow textbook definition of what teachers should be. For them, living and teaching seem to be contiguous.

The National Teachers Corps represents the kind of program and the range of attitudes and depth of commitment which must prevail if public urban education is going to meet the enormous challenges of our time.

Best wishes.
Sincerely,

JOHN V. LINDSAY, Mayor.