don't see much hope in the higher funding strategy. You see great complications and delay in the integration strategy and one would predict that we are going-at least there are no dramatic changes that you are proposing at this time.

Of course, as you know, there are a number of proposed proposals around to try to shake up the system-proposals for community control, proposals for wide advisory or approval power by parental groups, neighborhood groups, community groups, proposals to provide poor parents with some sort of voucher system to provide some sort of outside compliance contracts, all sorts of ideas of these types are going to be proposed, and I think they all have their genesis in their frustrations I am talking about.

This is a speech but I wish you would respond to it. I somehow feel that we are in sort of a never never land here. Disaster is being visited upon these children, yet so little seems to be at hand to change it. Would you respond to that?

Dr. MARLAND. There is no question as to the graveness of the conditions in our elementary and secondary schools, and for that matter our colleges and universities in terms of the poor and the minorities who are not learning. There is no question as to the inadequacy of the present system.

There are as you say a number of ideas circulating that may be useful. If you are looking for answers from the Commissioner designate that are suddenly going to solve these things, I would have to say I do not have the answers. If I had them I would have put them to work long before this time. You have a commitment to finding answers. As to ways to move, yes, we should try any reasonable idea. Such as more community control which I do respect and have been involved with for some time.

The involvement of industry to help make learning real should be tried. Some of the newer things such as performance contracting, should be tried, providing the performance contracting can lead to a change in the school and teachers have a part in it and have a part in exploiting the successes and put them to work. I give you whatever commitment a human being can possibly give to devoting all my energies to finding answers.

Senator MONDALE. As you know, this morning the new superintendent of schools here said he did not think there was any chance they would implement the reading program under the present structure. If a system can't teach children to read and to count, don't we have a radical situation?

Don't we have a revolutionary problem in our society?

In this Nation's capital can't we teach children to read and count! Isn't this a disaster of unprecedented proportions?

Dr. MARLAND. I agree we have.

Senator MONDALE. Thank you very much. We will now stand in recess until December 1.

(Whereupon, at 12:45 p.m. the hearing recessed, to reconvene December 1, 1970.)

NOMINATION

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1970

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met at 10:15 a.m., pursuant to recess, in Room 4232, New Senate Office Building, Senator Ralph W. Yarborough (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Senators Yarborough, Mondale, Stevenson, Javits, and Saxbe.

Committee staff present: Robert O. Harris, staff director; Gene E. Godley, general counsel; Roy H. Millenson, minority staff director; and Eugene Mittelman, minority counsel.

The CHAIRMAN. The Committee on Labor and Public Welfare will come to order.

The hearings will resume on the nomination of Dr. Sidney P. Marland, Jr., to be the U.S. Commissioner of Education.

The witnesses this morning slated to be here are the Honorable. George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, and Mr. David Selden, president of the American Federation of Teachers. I have been advised, the first witness, Mr. George Meany, was detained in another matter and could not be here. He will be represented by Mr. Andrew Biemiller, legislative representative of the AFL-CIO, and Mr. Walter Davis.

The committee's ranking majority member, Senator Jennings Randolph of West Virginia, greatly interested in education, expresses his regrets that he can't be here. He is presiding over another hearing, and except for that hearing, he would be here.

Mr. Biemiller, we have known you for years. You have been a Member of Congress before you accepted your present role, and as a former Member of Congress, you know all of the customs and traditions and protocols of Congress, and you have abided by all of them in your position.

I may not have the privilege of hearing you again here. I have heard you many times in the 13 years-this month makes 13 years that I have been a member of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee.

I want to commend you for the great sense of propriety with which you have conducted yourself as legislative representative. I think your past services in Congress has been of great benefit to you and to the organization you represent in that respect, that you have demeaned yourself in the highest tradition of public service and carried that position over after leaving Congress to your present position. We will be glad to hear you.

STATEMENT OF ANDREW BIEMILLER, LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE, AFL-CIO; ACCOMPANIED BY WALTER DAVIS, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, AFL-CIO

Mr. BIEMILLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. May I simply say we regret also we will not be appearing in front of you in the years ahead.

As you stated, President Meany unfortunately has a problem that detained him and asked me to present his statement on behalf of the AFL-CIO.

Also as you stated, I am accompanied by Mr. Walter Davis, who is the director of the department of education of the AFL-CIO.

Mr. Chairman, we appear today in opposition to the nomination of Sidney P. Marland, Jr., to be U.S. Commissioner of Education.

We believe we come before this committee with good credentials of concern and involvement in the history of public education in the United States.

The labor movement's commitment to education stems from the early 19th century. Since that time our basic belief has not changed. The demands and responsibilities of a democratic society make it imperative that all citizens receive a good education.

Organized labor's support for universal free public education of the highest quality has brought us before this committee many times. This dedication to public education requires more than congressional testimony. It involves the many hours spent by the hundreds of union members who serve on school boards throughout the country. Local and State labor bodies have worked tirelessly to win better financial support for the schools.

From this history of demonstrated concern, we feel compelled to testify today against this nomination.

What this committee is considering in these hearings is the nomination of a man to be Commissioner of Education-the Nation's chief educator.

If Dr. Marland is confirmed, then this committee is giving its stamp of approval to the education policy of this administration with which we are in complete disagreement.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Biemiller, will you pause a moment there before you go further. I want to comment just a moment on what you have said about labor's support of public free education and pay tribute to the fact that in the 1840's and along in those early years when public free education was being advocated by Horace Mann and others were stoutly opposed to this in America as being socialistic and making people who had no children pay taxes to educate those who had children, in those years organized labor-prohibited in many Statesorganized labor put its shoulder to the wheel for free public educa

tion in America.

It was the one organized force in our society that pleaded for free education. Organized labor was responsible for bringing about the beginnings of this free public education for everybody, which is the envy of educators all over the world. I pay tribute to what labor did to bring it about.

Mr. BIEMILLER. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Marland's answers to committee questions have raised a new question. What type of person should serve as the Nation's chief educator?

We in the AFL-CIO believe that person must rise above all doubt to his impartiality.

We believe he must be in tune with the times.

We believe he must be a person who recognizes the vast changes that have taken place in teacher-administrator relationships.

We believe he should not be tied closely to any one group-private enterprise or labor.

On the basis of these standards, the AFL-CIO believes Sidney P. Marland, Jr., should not become Commissioner of Education.

In ordinary times, the nomination of a Commissioner of Education is, regrettably, a somewhat routine matter. But these are not ordinary times. There is a crisis in education today.

And it is our belief that Mr. Marland does not measure up to the needs of the times.

We would like to go over with you the record of Sidney Marland. At this time, we would like to submit for inclusion into the record a report by our Education Department entitled "The Case Against Sidney P. Marland, Jr." This carefully researched document details many reasons for which the AFL-CIO opposes this nomination.

The CHAIRMAN. The document will be inserted in the record at this point.

(The document referred to follows:)

53-103 0-70- -8

AFL-CIO Department of Education 815 16th Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20006 202-293-5141

November 18, 1970

THE CASE AGAINST SIDNEY P. MARLAND, JR.

President Nixon has nominated Sidney P. Marland, Jr., president of the Institute for Educational Development, for United States Commissioner of Education.

The AFL-CIO places great importance on the office of Commissioner of Education and has endeavored over the years to make that office the focus of increasing federal support for American education.

In reviewing Marland's qualifications for the office, the AFL-CIO speaks from a background of more than a century and a half of demonstrated concern by the labor movement for the public schools.

Early in the nineteenth century, unions became convinced that the responsibilities of a democratic society made it imperative that all citizens be educated. The Workingmen's Party, organized in New York in 1829, included as one of its principal planks, a demand for a school system "that shall unite under the same roof the children of the poor man and the rich, the widow's charge and the orphan, where the road to distinction shall be superior industry, virtue and acquirement without reference to descent."

From that time on, organized labor has never wavered in its support for universal free public education of the highest quality.

Union members serve on hundreds of school boards throughout the nation; local and state labor bodies have worked tirelessly to win better financial support for the schools, and nationally organized labor has been one of the most effective advocates of federal support for the public schools.

The AFL-CIO therefore approaches the question of a new Commissioner of Education not as a matter of casual concern but rather as a matter of conscience growing out of our deep historic commitment to public education. It was as a result of that commitment that the AFL-CIO Executive Council, meeting in Chicago on August 5, 1970, unanimously adopted a statement opposing the possible nomination of Marland as Commissioner of Education.

"If the President were to make such an ill-advised nomination," the statement concluded, "we will oppose confirmation by the Senate." President Nixon did nominate Marland on September 22, 1970.

On the basis of Marland's record, his beliefs and his association with industry seeking to profit from the public schools, President George Meany, on behalf of the AFL-CIO, issued the following public statement on September 23, 1970: