Education: The Case for Federal Aid

¶ Nearly two million school-age children

are not attending school.

¶ About 23% of all U.S. teachers are paid less than $1,200 a year; 3% get less than $600.

¶ More than ten million U.S. adults have

had four years or less of schooling.

¶ At least one million men have been classified 4-F because of poor schooling.

Such facts, enforced by documents and charts, were offered as testimony last week at a Congressional hearing on the $300,000,000-a-year federal school-aid bill. Conclusion drawn by the chief witness, Columbia University’s Dr. John K. Norton : federal aid is the only remedy.

But despite Dr. Norton’s persuasiveness, chances for federal aid seemed little brighter than during all the years (the last hearing was eight years ago) that educators have quarreled about it. Although the bill stipulates that state and local control shall remain inviolate, archconservatives fear the bogey of federal control of schools; some Catholics are afraid that their parochial schools would suffer; many a Congressman suspects selfish motives in the bill’s main lobbyist, the National Education Association, whose membership is composed overwhelmingly of teachers (who stand to gain a $200-million-a-year boost in total salaries).