will still continue separate schools. As an official at HEW I was a part of a so-called ad hoc committee the purpose of which was to clear plans prepared by HEW educators before they were submitted to the courts, cleared not to insure that they were educationally sound, or that they achieved maximum desegregation but that they were politically sound.

And the question is why? Why is it being done if the purpose is not to bring white and black children together to receive an equal education?

And it is not being done for this purpose, when why in God's name is it being done at all?

TOKENISM VERSUS QUALITY INTEGRATION

Senator MONDALE. Would you yield there? I think this is a fact that came forth from the panel of young students we had. There is only one way to integrate, and that is to do it right, and do it with a whole heart, and do it because it is the best way to educate children, and it is probably the only way to bring this country back together. But it seems that the policy that we have today is entirely the opposite: to do as little as possible, to restrict the scope of the law to the minimum, to dismantle the administrative offices which have traditionally sought to achieve an educational objective of quality integration. In many school districts we are getting the worst of all worlds, and it is the school children who will pay, and finally it will be this country that will pay for that limited, short sighted, and politically cowardly position.

Would you agree with that?

Mr. PANETTA. The real tragedy, Senator, is that after 16 years since Brown v. the Board of Education and the promise it held out, that in effect the only consequences will be to really result in the reshuffling of students but the leaving of black schools and white schools and leaving really the basic discrimination that brought the Federal courts into it in the first place.

I don't think that we have taken a look at what we have got to accomplish here. We can't just go into a system and develop a desegregation program that results in resegregation and does not do a darn thing for the students there. The whole purpose of this was to deliver equal educational opportunity, and it would be far better for the Federal Government and the courts never to go into a system than to go in under the guise of in some way enforcing the law.

Senator MONDALE. You feel these days when you ask, "what happens to school kids? "that people regard that to be irrelevant, that we should never in the world discuss questions on that subject; but actually that is all that counts, what happens to school kids.

COMPLIANCE: FUTURE PROSPECTS?

Mr. PANETTA. Far beyond the consequences of the present, there is an even more important point. What does all of this mean for the future?

For southern enforcement will there be an effective followup by the administration to protect against subterfuge and resegregation and

46-125-70-pt. 3c

continued separatism? If the position is that regardless of actual desegregation, the system is in compliance, it does not appear very likely this will be the case. Sixteen years later, technical compliance will be achieved but separatism allowed to continue.

NORTHERN COMPLIANCE

For the North the implications are even greater for racial isolation here is, in many instances, worse than that in the South, licensed in many instances by a vague legal term called de facto segregation.

How prepared is the administration to wage a full-scale effort to eliminate racial isolation and discrimination and promote effective desegregation in those systems in the North?

EMERGENCY SCHOOL ASSISTANCE ACT: MOTIVES

Senator MONDALE. Why do you think this $1.5 billion program was proposed? What is your personal judgment?

Mr. PANETTA. Senator, when I first came into the administration. we discussed the possibility of the adding additional Federal funds to the segregation effort, in order, really, to meet some of the very real problems, but also to provide a carrot in order to desegregate systems.

The main thrust at the time was aimed at southern dual systems. and I can remember that the argument was used, even before southern Republican chairmen that money would be provided so that they could build new schools, so they would not have to use old black schools, so they would not have to bus students, so they could build new schools in order to desegregate.

My greatest fear, having been in the operation and having seen the pressure involved and seeing the political exigencies that come to the front, that this kind of fund could well be used as a kind of political pork barrel.

Maybe that might be one way to do it, but I think the districts themselves frankly in most instances that I have seen, really don't need the money to do the job of desegregation and they do need it for teacher training and for certain elements of construction, that is true.

EMERGENCY SCHOOL ASSISTANCE FUNDS: GUIDELINES

But within the context of political pressures involved, it is alsolutely essential that if the Congress is to give this money away that strict guidelines be written, and that they be enforced to see that the money is spent to desegregate and not for the purpose of beefing up a local school's financial status.

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP: CONGRESS AND EXECUTIVE

There is a need today for decent, strong and consistent Federal enforcement policies in school desegregation. There is an even greater need for this Nation, its Government, and its courts and its Congress. to decide what the goals are to be for this difficult and crucial issue.

For 16 years, the courts have adequately defined grievances but inadequately defined remedies. The Congress also has talked of ending discrimination but avoided discussing the steps that must be taken.

Although strong moral leadership and a commitment to integration by the executive branch has, at times, helped to lead the way in the past, such leadership and commitment are not the case today.

My plea to you and this committee is to help this Nation understand that if it is committed to equal education, it must be committed to effective integration with all of the sacrifices inherent in any commit

ment.

We cannot afford to sit back and wait for the courts. The Supreme Court may never decide the key issues raised in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg case and even if it did, I have seen too many decisions distorted and changed and misread to support here the political exigencies of

the moment.

No, the leadership will not come from the courts and indeed that may not be their role because I am talking not about legalisms but about national policy and that can only come from the Congress or the President.

RACIAL BALANCE

Neither is the question simply one of whether you are for racial balance or not. For racial balance like busing is only a method for achieving a particular goal of integration; it is not a goal in and of itself. A stable and effectively desegregated school system need not necessarily employ racial balance.

If America is committed to stable and effective integration then indeed the fullest resources of a nation must be used and brought to bear. Surely the problems will not be any easier but in the very least, the goal and the commitment will be clear and we can all work together toward the same end.

But if the answer is continued ambivalence and confusion, then we must brace ourselves for greater violence, greater separatism, and greater racial frustration.

SCHOOLS AND SOCIAL POLICY

Hopefully through your leadership, we can return to the spirit of the Brown decision and see our way clear to what it stated so affirmatively.

Education is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awaking the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to us all on equal terms.

The time has come to reach again for that forgotten quest. (The statement of Leon E. Panetta follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF LEON E. PANETTA

Let me first of all express my deepest gratitude for this opportunity to provide you with some of my views on the course of equal educational rights in this nation today. Although this Committee has been honored by testimony from those both within and without the current Administration, I offer you the unique views of one who has been on both sides of the fence. And thus, my expertise no longer lies in up-to-date facts but in what I perceive to be the broad problems

inhibiting the quest for equality. As a matter of fact, I take some comfort in the thought that the formation of your Committee roughly coincides with the events surrounding my departure from HEW, and just possibly, the two events were related. And frankly, I regret that you were not in existence a long time ago.

The diligent and careful efforts of this Committee to better understand the difficult issue before it has helped every American better understand the implications, the distortions, the pressures, the evasions and the other problems of school desegregation. Today, this issue is one of the most emotional and complex challenges facing communities across this country. It can be grossly oversimplified into its most emotional terms, and one word alone such as busing or neighborhood schools or coercion or vigilantes is all one need hear to decide that it's not for him or for his children. Beyond this, there is the current political turmoil that surrounds this issue and results in a confusing barrage of charge and counter-charge, statement and retraction, clarification and re-clarification.

This is wrong, desperately wrong, not just for what it does in terms of the effort to achieve an integrated education for children but moreso, for what it does in further dividing race from race in the prolonged and frustrating battle for equality in every other area. This Committee, I believe, can be an effective counter-weight to the confusion and oversimplification. Hopefully, you will continue to provide this needed balance that searches through the sometimes murky bureaucratic and political waters that surround the subject and provide Americans with an objective report on what is happening. . . actually happening in the effort to secure equal educational opportunities for every child.

This goal of equal education is one which I'm sure most Americans would agree with but the approaches to this goal can be as elusive and controversial as the attempts to define and answer the problems of poverty and other forms of discrimination. Thus, while everyone agrees with the semantics, no one really agrees with the ways that must be used to convert semantics into reality. Equal education is fine but how is it to be delivered?-through compensatory education?; through better pupil-teacher ratios?; through improved training for teachers?; through private schools?; through busing?; through restructuring neighborhood schools?; through more federal money and more equal federal and local expenditures? How is true equality achieved? One could argue endlessly over approaches and resolve nothing but there is a larger and tougher question about achieving equal education in America that must be resolved before any of the other questions can readily be answered. It is a dilemma that directly relates to what is happening today and what this Committee is all about-a dilemma that I'm afraid has not really been faced by this Nation-whether an integrated education is essential to achieving equal, quality education?

Put in other terms-can the racially isolated child, be he black or brown or white, receive an equal, quality education? Some may feel that this question was answered by the Supreme Court in Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954 and maybe it was . . . but 16 years later as more black schools remain in desegregation plans and the obvious guide is minimum rather than maximum desegrega. tion, the impression is that a nation may have forgotten what Brown was all about. For if nothing else was made clear by this historic decision, one point was emphasized again and again-that separate schools for black children were "inherently unequal". Black children, said the Court, have the "personal and present" right to equal educational opportunities with white children in a racially nondiscriminatory public school system. And in a critical passage, the Court stated the following:

"To separate (children) from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and mind in a way unlikely ever to be undone."

At the time, the effect of Brown seemed clear enough-if a district had a separate black and white school, it would not be enough to continue these schools with their separate identities... the separatism itself inherently prevented equal education from being a reality. But I believe that it can be honestly said that even Brown, while it accurately described the problem, avoided the tough question of whether integration was the answer. And I submit that until this Committee or the Congress or the courts or this Administration takes the time to answer that question, the goal of an equal education can never be fulfilled. For we can talk about disestablishment of a dual system (as the courts do) and we can talk about eliminating discrimination (as the Civil Rights Act does) but

until we agree on what is to replace the duality and the discrimination, many of our efforts will be in vain.

It was a year after Brown I was decided that the Supreme Court in Brown II went beyond the mere recognition of the "personal" right in the children and declared that a state with a dual attendance system, one for whites and one for Negroes, must "effectuate a transition to a (single) racially nondiscriminatory system." But again, the Court provided no real guidelines as to what was to be achieved-the wrong was again clear, the remedy remained obscure. And this failure, combined with the delay inherent in the "all due deliberate speed" doctrine, resulted in over 10 years passing with little effective desegregation occurring. Into this vacuum of indecisiveness came "freedom of choice" and Brown was further prostituted to mean that as long as a black child had a choice, that was enough. In 1967, almost 13 years after Brown, Judge Wisdom of the Fifth Circuit came the closest to describing what was to be achieved as a remedy in the second Jefferson County case:

"The Court holds that boards and officials administering public schools in this circuit have the affirmative duty under the Fourteenth Amendment to bring about an integrated, unitary school system in which there are no Negro schools and no white schools-just schools. (U.S., et al. v. Jefferson County Board of Education, et. al. March 29, 1967)

But these were only the words of a Circuit Court and no one really took Judge Wisdom up on what he said. Most courts continued to avoid what they wanted to avoid and they proceeded on an ad hoc, case by case approach and the orders varied from community to community, even within communities with similar racial and school situations. Some plans called for complete desegregation; some went so far as to provide for complete racial balance; and others provided only minimum requirements, leaving black and white schools much as they have existed under the dual system. And that is still the story today-for every strong order that seeks desegregation to the fullest extent possible, there are others that seek minimum compliance and little desegregation and the prospect is that these districts will have most likely resegregated or done little or nothing to be in so-called technical compliance with the law. With the Holmes decision in October of 1969, it was clear beyond question that the dual system had to be terminated "at once" but how this was to be done and whether maximum desegregation was necessary was still an open question.

On the administrative side, this veil of ambivalence was not so easy to come by. When Title VI was adopted and enforcement action begun by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, school districts demanded that they be told what was required in order for them to receive federal funds and thus, the HEW guidelines were developed. Admittedly, these guidelines were based on some of the strongest court decisions in the area but they provided the guidance that was sought and the result was consistency in enforcement. Similar requirements extended to similar districts. Title VI became an extremely valuable tool for bringing thousands of districts into compliance through desegregation, not just because it defined problems but because it sought effective remedies

and applied those remedies uniformly through dedicated enforcement officials who had the support of their government. Yes, there were problems . . and yes, plans were accepted that left some black schools where it was administratively infeasible to desegregate them, but the remedy was clear-integration was the answer to duality and discrimination and it would be maximum effective desegregation. Indeed, the courts began to look to the guidelines and to the Executive Branch for guidance in developing effective approaches. In March of 1968, the new HEW guidelines declared that any freedom of choice plan had to be effective to be acceptable and instituted firm deadliness . . . two months later, the Supreme Court in Green v. New Kent County adopted much the same approach. Thus, as the Executive Branch began to exert leadership in this area, to provide the answers, to provide the consistency-the courts began to follow its lead.

In 1969 came a new Administration within which there were obvious political pressures calling for a slowdown on school desegregation. And thus, the Executive Branch took another look at the leadership that had been exerted and wondered "who is leading whom?" Who said there had to be deadlines? Who said that busing was necessary? Who said that maximum effective desegregation should be the goal? In most instances, it had been the Executive Branch and enforcement officials of the government, for although some cases supported these positions, there were others that did not. As a matter of fact,