Senator FRIST. That is about five.

Dr. JOYNER. Can we add one more?

Senator FRIST. Absolutely. I was going to say, as you give thought to this, because you have the one advantage which none of us has, and that is, with your experience and with the number of people and your history of looking at these programs, to be able to weave or find those common essence of each of those programs that works, that sort of was weaved through all these programs is very helpful. If you have another one, I need a sixth one.

Ms. JOHNSON. The sixth one is that it ought to be a researchbased program design, at least using the principles of what we know about what works, what we know about child development, teaching and these kinds of things. There should be evidence that people understand what that is and are applying the best of what is known.

The expansion on what she said would be that besides community involvement, that sort of broader range is that within the program development and within the program structure, the key stakeholders in that child's life need to be involved. For young children, this might include parents, grandparents, and a whole slew of people who are really the key people in that child's life at that point who will really make a difference.

Dr. JOYNER. If I could add to her adding to mine, to go back to the discussion earlier about whether the existing programs have really had any impact at all or not, I think the research shows that in many of these programs where the overall evidence is not persuasive that the program as a whole has been effective, that there is research to show that individual programs somewhere have been effective, and that that research has often suggested, at least, what made an individual Title I program or an individual Head Start program effective. So my assumption is that out there there are programs, individual programs in nearly any of these larger ones that have been able somehow to show some effectiveness. What is needed is to capture a better understanding, gain a better understanding of what has made those individual ones work, and then build on that in improving that existing larger program or in designing new ones.

Senator FRIST. We have not done that very well as a Congress and as a nation, and yet we have 600 programs, we have spent a lot of money, and it is a challenge of this task force, starting with a large overview and continuing to focus now, in answering that question. Can we put together a set of principles by which we can judge 600 programs, all well-intentioned. Many began because an individual Member of Congress said we have a need here and here is my bill, and it is layered on top of it. Now we have to go back and address those fundamentals.

If you look at several of the things mentioned, the focus on a specific mission, outcomes measures, leadership, a system, ongoing system to evaluate your program, self-evaluation, community links and research-based, of the 600 programs out there how many do you think really meet those criteria well?

Dr. JOYNER. I really do not know.

Senator FRIST. Would you say 10 or would you say 200 or would you say 500 based on-again, I know it is subjective, but, again,

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we are grasping. I cannot tell you now if it is one out of 600 or if it is 300 out of 600.

I will not hold you to this. I just

Dr. JOYNER. I would not want to hazard a guess, but she

may

Senator FRIST. Using the parameters we just laid out.

Ms. JOHNSON. I am not going to hazard a guess, either, but I am going to explain to you why I am not going to hazard a guess. Senator FRIST. All right.

Ms. JOHNSON. I think one of the key roles that GAO plays for you is to be very honest and objective about what we know and what we do not know. And this is something that we truly have no information about and cannot draw a conclusion about based on the evidence that is out there right now.

Senator FRIST. Let me ask another general question, but, again, a basic one. What in your experience does the Federal Government-recognizing it is 6 percent of the money, but much more in terms of bureaucracy and requirements. But what does the Federal Government do well-do well-in this pre-K through 12 education field? What are we doing well in these hundreds of programs in pre-K through 12? Then I am going to ask you what do we not do well, so you can be thinking of that as well.

Again, I know I am drawing on your broad experience, much broader than any of us individually has, to give us some directionagain, reaching out for what has worked in the last 30 years and $70 billion a year and what has not.

Dr. JOYNER. I think for some of these programs historically, as I understand it, what the Federal Government has been expected to do is to get some money out there. From time to time we change the way we do that and are not always satisfied with how we do that. For example, in Title I targeting, we have made some recommendations about how to improve targeting, and some of those were adopted.

If part of the goal, in fact, has been to provide some money, a funding stream that can supplement what is out there. In those areas with higher proportions of economically disadvantaged children, to provide a larger proportion than the 7 percent of the whole amount of funding there. I think that is a role that the Federal Government has played with some success. In some areas, that is a very crucial amount of money that supplements what is available at that level.

Would you like to add to that?

Ms. JOHNSON. I think the two other things that the Federal Government has done which have been very important come from the Federal Government not really been in the education business. It has been in the civil rights business working through education to promote access and equity for certain groups. And two of the things that we have done well as a Federal Government is to provide leadership in targeting what are the issues, what should really be looked at nationwide as a country. And I think the combination of targeting those very important issues, young children, for example, with the flow of funds gives a certain amount of power to what the Federal Government does.

The other thing that the Federal Government does has been to leverage all kinds of other behaviors, and maybe the clearest example of that is special education, in that although the Federal Government has never provided the proportion of funds that they said that they would in the early 1970's-in point of fact, led to the Federal law, leveraged all kinds of money on a group and all kinds of services on a group, which really had not been before really looked at by the public education system. And I know that Madeleine Will will talk about this at length.

I used to be a director of services for exceptional children. When I got into the field, it was just before the special ed laws were passed, so I began when special education was done in church basements and when children were hidden, and where lots of the less serious disabilities were not recognized as disabilities at all, but were simply blamed on the kids, that they were not trying hard enough, et cetera.

So I have seen personally and professionally the Federal role in special education even though the money has never gone beyond 12 percent-the role that it has played in shining the spotlight, in saying these are the standards, here is a flexible framework of how to make this work, and requiring certain parallel behaviors from States without dictating but the details.

It has had an impact well beyond the financial role.

Senator FRIST. I know the second panel-I want to get to the second panel because a lot of these issues will come back up, but this really does help set the platform for that.

On the flip side, what has the Federal Government-through all of our best of intentions and a good amount of money-what has the Federal Government-again, based on your research of programs over the years, what has the Federal Government not done well?

Dr. JOYNER. I will start. I think-again, I would say in general terms that it has not held States, held the recipients of the funds accountable in a sense beyond requirements and paperwork in the past and now moving toward less of that; but that in this area, as in other parts of Federal programs, there has not been as much focus on the actual outcome and the actual results of this, and building in requirements for finding out what works. Again, this is not unique to education in comparison with others. But to spend this amount of money over this amount of time without knowing really what is working, what is not working, and what we could do to improve it, to rely on a belief-the knowledge this is an important problem, and a belief that this will probably help, and to put the money there without wisely spending it by finding out with what result I would say that is the most general concern that I would have.

Senator FRIST. This goes back to your opening statement, as well, this evaluation and self-evaluation. When we talk of children and we talk of education and we talk of families, is there a tendency to rely more on emotion, on the fact that it makes us feel good to give money to a system that is supposedly meeting the needs of that individual? Does that apply more to education than it does to other fields? I am sort of leading up to the point: Does it allow people to escape or programs to escape and resist evaluation, recogniz

ing that you are dealing with emotional issues, important issues that really strike home? Is it worse in education than other fields? Dr. JOYNER. Well, I think it is certainly an important factor in education because, by and large, I think people want to help the children and believe that they are helping. And there is usually anecdotal evidence that something is working. People do not just keep doing things that they can see are not helping. But that sense of confidence that what they see-they know that this child is better off in sort of a gut-level way, and that it does matter to them, I think, again, makes them uncomfortable in an experimental design where you are withholding something. If you really believe this is bound to help and this is a child you are trying to help, then you want to give it to everyone instead of waiting to see whether it really does or not.

And so it is a very emotional area and government-wide, Federal Government-wide, there has not been a lot of emphasis on the results and an evaluation mind-set, and certainly evaluation resources on that have been reduced in recent years.

Senator FRIST. In your opening statement, you mentioned Head Start, and every time I mention Head Start, there is such a gut feeling, it is so positive, that I have to keep separating it and say, what is the data, let's look at the outcome, has it been measured, have people done the appropriate study, recognizing there are lots of different endpoints which both of you have pointed out.

But your statement that caught me and I wonder how much it applies to all the other agencies-is a seeming resistance not to take the suggestion that you have to be measuring outcome and that is what you implied. I think you said that when you suggest to a group in education using Head Start that there are outcome measures you should be making along the way, that there is a resistance there.

It is important for us because it means that if we are moving in the direction of a program, we need to build it in right up front. Dr. JOYNER. Exactly.

Senator FRIST. Do you want to comment?

Ms. JOHNSON. It is true that in most of the Federal programs that provide services to people the public at large does not get quite as emotional as they do about education. But I think this emotional reaction is true for most of the human services programs. Not only is there an emotional gut reaction that, we know this is good, it feels right, it feels good, but also because everybody has been through school, this is an area where everybody thinks they are an expert. They are an expert based on their own experience as both somebody who has been through it as a student, as a parent, and some as teachers.

And so one of the things that you are also seeing is, I think, a lack of an urgent sense of gut need for research information, because people feel they know a good program when they see it, they can tell something is working. I think that is more common in this area than you see in others.

Senator FRIST. Thank you. We are going to need to move to the second panel shortly, but I want to give both the Senators here an opportunity to question. Senator Snowe?

Senator SNOWE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief, and I will ask unanimous consent to include my entire statement in the record.

Senator FRIST. Without objection.

[The prepared statement of Senator Snowe follows:]

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR OLYMPIA J. SNOWE

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank you for calling today's hearing which focuses on the Federal education programs for children in pre-school and in grades K through 12. With the Congress and, indeed, the Nation, now focused on the importance of education, I can think of no topic more timely than the performance of the education programs that are funded by the Federal Government.

Mr. Chairman, I have always been a strong advocate for maintaining our Federal commitment to education because of the critical role education plays in the lives of each and every American. The fact is, education is the great equalizer in our society that can give every citizen of our Nation-regardless of race, income, or geographic background-the same opportunity to succeed in the global economy of the 21st century. It levels the playing field. Therefore, even as we work to achieve and maintain a balanced Federal budget, I believe we must always maintain a strong Federal commitment to supporting our Nation's schools.

Mr. Chairman, although the Federal contribution to the total cost of elementary and secondary education may seem small when compared to the total amount of money that is spent by State and local governments, it by no means diminishes the importance or impact of the dollars we spend. Overall, the Federal Government provides approximately 7 percent of all education monies that are spent. However, when we look at what that 7 percent means in real dollars, it's not pocket change. Consider that in fiscal year 1996, a total of $25 billion was spent by the Federal Government on programs that support early childhood and elementary and secondary education programs.

While I believe it is critical that we maintain our commitment to education, that does not mean we should ignore the manner in which these monies are used or cease to improve the manner in which these monies are distributed and managed. Ultimately, it's not just about spending bucks on education-it's about getting the biggest bang for the buck possible!

The Department of Education is responsible for managing the majority of the Federal monies that are spent on education-a total of $16 billion in 1996-so it is understandable that the Congress has a strong, vested interest in the performance and management of their programs. Today's hearing will provide us with an opportunity to not only study the performance of the programs that are managed by the Department of Education, but also to find ways in which we can improve these programs. In the end, the beneficiaries of improved management and performance will be the taxpayers whose money we spend to support these critical programs-and, more importantly, the children who attend out Nation's schools.

I would like to thank our witnesses for being with us this morning-and would like to thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for calling today's hearing. Thank you.

Senator SNOWE. I commend you for holding this hearing on, I think, obviously a very critical issue, and it gives us the opportunity to examine in depth some of the programs so important at the Federal level for education.

Dr. Joyner, I was interested in the GAO report on Head Start. I was curious about the fact that given the fact that Head Start has been in existence for some 30 years and $15 billion or more, according to your report-$31 billion later, that there has been no adequate assessment of the program and the impact of that program nationwide. Can you explain that to me? Because it would seem to me that at this point, given the $31 billion the Federal Government has spent on the Head Start Program for now approximately 30-odd years, with 15 million children being served by that program, that the Federal Government has not been able to assess overall the impact of Head Start on the performance of young people who have participated in that program?