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Show Debunking "School Problem" To say the least, whatever problems our public schools face have been vastly exaggerated by supporters of federal feder-al aid to education. Some information produced by a policy committee of which Senator Styles Bridges in chairman does much to clarify the picture. It deals with how the schools fared in the eight-year period, between the school yea re 1952-53 and 19G0-G1. Here are a few of the facts it record: The number of pupils increased 35 whereas the instructional staff increased 45, and the number of children per teacher declined from 215.2 to 24.4. The average teachers' salary increased 52fA , as against the much smaller increase of 307 in per capita personal income as a whole and of 34 in industrial indus-trial wages. And, whereas the addition of 9.7 million children chil-dren to the school populations required an additional 347,-000 347,-000 classrooms at the rate of 28 children per classroom, about half again as many 507.5CX) were actually constructed. con-structed. To quote the report directly, these eight years "witnessed "wit-nessed tremendous progress in improving school support, building new classrooms, hiring new teachers, raising teacher' salaries . . . This is a proud record of achievement, indeed." If facts mean anything at all, these mean that more federal encroachment on education, with the bureaucratic controls that would come, is unneeded, unjustified and dangerous. |