Statement from United States Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath

STATEMENT * "We know that public elementary and secondary school enrollment will reach new peaks in the years immediately ahead,' Dr. McGrath said in a recent interview, Treminding that "the schoolhousing.shortage will become more critical year by year. Making an "armchair" calculation, he forecast that by 1960 to an additional 275,000 instruction rooms would be required, or an over-all total of 600,000 at a cost of about 18 billion dollars in terms of 1951 dollars. "This nationwide survey," Dr. McGrath continued, "definitely alerts us all to the fact that financing practices will have to be improved and new and substantial resources for public school construction will have to be tapped if cufficient funds are to be raised to cancel out the Ideficit education' created by educationally unsatisfact. >ry and unsafe structures." In testimony before a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor considering school building legislation last April, Dr. McGrath stated: "Even after maximum local and state effort has been brought to bear on. the problem, there will rema in a significant Craction of need. The unprece- dented size or the total problem will call for action on a bolder scale than will be possible without federal participation. Furthernore, the situation is so urgent that it cahnot be left to the states and districts to meet over an extended period of time Both because the problem is so big and because it i.s sò urgent, federal action to assis.t and encourage the states and local communities is inescapably necessary ." * By Earl J: McGrath, U: S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., which appeared in "Taking Stock of School Plant Needs", by Elaine Exton, School Roard Journal, February 1953, pp . 44-46.