Statement by the President Announcing a National Planning Conference on the Education of Disadvantaged Children.

I HAVE asked the U.S. Commissioner of Education, Harold Howe II, to call a national planning conference in Washington, July 18-20, on education for disadvantaged children.

The program provided by title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 has been started and the funds for this fiscal year dispersed in an unusually brief span of time. Its value has been clearly demonstrated. There are 7 million children who are receiving a better education this year because our State and local school systems moved swiftly and with ingenuity to use these funds. We must now assure ourselves that progress is universal. The gains made in some schools can be duplicated throughout the Nation if we exchange information and ideas quickly.

To this end I have suggested to Commissioner Howe that he invite the chief education officer of each State to name a four-man delegation to the conference. This delegation would be comprised of the State's title I coordinator, a representative from a State college or university, and a representative each from an urban and a rural area.

The conference will provide a working environment for exchanging ideas and exploring new methods of educating the children of poverty. It can concern itself with problems discussed in the report of the National Advisory Council on Education of Disadvantaged Children.

I have asked Commissioner Howe to make the results of the conference known to all State educational agencies, and I hope this meeting will be the forerunner of a series of similar conferences in each State before the fall school opening. We cannot rest until every boy and girl who needs special help in school receives it in the most effective, imaginative form that American ingenuity can devise.