[Senate Hearing 112-875]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-875
BEYOND NCLB: VIEWS ON THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
REAUTHORIZATION ACT
=======================================================================
HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
EXAMINING BEYOND NCLB: VIEWS ON THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
REAUTHORIZATION ACT
__________
NOVEMBER 8, 2011
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
TOM HARKIN, Iowa, Chairman
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
PATTY MURRAY, Washington RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania RAND PAUL, Kentucky
KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
AL FRANKEN, Minnesota PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island MARK KIRK, Illinois
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
Daniel E. Smith, Staff Director
Pamela Smith, Deputy Staff Director
Frank Macchiarola, Republican Staff Director and Chief Counsel
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
__________
STATEMENTS
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2011
Page
Committee Members
Harkin, Hon. Tom, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions, opening statement......................... 1
Enzi, Hon. Michael B., a U.S. Senator from the State of Wyoming,
opening statement.............................................. 2
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, a U.S. Senator from the State of Tennessee 4
Hagan, Hon. Kay R., a U.S. Senator from the State of North
Carolina....................................................... 5
Bennet, Hon. Michael F., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Colorado....................................................... 14
Paul, Hon. Rand, a U.S. Senator from the State of Kentucky....... 28
Isakson, Hon. Johnny, a U.S. Senator from the State of Georgia... 37
Franken, Hon. Al, a U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota..... 41
Merkley, Hon. Jeff, a U.S. Senator from the State of Oregon...... 45
Witnesses
Schnur, Jon, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board, New Leaders,
New York, NY................................................... 6
Seaton, Charles, Teacher, Sherwood Middle School, Memphis City
Schools, Memphis, TN........................................... 9
Grier, Terry, Superintendent, Houston Independent School
District, Houston, TX.......................................... 10
Luna, Tom, Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction, Boise, ID. 11
Prepared statement........................................... 12
Danks, Amanda, Lead Teacher, Wm. S. Baer School, Baltimore City
Public Schools, Baltimore, MD.................................. 15
Geisselhardt, Pam, Gifted and Talented Coordinator, Adair County
Schools, Columbia, KY.......................................... 15
Hess, Fredrick, Resident Scholar and Director of Education
Policy, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC.......... 16
Beh Neas, Katherine, Senior Vice President for Governmental
Relations, Easter Seals, Washington, DC........................ 20
Henderson, Wade, President and CEO, The Leadership Conference,
Washington, DC................................................. 25
Thomas, Elmer, Principal, Madison Central High School, Richmond,
KY............................................................. 27
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
Alan Knapp, Director of National Policy--Partnership for 21st
Century Skills (P21)....................................... 50
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, submitted by
Ursula Wright, Interim President & CEO..................... 51
Letters:
National Conference of State Legislatures................ 53
Melissa Bilash, Special Education Advocate, Wayne, PA.... 55
(iii)
BEYOND NCLB: VIEWS ON THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
REAUTHORIZATION ACT
----------
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
Room SD-106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Tom Harkin,
chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Harkin, Hagan, Merkley, Franken, Bennet,
Whitehouse, Enzi, Alexander, Isakson, Paul, and Murkowski.
Opening Statement of Senator Harkin
The Chairman. This session of the Health, Education, Labor,
and Pensions committee will come to order.
Today's roundtable will focus on moving beyond NCLB, No
Child Left Behind, the current iteration of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act, and toward reauthorization of the law
for the needs of the 21st Century. Over the last 2 years, this
committee has held 10 hearings on the full range of issues
covered under the law. I've also held numerous stakeholder
meetings and participated in lengthy negotiations with my
Republican colleagues which resulted in a bill that was voted
out of committee a little over 2 weeks ago.
I believe the committee's bill takes several important
steps forward by, first, resetting our national goal from
students attaining proficiency to ensuring that students
graduate from high school prepared for college and a career;
second, by closing the comparability loophole and ensuring that
title I schools get their fair share of Federal resources;
third, incentivizing States and districts to develop rigorous
teacher and principal evaluations and support systems, with the
goal of continuous instructional improvement; and, fourth,
providing a laser-like focus on turning around the bottom 5
percent of schools and our Nation's dropout factories, the high
schools that graduate less than 60 percent of their students,
so that real change occurs in these schools, and the students
who attend them have their academic trajectory set on a new and
improved course.
Today we will hear from key stakeholders in this debate who
are impacted by the educational laws we pass in Washington. I
am eager to hear each of their perspectives on how through this
reauthorization we can provide States, districts, and schools
with the tools they need to help all students succeed. I think
we have provided some of those tools in our bill, but I'm sure
that there are others who think that more can be done.
One thing I know for certain is that the current law is not
bringing about the significant improvements in student
achievement that our country needs and that our children
deserve. We must reauthorize to get out from under the
ineffective No Child Left Behind Act.
I expect our roundtable participants will discuss things
they like about NCLB and our bill and things they would like to
see changed. The goal today is to have an open discussion that
informs the ongoing debate on ESEA reauthorization. And I thank
all of our participants for being here today.
I will now turn to Senator Enzi, the Ranking Member of our
committee, who has been a strong partner in our work on ESEA
reauthorization.
Opening Statement of Senator Enzi
Senator Enzi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for
your willingness to work on this roundtable. Last month's
markup of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a
major step forward in the reauthorization process, which has
been stagnant over the last 4 years since No Child Left
Behind's authorization lapsed.
I expect that there will be many more changes to the bill
that we reported from the HELP Committee in order to gain
broader support from members on both sides of the aisle and to
further improve the draft. Marking up the bill was the first
and important step in the reauthorization process.
This is not to say that there was not a lot of work that
occurred beforehand to get that bill to markup. To the
contrary, we received testimony from over 70 witnesses,
including the Secretary of Education, elementary education
experts, State and district superintendents, principals,
teachers, and representatives of special populations.
The committee hosted a Web site where people from all
across the United States could express views and solutions. And
each Senator has heard from constituents both here in DC and
in-state as to the concerns, fixes, and changes needed to
improve the No Child Left Behind law. Now that we've marked up
the bill in committee, we're holding this roundtable to get
input on the bill. We want to know whether we're developing
fixes to the problems that have been identified. We also want
to hear about what else we need to do to improve the bill as we
move forward.
I want to thank today's panelists, each of whom comes from
vastly different backgrounds and who can provide a range of
observations on both current law and the draft bill that was
reported out of the HELP Committee last month. Today, we'll
continue the conversation of identifying problems on the ground
with the current legislation and how we can create policy that
provides flexibility for innovative approaches in the States.
I'm also interested in hearing about the aspects of No
Child Left Behind that today's panelists think should be
retained as we move forward. Although there are many criticisms
of No Child Left Behind, there are positives that we can point
to as well. It moved the conversation around education in this
country toward greater transparency of outcomes, and it invited
parents to take a more active role in their child's education.
I think that's been retained while shifting the emphasis
from bad schools back to seeing that no child is left out. By
shining a light on the children rather than just the schools
and by making sure that data were broadly available, parents,
teachers, principals, and taxpayers can have all the access to
information they needed to make decisions about children, not
just about schools. That's a profound development and one I'm
committed to retaining and building upon as we move forward in
the reauthorization.
While No Child Left Behind pushed us to learn about and
address many of the shortcomings in our schools, it also plays
strict, one-size-fits-all rules on how States and local
education agencies address deficiencies within schools. In the
bill that we considered in committee, we removed most of those
Federal mandates and asked States to intervene only in their
bottom 5 percent of schools and those schools with the largest
achievement gaps.
However, parents and teachers will know how their children
are doing because of the information that will be reported for
every child. We want the results to follow the child so
subsequent teachers can make a difference. For all other
schools, we have told States that they must take the lead by
returning responsibility for accountability, albeit it
accountability that expects students to be college- and career-
ready, to determine what makes the most sense for their
students.
Although I hear the concerns of many that this bill does
not include performance targets and other federally designed
annual objectives, having the goals of students entering
careers and college without the need for remediation is a goal
that requires intensive, step-by-step, grade-by-grade planning,
not some marker as to whether the student is prepared on the
day they graduate. States will intuitively need to design
rubrics that get their students on this path. They don't need
unnecessary Federal micromanagement that says how and when they
should reach each progressive milestone. And as a practical
matter, we've learned that No Child Left Behind did not handle
this responsibility very well through one-sized accountability
systems that focused on schools.
The bill we reported out of committee attempts to remove No
Child Left Behind's oversized Federal footprint and return it
to the States where it belongs and is most effectively
implemented. As I stated during the markup, I do not support
100 percent of the bill we reported out. I would have supported
a much smaller Federal role and far fewer Federal programs.
I also know that Chairman Harkin would have supported far
greater federally designed accountability. That's the essence
of working to get something done--a bill that will include the
broader Senate, the broader Congress, stakeholders, and those
interested in better instruction and a more prepared workforce
moving forward so action can be taken instead of just wasted
debate. But, again, this is another step in that process and we
will be further informed as more voices are involved.
With that said, I'll continue to support a lessened Federal
role in schools, fewer Federal programs, and greater
transparency to parents through reporting on the child's
performance. We need to place more emphasis on seeing that each
child is getting the education that we promised. I was
disappointed the markup moved in the opposite direction within
those three goals, so I encourage my colleagues to work
together to improve this bill if we truly plan to move the
legislation to the president's desk.
In summary, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for working with me
on this hearing. I'm looking forward to continuing the
substantive policy discussion from last month's markup.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Enzi.
Let me just take a moment to introduce each of our
participants. I know some Senators would like to also weigh in
with their own introductions. I'll start on my right.
First, we have Rick Hess, Resident Scholar and Director of
Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute
for Public Policy Research. Mr. Hess is also the author of the
education column in Ed Week called ``Rick Hess Straight Up,''
the executive editor of Education Next, and a research
associate with the Program on Education Policy and Governance
at Harvard University.
Next is Jon Schnur. Mr. Schnur is president of the board of
directors and co-founder of New Leaders, formerly known as New
Leaders for New Schools. He has developed national educational
policies on teacher and principal quality, afterschool
programs, district reform, charter schools and preschools.
I will now invite Senator Paul to introduce the next
person.
Senator Paul. I'm pleased today to have Pam Geisselhardt
here from Adair County. She's a gifted and talented teacher and
I think one of the great successes of our Kentucky public
education. And I really am glad that we were able to have this
hearing to talk about the bill before it's final, to get your
understanding and your input as to how we can change and make
No Child Left Behind less of a Federal burden on teachers and
principals and superintendents and all our educators.
Thank you, Ms. Geisselhardt, for coming.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Paul.
Next, we have Tom Luna, the Idaho superintendent of Public
Instruction. Mr. Luna currently serves as president-elect of
the Council of Chief State School Officers. He will serve as
president beginning in 2012.
Next is Katy Beh Neas, a senior vice president for
Government Relations with Easter Seals. She does incredible
work with Easter Seals. I can attest to that over all the
years. She is responsible for Easter Seals Federal and State
public policy activities and is also co-chair of the Consortium
for Citizens with Disabilities Education Task Force and has
expertise in both disability education and early childhood
education.
Next, I would ask Senator Alexander for an introduction.
Statement of Senator Alexander
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We welcome Charles Seaton from Memphis. After a career or
15 years in non-profit juvenile prevention programs, he decided
he wanted to work with children in Memphis. He works in the
eighth grade with exceptional children, special education
children, and I understand that he is involved, as every
Tennessee teacher and principal is right now, in the new
teacher-principal evaluation process. We might hear something
about that from him.
Welcome.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Alexander.
Next, I would invite Senator Hagan to introduce Mr. Grier.
Statement of Senator Hagan
Senator Hagan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am proud to have an opportunity to introduce an old
friend of mine, a proud North Carolinian and an East Carolina
University Pirate and one of this country's foremost education
leaders and innovators, Dr. Terry Grier. While Dr. Grier has
served as a superintendent for nine school districts across six
States, he has experienced the public education system from all
levels, as a student in Fairmont, North Carolina; a graduate of
East Carolina University and Vanderbilt; and as a teacher, a
coach, and a high school principal.
I first met Dr. Grier in 2000 when he became the
superintendent of my hometown, the county of Guilford County in
North Carolina. I happened to represent that county in the
State Senate at the time.
And during his 8 years in Guilford County, Dr. Grier led
the district as it cut its dropout rate in half to less than 3
percent, increased the high school graduation rate from 63
percent to nearly 80, received one of the largest private
investments ever in a public school system from the Joseph M.
Bryan Foundation and the Center for Creative Leadership to help
train school leaders, and established one of the country's
first early college high schools. And as we know, today, early
college institutes across the country are widely seen as one of
the most effective ways to steer our low income students on a
path to success.
Then Dr. Grier continued his track record in San Diego,
where he helped reduce the dropout rate by 50 percent and
increased scores on the California Standards Test to all-time
district highs. In 2009, Dr. Grier became superintendent of the
Houston Independent School District, the seventh largest school
district in the Nation with more than 200,000 students.
In Houston, his initiatives continued to produce results
for schools and students. And last month, it was announced that
the Houston Independent School District landed 87 schools on
the 2011 list of the State's high performing schools, by far
the leader among the urban school districts in the State.
I am pleased and honored to welcome my old friend, Dr.
Terry Grier, to this committee.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Hagan.
Senator Mikulski could not be here today, but she wanted to
express her definite appreciation to you for all that you do
and for being here today.
Next is Amanda Danks.
Ms. Danks teaches special education in Baltimore City
Public Schools--currently teaches at the William S. Baer
School, a school for students with severe disabilities and who
are medically fragile. In addition to her school
responsibilities, Ms. Danks also serves as a resident advisor
for new special education teachers and works with the families
of children with autism to support them in their homes and
communities.
Next to Amanda, Mr. Wade Henderson. Mr. Henderson is the
president and CEO of the Leadership Conference, formerly known
as the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. He also
heads up the Leadership Conference Education Fund. And prior to
these roles, Mr. Henderson was the Washington Bureau director
of the NAACP.
Finally, I'd like to invite Senator Paul to introduce our
last witness.
Senator Paul. I'd like to welcome today Elmer Thomas, who
is the principal of Madison Central High School in Richmond,
KY. He is the vice president of the Kentucky Association of
Secondary School Principals. This year, he was the Kentucky
principal of the year. And has spent time working in his school
on the Focus and Finish Program which identifies struggling
seniors and creates opportunities to have career certification
and work-study programs. We're very happy to have Principal
Elmer Thomas with us here today.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. And thank you all for
being here for this very important discussion.
Mr. Hess and Mr. Schnur, I'm told, may have to leave us
early around 11:30. We understand your busy schedules and
appreciate that you could be here. And that goes for all of our
panelists. Thank you all for being here.
Before we start, let me explain the format of a roundtable.
I'll start the discussion by asking a question of one of the
panelists. That person will answer. If one of the panelists
wants to respond to the question as well or to something the
panelist has said, take your name tent and put it on its end,
like that. That way, I'll know to call on you.
Or if a committee member wants to ask a question or a
followup or an intervention, I ask them to do the same. We
usually have a lot of folks who want to talk. I'll recognize
someone and we'll continue the conversation. This won't be like
a formal hearing, although it is being recorded.
I'll ask different committee members to join in asking
questions as well. We'll try to keep the discussion flowing
while being respectful of one another, and I hope the result
will be a good in-depth conversation regarding the bill. I'd
just also ask everyone to refrain from giving speeches. Well,
if they're a couple of minutes long, that's OK--but long
speeches.
Given that we may lose you early, I'll start with Mr.
Schnur.
Can you tell us what you believe are the strengths of the
bill that the committee has passed or how you think it could be
improved?
STATEMENT OF JON SCHNUR, CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD,
NEW LEADERS, NEW YORK, NY
Mr. Schnur. Thank you so much, Chairman Harkin, Senator
Enzi, Senator Alexander, Senator Hagan, members of the
committee. It's an honor to be with you, and I must say you are
tackling one of the most pressing priorities for the country.
And the blend of addressing education as both a national
priority and a State and local responsibility is a delicate
one, and I understand there are issues at play in this bill on
that.
To answer your question, I've been in dozens and dozens of
schools around the country looking at where we have leaders
working to improve often low achieving schools, urban schools,
some rural schools. And I think we've seen some lessons emerge
from those. I'll mention a few of those, and then, to me, take
the implications of what I think are a couple of the biggest
positive aspects of this bill and a couple of areas that I
think really could be improved.
When we've looked at the schools, we've analyzed where
we've got schools that are making dramatic progress, including
serving low-income kids, kids of color, kids with special
needs, kids who many people in the society don't think can
achieve. And we've got actual examples, and you've seen some of
these. We're getting dramatic progress.
And we've got some of our own new leaders, new leaders from
the schools who actually are in schools that have gotten
incremental progress. We've analyzed the difference--a few
trends we've seen.
First, in all the schools where there's been progress,
there is really genuinely high expectations for our kids to
achieve, specific expectations that get kids on track to be
ready, not just for doing a little bit better, but for success
in college and careers.
Second, there is in these schools--and we didn't realize
this 10 years ago when we started our principal training
program. There is a focus in the school on constant improvement
of teaching and feedback to improve the quality of teaching
regularly in the school, because teachers are not just born.
You've got some great teachers, but teachers who are working at
it with coaching can make dramatic improvement when there's the
right feedback and improvement, and pockets of schools are
doing that. Most are not.
Third, we see intense cultures of high expectations and
personal responsibility and efficient use of time for all kids.
You can't legislate that from the Federal level. That's the
kind of thing you have to drive through effective leadership,
the kind of culture that can drive high expectations in
practice.
Fourth, we do see adequate funding, including funding for
the teaching profession, which is so important, but also
discretionary funding. The little bits of discretionary funding
turn out to make an enormous difference to help principals or
superintendents make improvements. So even your discretionary
competitive programs have outsized importance because schools
are struggling for that little bit of extra money to make
improvements.
Fifth and finally, there's leadership, and leadership at
the local level that's invested in driving outcomes, which is
inhibited when there's a culture of compliance and kind of a
mindset of checking the box from too many regulations. And I
think it's a big issue that you all are rightly addressing.
Specifically, what I think is good and what I think can be
improved in the bill--briefly, one is matching what I think
those schools need. The insistence and the requirement for
college- and career-ready standards and assessments is so
important, not that that's federally prescribed, but having
something is--most of these schools do not have those
expectations. If you do, that should be institutionalized,
because that's fantastic in this bill.
The second, the competitive grant programs focused on
talent, on principals and teachers--the Pathways program, the
Great Principals Act--really trying to train principals and
teachers and support them in exchange for performance
accountability for their institutions.
Third is the prioritization on low achieving schools. It's
a disgrace that we have schools that are achieving on such low
levels in this country. And even if you got flexibility now--
that's a priority in this bill.
And finally, I do think that it's important that you've got
to fix some of the prescription and regulatory mindset of No
Child Left Behind in order to remove the culture of compliance
and try to invest in leadership at the local level. I think
those are really good.
Two issues I'll close on--I have two significant concerns
about the bill that I would pay a lot of attention to if I were
in your shoes in the Senate and working on improving this bill.
First of all, there's been a lot of discussion about teacher
and principal evaluation and effectiveness systems. And I
realize that there are those who would say that should be
mandated. There are some who say that it shouldn't be part of
this bill.
I would recommend improving on the current bill by putting
in place a very substantial incentive--not a requirement--a
very substantial incentive, perhaps taking as much as 50
percent of the title II program, which has not been effective,
to support competitive grants to help States and districts
design and use these systems. And in some ways building on
Senator Alexander's bill, I think the incentive is there, but
could be larger.
I think over the course of 10 years, you could put enough
funding that every State would be able to get funds, and I
think there's a way of doing it. Since it turns out that only
42 percent of title II right now is used for teacher and
professional development, I think you could actually get more
funds through this approach to support professional development
than the current program.
The last thing I'd say on this--right now, title II isn't
working very well. I think if you put in place State-driven
systems on a competitive voluntary basis, you could actually
get a lot more bang for your buck from the systems.
And the very last thing I'll say is, I do think there needs
to be much more press on the performance targets and press for
improved achievements. I think there are various ways to drive
that transparency and accountability.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Schnur. When you
said the successful schools--you gave five things: high
expectations, constant improvement of teaching, the culture of
personal responsibility, adequate funding, and leadership.
Would I understand that under culture of personal
responsibility comes the subset of families? In other words, we
always focus on schools. But we know a lot of what influences a
kid's ability to learn and desire to learn is what happens
outside the school. What role does the family play in that list
of yours in those successful schools?
Mr. Schnur. As you know, it's huge, and as a dad of a 6-
year-old and a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, I walk my kid to
public school every day. I know the roles of a parent--the role
that parents play. But the schools that we've seen that have
driven big results do find ways to really engage parents in
taking responsibility to drive improvement for kids.
Most parents want the best for their kids, but a lot of
them don't have the support they need. There are strategies
that can include the parents in this culture of personal
responsibility, as you're noting, and, I think, especially, are
driven by the leaders of the school and the teachers that they
enlist.
The Chairman. Senator Alexander.
Senator Alexander. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to thank all of you for coming, and I thank
Senators Harkin and Enzi and Paul for making this hearing
happen. I think it's useful.
Let me take what Mr. Schnur said and go to Mr. Seaton, who
is from Memphis. Mr. Schnur suggested that the bill would be
improved if we had a larger incentive for teacher-principal
evaluation.
Mr. Seaton, Tennessee is currently going through a teacher-
principal evaluation process. I think almost every teacher is
involved in it. And that's the result of a program, Race to the
Top, which had an incentive for States who wanted to do teacher
and principal evaluation.
What's going on? What's your experience there in Sherwood
School in Memphis? How are teachers and principals responding
to it? And what role do you think the Federal Government ought
to have in requiring it, defining it, and regulating it?
STATEMENT OF CHARLES SEATON, TEACHER, SHERWOOD MIDDLE SCHOOL,
MEMPHIS CITY SCHOOLS, MEMPHIS, TN
Mr. Seaton. Good morning. Thank you to the chairman and all
of you for having me here.
We in Tennessee are actually, I believe, setting the
standard nationally, and, hopefully, people will start paying
attention to what we're doing with regards to evaluation. We
know that if you want something, you have to inspect it or you
have to evaluate it. And so we took the lead with accepting the
Race to the Top money and decided that we were going to look at
putting a good teacher, an effective teacher, in front of every
young person that we have in the State of Tennessee.
Memphis went a step further, and we started looking at a
number of evaluation models, nationally, that were being used.
And Memphis City Schools developed or redeveloped--retooled a
model, and we're using it now. Every teacher, every principal,
whether they're teaching a student--so that means
administrative personnel also--are being evaluated, and they're
looking at a number of issues.
They put a rubric together that looks at the actual art of
teaching and measures those skills that we believe are
effective skills to teach, and it also looks at culture or the
teaching domain, where you are. And I think that we have seen
that it's caused us, as teachers, myself included, to re-
evaluate exactly how I'm doing and try to put those high-yield
strategies in front of myself.
Senator Alexander. You're a special education teacher. Is
that right?
Mr. Seaton. That is correct. I teach special education. And
it's caused us--and No Child Left Behind has done a good job in
focusing attention on those areas of special needs children.
But I think we see in Tennessee that we've created now a
culture that is data-driven as well as personnel driven. So
we're able to look forward.
Senator Alexander. Thank you.
The Chairman. Before I call on the next Senator--I think it
was Senator Bennet--let's go to Mr. Grier who wanted to have an
intervention on this point.
STATEMENT OF TERRY GRIER, SUPERINTENDENT, HOUSTON INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL DISTRICT, HOUSTON, TX
Mr. Grier. Yes. Thank you, Senator. Thank you so much. It's
good to see you.
In Houston, we believe that teacher and principal
evaluation is just too important to leave to chance. It has to
be fixed in this country. As a school superintendent, I've been
leading district after district, and when you get there and you
see that student performance is not very high, but evaluation
ratings on almost everyone is off the scale, it just has to be
fixed.
We have to have a teacher and principal evaluation system
in this country and in our school systems that give our
employees a real honest picture of what they're doing. Last
year, in Houston, we implemented two new evaluation systems.
Our teacher evaluation system will contain a weight of about 50
percent, a little less, of student academic performance, as
well as will our principal evaluation as we finish it up this
year.
This past year, as a result of our efforts, we retained 92
percent of our highest performing teachers in Houston. And,
frankly, we replaced 55 percent of our lowest performing
teachers in the district.
The Chairman. One thing that Senator Alexander has gotten
into my head about is how tough it is to do evaluations, and
that we don't really have the metrics, if that's the proper
word that I could use, of what is a good teacher evaluation
system. Or are there a lot of different things out there? You
said that 50 percent in Houston was based on student
performance, and you seem to think that whatever you're doing
in Houston is working.
Is there a template there for the rest of the country? I've
been reading articles about Tennessee, and they're trying to
adopt some kind of evaluation. But it's very difficult.
Mr. Grier. It's difficult work, but as we proved in
Houston, it's not impossible work. When you can retain 92
percent of your best teachers, and you can replace 55 percent
of your lowest performing teachers in a year, that's proof that
it's--in the seventh largest district in the country, it's not
impossible. We had over 2,500 teachers involved with us in
developing our teacher evaluation system. This is something we
did with our teachers, not to our teachers.
The Chairman. So they were involved in developing the
system.
Mr. Grier. They must be. They just absolutely--it's
critical that they must be.
The Chairman. If you have that on paper--maybe my staff has
it. I don't know. I'd like to see what you use for the other
metrics.
If you use 50 percent on student performance, what's the
other 50 percent?
Mr. Grier. A lot of it's pedagogy, how teachers teach,
classroom management----
The Chairman. Did you do classroom observations?
Mr. Grier. Classroom observations, a minimum of----
The Chairman. Do you ask students--are students involved?
Mr. Grier. Students are not involved in our particular
component.
The Chairman. Do you think that's important? Because I've
often thought that one of the best people to evaluate a
teacher--students know who's a good teacher.
Mr. Grier. It's fascinating. We know several things about
teacher evaluation. Teachers know who the good teachers are.
Students know who the good teachers are, as do parents,
particularly parents who understand how the system works and
that are reasonably well-educated.
Where we struggle sometimes is in training principals to
evaluate teachers and to have the skill sets. We required all
of our principals in Houston to go through 35 to 40 hours of
teacher evaluation documentation, appraisal training. It's very
important.
The Chairman. Mr. Luna had his up next. Mr. Luna.
STATEMENT OF TOM LUNA, IDAHO SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC
INSTRUCTION, BOISE, ID
Mr. Luna. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In response to Senator
Alexander's question about evaluations and incentives--and at
some point, I would hope to be able to have a discussion also
about Idaho's State chief 's views about the law itself, the
good parts and the other parts.
But when it comes to evaluations and incentives, we know
that the most important factor--once a child enters a school,
by far the most important factor is the quality of the teacher
in the classroom. It's by far more important than the amount of
money spent, the curriculum, the technology. All those are
important, but by far the most important factor is the teacher
in the classroom.
And so in my State, we went through the process of
developing a teacher performance evaluation that is built upon
the Charlotte Danielson framework. And I think many would tell
you that Charlotte Danielson is definitely an expert in the
observations and evaluations of how teachers perform in the
classroom.
And then 50 percent of the evaluation now in Idaho has to
be based on student achievement, primarily focusing on growth.
Parental input has to be part of the teacher's performance
evaluation. We've also implemented a statewide pay for
performance plan, or merit pay, as some people would refer to
it, where teachers in Idaho can now earn up to $8,000 a year in
bonuses based on taking on leadership roles or if they teach in
a hard to fill position, but also if they teach in a school
that shows high academic growth.
The point I would like to make, and to answer your
question, Senator Alexander--you asked about evaluations and
incentives. Should the Federal Government require it? Should it
define it? Should it regulate it?
We did all of this without any incentive or mandate from
the Federal Government. And if you want to find a balance, I
don't see, necessarily, a problem with the Federal Government
requiring it. But I think it goes too far if the Federal
Government tries to define it or regulate it. I think Idaho and
other States could demonstrate that we're ahead of the curve
when it comes to robust evaluations and incentives so that we
don't leave it to chance as to whether every child has a highly
effective teacher every year they're in school.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Luna follows:]
Prepared Statement of Tom Luna
Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Enzi, members of the committee,
thank you for the opportunity to discuss the urgent need for ESEA
reauthorization with you today. My name is Tom Luna, I am the
superintendent of Public Instruction for Idaho and the president-elect
of the Council of Chief State School Officers.
Let me be clear at the outset that in the interest of long-term
reform and efforts to increase student achievement throughout the
States, the Council believes that a reauthorized ESEA is the best path
forward. We support your efforts in moving this process along and hope
that Congress can move swiftly and send a bill to the President for his
signature this Congress. We support the Administration's ESEA
Flexibility plan, but all students deserve to benefit from a timely and
comprehensive update to the ESEA.
I applaud the bipartisan effort in the Senate to bring forth a
comprehensive reauthorization bill that maintains a meaningful
commitment to accountability while promoting greater State and local
leadership in K-12 education. As Idaho's State Superintendent, I have
strongly encouraged reauthorization to transform this law away from a
prescriptive one-size-fits-all Federal model, to an approach that
promotes State and local decisionmaking, while maintaining an
unwavering commitment to accountability for all students, especially
the disadvantaged. Idaho has already moved in this direction by passing
comprehensive education reform known as Students Come First that raises
academic standards, creates the next generation of assessments,
implements a growth model for increased accountability, ties educator
evaluations to student achievement, and rewards excellence in the
classroom. The Senate HELP Committee now has found the right balance to
reauthorize the Federal law and give States the higher levels of
accountability and flexibility they need to raise student achievement.
The bill passed out of this committee last month sets high
expectations for all States and empowers them to lead on behalf of
their students. Specifically, the bill requires all States to adopt and
implement college and career-ready standards and improved assessments
aligned to the higher standards. These next generation assessments must
measure student knowledge and their ability to apply knowledge through
higher order skills. Removing the one-size-fits all accountability
approach found in current law, the bill requires States to establish
rigorous new accountability systems, make annual determinations for all
schools and districts based on clear goals and continuous improvement,
and provide an array of rewards, supports, and interventions for all
schools, with a focus on the lowest performing schools and those with
the largest achievement gaps.
States are already moving reform in these critical areas and have a
proven track record of doing the right thing on behalf of their
students. For example, 45 States have adopted college and career-ready
standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics through the Common
Core and 45 States have agreed to develop next generation
accountability systems aligned to core principles designed to ensure
meaningful results for all students. With nearly every State also
collaborating with one of two consortia designing next generation
assessments, the conclusion is simple--States are not running from
accountability, they are stepping up and embracing higher levels of it
on their own accord. Your legislation will help more States continue
this work by incentivizing State leadership, clearing away hurdles
presented by current Federal law and creating the necessary flexibility
for States, districts and schools to tailor solutions aimed at
addressing persistent underperformance. Regardless of Federal action,
Idaho intends to implement college and career-ready standards and
establish a new accountability system consistent with the principles
outlined in the Council of Chief State School Officers accountability
framework. Passage of the HELP committee bill, however, will enable the
State to forgo costly and burdensome implementation and administration
of distinct Federal and State systems. Idaho's new statewide
accountability system will include performance targets designed to
ensure that all students are on a path to college and career readiness.
Idaho's system will include a single, streamlined statewide
accountability system that will include growth measures, growth toward
college and career readiness and will account for measures that include
pushing even the highest-achieving student, such as dual credit and AP
course enrollment. Idaho has already taken steps toward building this
accountability system through by passing comprehensive education reform
laws, known as Students Come First. Through these laws, the State is
raising academic standards, creating the next generation of
assessments, implementing a growth model for increased accountability,
tying educator evaluations to student achievement, and rewarding high-
growth and high-achieving schools. In addition, the State is focusing
on increasing the number of students taking dual credit courses in high
school, and all high school juniors will take a college entrance or
placement exam before graduation. These reforms lay the groundwork for
Idaho's waiver application for ESEA Flexibility and are aligned with
the proposed legislation to reauthorize ESEA.
The HELP Committee's bill has seen several positive improvements as
a result of the committee's input and we hope the bill will continue to
see further improvements when it is discussed on the Senate floor. In
that spirit, I would like to offer two suggestions. The bill limits
States to a single framework for identifying the 5 percent lowest
achieving schools based on assessments in English and Math as well as
graduation rates for high schools; but allows for the use of other
valid outcome measures for all other schools. This distinction
effectively creates two accountability systems and unnecessarily
prevents States from using multiple outcome measures to get a more
accurate account of how students are performing. Additionally, while we
support and appreciate efforts to incentivize the development of
meaningful teacher and leader evaluation systems through competitive
funding grants, CCSSO did not oppose the overall requirement for States
to require districts to implement such systems in order to receive
title II funds. Again, this is an area where States are already
leading, Thirty-five States are working together to develop evaluation
systems that support educators as well as use performance to make
determinations about performance levels for educators. Requiring States
to develop evaluation systems based in significant part on student
achievement and including multiple measures, without prescribing the
design or uses of such systems will further strengthen this
legislation.
In closing, let me say that as long as the Federal Government
contributes to funding public education, it should play a role in
ensuring accountability both for ensuring positive results for all
students and encouraging the best and highest use of taxpayer dollars
toward achieving those results. In short, States also must be empowered
to define and lead education reform efforts and the Federal role should
be limited and focused on setting a high performance bar and on
supporting comprehensive State and local reform efforts. One needs to
only look at what is going on in Idaho, Indiana, Ohio, Florida and
other States across the country to see evidence of States' commitment
to accountability and comprehensive reform. It is evident that
education chiefs across the country have embraced the challenge of
turning around low-performing schools and closing achievement gaps. We
know States will deliver higher standards, aligned assessments, robust
accountability systems, aggressive turnaround interventions and
meaningful educator evaluation systems, because the work is already
well underway. Maximizing the impact of these important reforms,
however, will require Congress to update the ESEA to empower States to
go even further. Given this context, we respectfully urge every member
of the committee to support passage of this legislation on the Senate
floor and to work collaboratively with the House to send a balanced
reauthorization bill to the President for his signature.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Luna.
I will go in this order--Senator Bennet, Ms. Danks, Ms.
Geisselhardt, and then Senator Paul.
Statement of Senator Bennet
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank
everybody for being here today, especially Mr. Seaton and Ms.
Danks.
Thank you for teaching. I deeply appreciate it.
Senator Alexander, I spent some time on the phone this
morning with your very excellent Commissioner of Education in
Tennessee, hearing from him about the evaluation system there,
and he sends his regards to you.
Senator Alexander. What did he say?
Senator Bennet. I'll tell you later.
[Laughter.]
He said they have the best system in the world. And since I
support both of Mr. Schnur's amendments to the bill, I wonder
if you could talk a little bit about, from your perspective--
because no one around this table, I don't think, has spent more
time in as many schools as you probably have--what is the
importance of the performance targets? And what should that
look like in this bill, ideally, if we're able to find a path
that would allow us to include it?
Mr. Schnur. Well, you people in this room have a lot more
expertise on the legislative issues. From a school perspective,
from a principal, teacher, kids sitting in schools, I think it
is of vital importance--and I think they don't necessarily care
where this comes from. But kids across the country need a press
that's supported from outside the school for higher
performance.
There are too many things conspiring to kind of bring
lower--I'm not saying the Federal Government should at all
micromanage this. But I'm saying from the school perspective,
all these things conspire to have, in many ways, lower
expectations.
The best principals need and benefit from the public, in
some way, saying, ``You can do better in specific ways. You've
got to hit bigger goals. We're going to have transparency
against progress, against bigger goals.'' And the best
leaders--they want to do it, but there are a lot of people who
will be naysayers. And so having that support, I think, is
important.
Specifically--and my view is not shared around this--I'm
sure in this room, universally, but I do think that requiring
having performance targets is really important. I think there
should be a lot of flexibility for States that have those
defined as long as they're making big progress in getting kids
to succeed. But I think it's a great blend of empowering States
to do--and how? By requiring there be the targets to do it, I
think, would be really helpful. And the transparency against
that is as important as anything else.
One thing I would just briefly mention--and some of the
Senators here know--we're launching a new organization, America
Achieves. And one of the things we're going to do is convene a
panel of people, including former Secretary Riley and former
U.S. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and people like Eduardo
Padron, who runs the Miami Dade Community College, and Deb Gist
in Rhode Island and others--teachers, great teachers, and
frontline principals--to put recommendations together for what
goals and targets should be.
Early learning, K-12 through post secondary--a private
panel--and I think that can help inform the debate, and getting
good thinking out there is important. But I think somewhere at
the government level there needs to be a drive to ensure there
are targets and transparency against those, in my view.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Now I've got Ms. Danks, Ms. Geisselhardt, Senator Paul, Mr.
Seaton, and Senator Isakson. We can probably sit here for the
next 2 hours and discuss performance targets and evaluations.
There are other aspects of the bill we'd like to get to. So
could we perhaps--and maybe you're going to bring up some other
things. I don't know. But, hopefully, we can sort of----
Senator Enzi. Perhaps we could have each of them quickly
mention what they think is good in the bill and what they think
needs improvement in the bill, and then go back to this kind of
a format so that nobody gets left out on making their comments.
The Chairman. OK. Let's go to Ms. Danks, first.
Ms. Danks.
STATEMENT OF AMANDA DANKS, LEAD TEACHER, WM. S. BAER SCHOOL,
BALTIMORE CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, BALTIMORE, MD
Ms. Danks. Good morning.
The Chairman. Do you want to address the performance and
evaluation----
Ms. Danks. I just wanted to respond to your question about
how the rubric was created. In Baltimore City, we recently
passed a contract where the teachers are paid for performance,
and we also went through that process of creating a rubric. It
took about a year, and we had all our stakeholders,
administrators, teachers, some family members, working together
through many drafts to create a rubric that truly defined what
highly effective teaching looked like in the classroom.
I think Senator Alexander's question about whether or not
the Federal Government should have a hand in that--I think the
autonomy that our district had in creating that rubric for our
specific needs was fantastic. I don't think that our rubric
would translate to a lot of school systems just because we are
an urban area with a different set of populations.
I do teach at a school for students who are severely
disabled and medically fragile. And within our own school,
we're actually looking at creating our own rubric just
because--the rubric that the district created was fantastic
because it was so specific. It has footnotes and explained
every detail. But for a lot of our students, those details are
not going to apply.
And, again, I think having that autonomy for us to go
through that process on our own and define what highly
effective looks like for our student population is a great way
to ensure that we have highly effective teachers in the
classrooms.
The Chairman. Very good.
Ms. Geisselhardt.
STATEMENT OF PAM GEISSELHARDT, GIFTED AND TALENTED COORDINATOR,
ADAIR COUNTY SCHOOLS, COLUMBIA, KY
Ms. Geisselhardt. I was wanting to speak to the teacher
evaluation and incentive. I just wanted to say that there
already is incentive, as far as a national board certification.
In most States, there's incentive pay for that, and that is
marvelous professional development for teachers.
And as far as the evaluation, I think evaluation definitely
needs to be done on the local and State level because it is so
different in for instance, Memphis and rural Kentucky. And I
think that's one of the great things about your bill--is that
it does put more emphasis on local and State decisionmaking in
all areas.
But as far as teacher quality, teachers are--well, I
shouldn't use that term, because that's different in this bill.
But as far as evaluation, teachers want to be evaluated,
because teachers want to improve, and that should be the
purpose of evaluation--is to improve teaching rather than to
find fault with teachers and things like that. That is the
purpose.
If we can have this, where our rubric and things like that
give us the needs that we have as teachers to help us improve,
that's what we're looking for. But we do very much want to
avoid incentives and things like that that cause competition
between teachers.
And that's a real concern for us as far as teacher
evaluation and incentives, because in order for schools to be
successful and in order for our students to learn, all teachers
and all school personnel must work together for the education
of the whole child, and we don't want to start--I think I'm
speaking for all teachers in that regard. We don't want to
start anything that causes a competition between teachers,
because we do want to be able to collaborate and work together
and be the best that we can be.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
I think Senator Enzi made a great suggestion. I'd like to
start with Mr. Hess and go down--not right now--as soon as we
finish with Senator Paul and Mr. Seaton and Senator Isakson.
Senator Paul. If you want to, go ahead, and I'll ask my
question after you go down.
The Chairman. OK. You want to do that?
Senator Paul. Sure.
The Chairman. OK. I think Senator Enzi made a good
suggestion. Let's just start with Mr. Hess.
Mr. Schnur, you already had your shot. We'll skip you.
So Mr. Hess--and we'll just go down. What are the two or
three things you like about the bill or the two or three things
you don't like about the bill, if that's a fair enough
question.
STATEMENT OF FREDRICK HESS, RESIDENT SCHOLAR AND DIRECTOR OF
EDUCATION POLICY, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Hess. Sure. I appreciate the opportunity to be here,
Mr. Chairman, Senator Enzi, members. For me, actually, unlike
Mr. Schnur, I don't have the opportunity to spend as much time
kind of on the ground. I spend much more of my time trying to
look at these questions with some perspective.
I think if we look back at a half century of Federal
efforts to improve schooling, some pretty stark lessons stand
out that are rarely taken into account. We often spend time
talking about whether the Federal Government should or should
not be involved in education. If we go back to the Northwest
Ordinance, Morrill Land Grant Act, National Defense Education
Act, for more than two centuries, we've actually had the
Federal Government involved in some way.
For me, the much more useful question here is: What is the
Federal Government equipped to do well when it comes to
American education? I think the Federal Government is horribly
situated to improve schools or improve teaching. It is just
atrociously situated, because schools are enormously complex
organizations. What we've already heard today from several of
the folks on the ground--from Mr. Luna, from Mr. Grier--is how
much improving teacher accountability, improving teacher
evaluation, depends not on whether you do it, but on how you do
it.
And the problem is, given this design of the American
Federal system and the complexity of State education agencies
and local education agencies and schools--is no matter how
well-intended our efforts around trying to spell out
improvement models, trying to stipulate preparation for
principals who are going to take over turnaround schools,
efforts to specify evaluation models, long experience teaches
me that we are going to wind up with much more in the way of
regulation and case law and compliance than we are with
fulfillment of the intent of the law.
I would encourage us to be as cautious as possible about
trying to spell out interventions or remedies for either
schools or teachers. That said, I think there are some
particularly useful elements of the law. I think a coherent
vision of the Federal role recognizes that there are public
goods the Federal Government, to my mind, is uniquely equipped
with to provide an education.
One is robust and reliable transparency, both around
student performance, around outlays and expenditures, and
around disaggregating us to ensure that we have an x ray on how
well kids everywhere of all kinds are doing.
Second, the Federal Government, I think, has an explicit
charge to provide constitutional protections for vulnerable
populations. We do this in IDEA. I think title I is an effort
to do this. To my mind, the 5 percent target that's spelled out
in the committee bill is reasonable.
Jack Welch, when he ran General Electric, used to have a
mindset that they were going to try to fire the worst 10
percent of employees each year, not that he knew 10 percent was
the right number. It could have been 15. I could have been 5.
He just thought 10 percent was a reasonable target. And it
strikes me that encouraging States to address those worst 5
percent each year is not unreasonable, so long, again, as we
keep that focus on encouraging States to address it and not on
trying to stipulate models through which they should address
it.
Third, I think there is an enormously useful role in the
kind of stuff Mr. Schnur alluded to to provide political cover
for State, local, and union leaders who are trying to get
themselves out of anachronistic systems. Often, even when you
have superintendents like Mr. Grier or far-sighted union
leaders who would like to do things differently, they get
pulled back by their constituents who ask, ``What's in it for
us?''
One of the powerful levers of voluntary competitive grants
is the answer to ``What's in it for us?'', where we can go out,
we can bring a spotlight, we can bring home dollars, and it
provides us a chance to leapfrog into the 21st Century.
And fourth, I think there is a crucial Federal role when it
comes to basic research. I think Senator Bennet's forthcoming
amendment on ARPA-ED is enormously useful on this front. What I
would encourage, though, is we keep in mind that the Federal
role, if we think about DARPA, for instance, is to really
figure out how do we leverage basic technological innovations
and not get the Federal Government involved in trying to
recommend particular models of implementation.
I hope that's helpful.
The Chairman. Very good, Mr. Hess, very, very
comprehensive.
Ms. Geisselhardt.
Ms. Geisselhardt. In regard to what's positive about it, I
think, first of all, that--the statement Senator Enzi made was
that No Child Left Behind was ineffective, and I certainly have
to agree with that. And I would like to think of this really as
not the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind but the
reauthorization of ESEA.
As an educator, just the connotation of the term, No Child
Left Behind, really is demoralizing to us at this point,
because there is so much focus on testing, testing, testing
that we have no time to teach. And it really has become that
way within the schools. Working with gifted education, I run
into this all the time, because things that I want to do with
my students--the teachers don't want me to take them out of the
classroom because they're addressing a particular standard
that's going to be tested.
For instance, I was taking a group to view an open heart
surgery, a live open heart surgery, and one of my teachers was
giving a practice test to practice for the practice test to
practice for the test. I mean, that's the way that it goes.
These students are testing all year round, and it takes so much
time from instruction.
And as long as we keep our standards and our gap groups set
up as they are--I think the gap groups are effective. We want
to look at those gaps. We want to be sure that no child is left
behind, and that needs to be our concentration. And I was so
thrilled when No Child Left Behind passed because I thought,
``Hallelujah. Now we're going to see that every child learns
every day.''
But what we're doing in No Child Left Behind is we're
leaving behind most of our students, because our students that
have special needs are not being able to be taught the skills
that they need to be taught. Our FMD classes, where teachers
really, really, really, genuinely cared about these students,
wanted these students to learn skills that they could use in
their lives, life skills. They can no longer teach those skills
because they have to address the standards. These students are
going to be tested on the standards.
Gifted students are left behind totally, because they are
already proficient or distinguished, and so teachers don't feel
that they can use their time to work with these gifted
students. Consequently, test scores of our gifted students are
getting lower and lower. And many of these are the future
leaders of our country, and we're not meeting their needs. So
those students come to school and go home and have not learned
throughout the day.
But the real concern of mine--and I do work with gifted
students, is what I hear from the special ed teachers and their
concerns that they have that they can no longer--they deeply
care about these students or they wouldn't be in these jobs.
They couldn't be in these jobs. But they cannot address the
needs that these students really need in their classrooms.
We have even had an instance where we had a terminally ill
special needs child and tried to get an exemption for testing
and could not get that. Even with a doctor's note saying that
the testing--just the process of testing would be detrimental
to the child's health, we still could not get an exemption for
that child, and their scores were figured in our
accountability.
We have a student that has a four-word vocabulary. That's
all he speaks. And one of the phrases that he uses or the terms
that he uses--he can say, ``yes,'' ``no,'' ``mom,'' and ``hell,
no.'' That's all he says, and that's all--he's in sixth grade
now. That's all he has said throughout his schooling.
He's supposed to do a portfolio. Yes, it's an alternate
portfolio. You know, that's what people say--``Well, we have
alternate portfolios.'' But how do you do an alternate
portfolio with that?
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Luna.
Mr. Luna. Mr. Chairman, just one point of clarification. I
think a concern was raised earlier about the fact that
incentives could create competition in schools and that that
could be a negative impact. Just so you understand, in Idaho,
when it comes to student achievement, we only go down to the
school level. And so it actually fosters collaboration and
teamwork amongst all the teachers in the school because they're
working together to help all their students hit an academic
goal. And if they meet that goal, then all of the teachers
receive the financial incentive, not just a few teachers in the
school.
When it comes to No Child Left Behind, No Child Left Behind
reminds me of the old Clint Eastwood movie, ``The Good, The
Bad, and The Ugly,'' because there's a little bit of all of
that in the law. I think the good part is it brought us--you
know, this was 10 years ago. It brought us to a standards-based
education system where now we were accountable for every child
and we had to have a standardized way of measuring student
achievement.
The bad part of the law was it was a one-size-fits-all. And
in a State like Idaho, which is a rural State and then has
rural communities within that rural State, it was difficult to
implement the law.
The ugly part is we had a system where the Federal
Government set the goal, and then they prescribed to the States
what programs and processes we had to use to meet that goal.
And if their programs and processes didn't work, we were held
accountable. That was the ugly part.
I think that this law, this reauthorization, has kept the
good parts of No Child Left Behind. In fact, I think it's even
improved upon--going to a growth model, because if we're
serious about making sure that every child's needs are met,
then a growth model demands that a system not only focus on
those students that aren't at grade level but also those
students that are above, because you're obligated to show
academic growth for those students also. Today, once they hit
proficiency, you're tempted to not focus as much on students
that are proficient or higher and still focus on kids that are
below proficiency.
The other thing about the law is it recognizes the
leadership that States have stepped forward and taken in
improving education. States chose to work together to develop a
higher standard to hold all of our students to called, The
Common Core. It wasn't because it was federally mandated. We
chose to work together to create the next generation of
assessments, not because it was mandated but because we know
that's what's best for our students. And we chose to develop
the next generation of accountability.
You have 40 or more States that without any Federal mandate
or incentive have developed a higher standard for our students.
We're developing higher assessments to measure our students,
and we've come up with our own accountability plan that has had
quite a bit of influence on the law that's been drafted.
I think it's a 10th Amendment issue, right, and I think
it's recognizing the rights that States have and the
responsibilities that States have. And I'm comfortable with
that now more than even 10 years ago, because States now have
demonstrated that they are more than willing and ready to step
up and hold ourselves and our schools to a higher level of
accountability.
The Chairman. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Luna.
Ms. Neas.
STATEMENT OF KATHERINE BEH NEAS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR
GOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS, EASTER SEALS, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Neas. Thank you, Senator Harkin, Senator Enzi. I wanted
to just say a couple of things from the perspective of Easter
Seals. And I think our perspective is that students with
disabilities, in general, have greatly benefited from the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, because the law
requires their academic achievement to be measured and
reported.
As a result, more students with disabilities have been
afforded the opportunity to learn and master grade level
academic content. That has been huge for our kids--the whole
notion of they get a chance to try. There are a number of
things that we like in the Senate bill--the notion of States to
adopt college- and career-ready standards and an assumption of
high expectations.
We also are very pleased that the bill does not codify the
so-called 2 percent rule, which for us has allowed people to
apply very, very low expectations to achievement for students
with disabilities. We're very pleased with the elements that
promote universal design for learning throughout the bill;
access to multi-tiered systems of support, including positive
behavior interventions; and the notion that early learning can
begin at birth; and that this bill promotes those things.
There are a number of things that we're very concerned
about and look forward to working with you to improve them. The
bill doesn't change this notion of ``N'' size or subgroup size.
And as a result, right now, less than about 30 percent of
schools have enough students with disabilities to meet the
subgroup category. So 70 percent of schools don't even
measure--don't have enough kids according to their subgroup
size.
We know that lots of kids--their progress isn't being
measured and reported. This law requires 95 percent of kids to
be assessed. We understand that not every kid is going to be at
school every day. But we know that we need that data on
subgroup accountability.
We really want at the end of the day for all kids to have
access to the general education curriculum and for all kids to
be held to high expectations. I spent the last 4 days with 350
Easter Seals people around the country and have had story after
story after story of families who are told what their kid
couldn't do. And they came to us, and we were able to help them
figure out what they wanted to do.What I would plea to this
committee--don't put in barriers that make it hard for kids to
have access to the general curriculum. Before No Child Left
Behind, before the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, for
kids that have very significant cognitive disabilities, we used
to hear over and over again that what they were taught was
their colors.
And I'd get a family that would say, ``We got another--this
IEP--we've got goals in them that my kid's going to learn their
colors, yellow, red, green. Next year, the goals for my kid's
IEP are colors. My kids know their colors. We need to move
on.'' And No Child Left Behind, the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, has given us a form that says every kid deserves
the opportunity to make academic progress.
My plea to you is let's continue on that to make sure that
there aren't barriers put in place that disallow kids to have
access to the general curriculum, access to the supports that
they need to learn. And one of the things we need are teachers
who know what they're doing, who are committed to these kids,
who will help them learn, and the tools to help them do that.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Seaton.
Mr. Seaton. Thank you again. One of the things--yes, we do
need Federal involvement. We need your money. And in order to
say that we need your money, you need to be able to have some
involvement in the guidance of where and how that money is
spent.
I do believe in Tennessee that we are moving forward and a
culture has been created by No Child Left Behind that looks at
the numbers, that looks at data. And we are willing to change
and update our strategies on a regular basis.
There are three things that I want to talk about.
Evaluation--real quickly, it has to happen. In the military,
they used to say, ``Inspect what you expect.'' Evaluations will
cause us to look at how we're going to accomplish the things
that we need to accomplish.
Leaders--we need leaders, and a lot of times, people think
that becoming an administrator in a school system--you teach
10, 15 years, 3 or 5 years, and you can just become a leader.
Leaders don't happen like that all the time.
There needs to be something--this guy Collins wrote Built
to Last and Good to Great. Those are big-time business books.
But they look at how to be effective over the course of time
and how major companies have lasted, and then what they did to
last. We need to be able to take those same types of data
points and benchmark what it takes to be a good leader in a
school. And we need to look at the top 5 percent of schools as
well as the bottom 5 percent, because those bottom 5 percent of
schools are our dropout factories. And we need to address that
with accountability.
I think that No Child Left Behind pointed us in the right
direction. But it didn't give us the resources that we
necessarily needed to make those changes. So as I look at what
you are talking about--we have a program in Memphis called
Cradle to Career, and it looks at education from birth to your
career.
The college readiness program that you all have
incorporated, I applaud, and I think that we, as educators and
as a family of Americans, need to get together, and we just
need to kind of accept the direction that you all have given
us. And I thank you for this time.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Seaton.
Again, what's good and what's bad about the bill?
Mr. Grier.
Mr. Grier. Thank you, Senator. First, we want to say thank
you for continuing to have an accountability component in
there. Focusing on the bottom 5 percent of our schools that are
persistently low achieving schools that have an achievement gap
and allowing States some discretion in developing an
accountability system in their State, I think, is all positive.
We also would like very much that we no longer have to set
aside money for supplemental educational services.
In our district, this after-school tutoring program has not
yielded any results. We actually have had vendors that would
give students rides to movie theaters in stretch limousines for
signing up with them. Last year in our district we created our
own tutorial program in our turnaround schools. We
reconstituted five middle schools and four high schools. And we
tutored all sixth and ninth graders in those schools in math
every day, one tutor per two children.
At the end of the year, we had twice the academic gains
that the Harlem Children's Zone achieved last year. We know
that good tutoring with a good curriculum that is organized and
that can occur during the school day can pay huge dividends.
Based on our own experience with turnaround models, we
would like to really encourage you to modify the one where the
current legislation limits the schools that reclassify as
persistently low achieving to only use the closure and restart
models. We believe that repeat classification should only
prevent the LEA from using the same model they used during that
initial classification.
We also would like to caution the committee on the
additional reporting requirements that we fear may be attached
to our parental involvement and in the successful safe and
healthy students initiatives. We worry that, potentially, a
large portion of funding allocations to these reforms will go
simply into reporting mandates. We don't need that type of
additional bureaucracy. We just don't.
Finally, one of the things that concerns us in Houston--and
it concerns a lot of my colleagues in a lot of the large school
districts--is this issue around comparability. And there are
some real problems with that in the current legislation. We
would love to work with you later to perhaps work through some
of this. But the way that you would come in and determine the
formula around comparability is very problematic.
The Chairman. Which is in the bill?
Mr. Grier. Which is in the current bill--needs major
attention.
The Chairman. Which is in the current bill that we have,
not the current law.
Mr. Grier. Current bill we have.
The Chairman. Got it.
Mr. Grier. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. I just wanted to be clear what you said.
Mr. Grier. It's just a huge issue, particularly in a
district, for example, like Houston, where in turning around
our lowest performing secondary schools--and these were schools
that were tagged with the label of dropout factories. We went
out this past year and raised almost $15 million from private
sources. We lengthened the school day by an hour. We added a
week to the school year. We hired all these additional tutors.
Well, that cost more money.
To do that and bring those outside dollars in--and now, all
of a sudden, those are there. In the bill's current language,
if we had to use the comparability formula that you have here,
these schools would actually be penalized by our efforts to go
out and raise additional dollars.
Another thing that bothers me an awful lot as a school
superintendent is that it just simply costs more money to turn
these schools around. And I wish your current bill had some
type of set-aside in the title I revenues that we receive that
would be required to be spent on those schools.
And people can say to you, ``Well, you have the flexibility
to do that.'' Yes, you do. You often don't have the political
will to do that, and that's very, very tough, because you're
then taking money away from another school to insert in your
lowest performing schools.
I don't have the magic number in terms of what that set-
aside should look like. But we set aside 1 percent for parental
involvement. Some people argue that's too low, but it is a set-
aside that requires us to spend money to make sure we can
engage our parents.
These schools that are so low performing--it takes more
money. I can promise you one of the things I'm more concerned
about than anything we've talked about here today--and I don't
know how your bill addresses this--is the human capital that's
required to address these 5 percent schools.
Quality principals, quality teachers in every classroom--
those are easy words to say. But when you get out and you start
recruiting, our nine turnaround schools--we recruited
nationally. We offered $20,000 and $30,000 incentives, stretch
goals, $5,000 signing bonuses to get principals to go into
these schools.
We didn't have anyone from our highest performing schools
lined up to go into those schools--no one. And we recruited 70
principals to hire 9. We hired those nine principals, and after
a year, we replaced four of them. It's just hard work. And this
whole issue around turning around these lowest performing
schools--the biggest issue that we'll talk about is the issue
around human capital.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Grier.
Ms. Danks.
Ms. Danks. Thank you again. Something I really liked about
the bill was the idea that each State would be adopting the
college and career readiness standards. I think having those
high expectations for all of our students is very important and
is going to get our students ready for the 21st Century
workforce or college or whatever they end up doing.
Something that I think has been missing for far too long
from many of our standards are life skill standards, standards
that address those skills that our students with the most
severe cognitive disabilities need to master in order to be
successful after their high school term is finished. So we
focus a lot on the students that are typically developing, on
what they're going to do after high school.
But this other population is left behind by not having
those standards so that teachers know what to teach, so that we
can effectively measure progress toward those standards, and so
that we can be sure that those students are ready for whatever
they may be getting into when they're finished with high
school.
Everyone says that we assess too much. I think that we
assess ineffectively too much. I agree. We have a lot of
practice tests for the practice tests in order to take the real
tests. I think that's completely ineffective.
If we were able to adopt some more effective assessments
that provided teachers and administrators with the data
necessary in order to inform our instruction and improve our
instructional strategies so that we can push our students to
those higher levels, then we would be able to assess quickly,
efficiently, and more often. That data would be collected
immediately.
I know we've talked about computer-based assessments. Those
often are able to give us more quick results and provide them
in such a way that the teacher can use those the next day in
order to inform their instruction and make better strategy
decisions.
Something that was always a struggle with No Child Left
Behind that I didn't fully understand how it was addressed in
this bill are the highly qualified standards. I know when I
came through teaching, I did come through an alternative
certification program, and the highly qualified standards was a
lot of paperwork. No one ever came in my classroom to be sure
that I was highly effective, but my paperwork was in, and
that's all that mattered.
I feel like we're missing the target on that. Anyone can
turn in transcripts, but not everyone can be a highly effective
teacher in the classroom. We've talked a lot about the
evaluation of teachers and principals. With that evaluation
comes support and guidance. And so I think that is a huge piece
missing in that highly qualified standards discussion.
Just because a teacher is highly effective 1 year with a
new student population or at a new school, they may not be
highly effective. I think that continued support to help our
teachers grow into better instructors is going to be paramount
for our students' success.
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Danks.
Mr. Henderson.
STATEMENT OF WADE HENDERSON, PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE LEADERSHIP
CONFERENCE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Henderson. Thank you, Chairman Harkin, Senator Enzi,
and to all the distinguished members of this committee. I want
to thank you for inviting me to this important bipartisan
roundtable discussion on the reauthorization of the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act.
Mr. Chairman, I have been uncharacteristically quiet this
morning, and I would hope that gives me perhaps an additional
minute to lay out both things that we like about this bill as
well as those that pose a concern. So let me begin.
Let me say at the outset that I think all of us seem to
agree that No Child Left Behind is in need of significant
improvement. I think we would also agree that the global
economy has imposed new demands on our Nation to improve the
quality of public education available, both K through 12 but
also post-secondary education.
The fact that our workforce is going to be drawn from an
increasingly diverse population of individuals both native born
and immigrants in our country makes this not just a moral
issue--and, that is, improving education reform is a moral
issue--but it's also a national security issue. And the fact
that this committee is taking seriously its responsibilities
for a deeper dive in this area is extremely important.
There are things about this bill that, indeed, represent
improvements over current law. I'm going to outline them very
briefly, and then I want to talk about the other things which
pose concern.
We are very pleased that the bill requires more equitable
funding within districts. I would disagree with Mr. Grier with
respect to the responsibility of the Federal Government to use
its leverage and its resources to help encourage improvement in
this area. I think the bill does have an improved effort to
address the problems of dropout factories, which are those
schools that represent a significant part of the schools where
individuals drop out annually. And for African-Americans and
Latinos and native Americans, we often lose perhaps as many as
50 percent of our high school graduating class annually.
I think the bill does a great job in providing college- and
career-ready standards. I would agree with Ms. Danks that there
is improvement there. I'm pleased about the importance of data
collection to ensure that the subgroups of boys and girls
aren't matched and that interventions can be targeted more
effectively. I think that's important.
We think the STEM courses available to under-represented
groups is an improvement. All those things represent
significant improvement, and we were especially pleased with
Senator Franken's effort to provide additional protections for
students in foster care. It makes a significant difference.
Those things are, we think, very important.
But, unfortunately, from our standpoint, these improvements
are overshadowed by the bill's, albeit it perhaps unintended,
but nonetheless historic retreat on the accountability
question. And because of this retreat, dozens of civil rights,
education, and business organizations, including the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, have determined that we cannot support the
bill at this time.
We have issued a statement to that effect, which I would
request be entered into the record of this discussion this
morning.\1\
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\1\ Editor's Note: The statement referred to may be found at http:/
/dl.dropbox.com/u/2906714/
MoreGroupsWithholdSupportfromESEA_11_8_2011.pdf.
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The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Henderson. Now, we are troubled by several provisions
in the bill. Let me see if I can just outline them with the
same brevity that I did with those things that we like.
We are concerned that the States would be required to take
action to improve only a small number of low performing
schools, that is, the bottom 5 percent of the schools in most
States, and that while the bill does identify an additional 5
percent of schools with achievement gaps and those considered
dropout factories, the bill does not require these schools to
make any significant academic progress and prescribes no
interventions. Moreover, it allows each State to decide which
achievement gaps merit attention and which do not.
In the remaining 95 percent of the schools that are not
among the States' very worst performing public schools, large
numbers of low achieving students will simply slip through the
cracks. Now, obviously, that happens today. But that is not the
measure that we use to determine whether a newly reauthorized
Elementary and Secondary Education Act is responsive to those
problems. In many States, these students will be low-income
students, students of color, those learning English, and
students with disabilities.
The bill also does not require States to set targets for
significantly improving high school graduation rates, despite
the fact, as I noted, that every year, about 1.3 million
students drop out, and only a little over half of the students
of color, including African-American, Latino, native American,
and southeast Asian students, graduate on time.
And then, finally, for English language learners, the bill
eliminates annual, measurable objectives, which is a critical
accountability element for the title III program.
Finally, the bill weakens requirements in the current law
requiring that low-income students and students of color be
taught at a higher rate by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-
of-field teachers. We know that we can't close the achievement
gap if we don't also close the teacher quality gap.
Now, I don't have the experience of many of the teachers
and principals who work on the ground every day. But I am a
board member, a trustee, of the Educational Testing Service.
The Educational Testing Service, as a non-profit corporation,
has launched a series of symposia and seminars focusing on ways
to close the achievement gap. And in, I think, a highly
academic and a deeper dive, they've identified a number of
elements that lead to actually reducing the achievement gap
between students.
But all of them are based on the core principle of
accountability. It is indispensable to advancing the common
goals that we have about closing the achievement gaps and
maintaining our country's competitiveness in the global
economy. I think it's fair to say and without hyperbole that
the provisions in the bill that we have focused on with
greatest concern really represent the de facto end of a
national accountability system as we have come to understand
it.
And while I believe that this notion of providing
flexibility for individual school districts and schools may be
important given the context in which it is raised, it is not
appropriate to offer flexibility that, in effect, represents an
end to the establishment of national standards that have been
the significant--in fact, arguably, the most significant driver
of the improvement of public schools that we've seen over the
past decade of No Child Left Behind.
With that in mind, sir, thank you, and I appreciate the
opportunity to----
The Chairman. I thought that was very thorough. Thank you
very much.
And, Mr. Thomas, you've got the hammer.
STATEMENT OF ELMER THOMAS, PRINCIPAL, MADISON CENTRAL HIGH
SCHOOL, RICHMOND, KY
Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Senator. I really appreciate the
opportunity to speak to you today, and I just want to say that
as a principal, I love my students. I love my job as principal.
I love working with our students every day and with our
teachers every day. And in looking at this reauthorization,
there are two or three things that I'd like to mention that I
think are very positive and then some things that we can
certainly work on.
Certainly, I think--as everyone is--in mind, we're looking
out for interests of students. And so some good things that I
think are in the bill--in the recommendation would be the
student growth model. You've heard that quite a bit, and I
think that's a real positive thing. To get rid of the punitive
AYP sanctions was very effective, and so we appreciate that
effort.
A lot of my work has been based on the college and career
readiness standards. I think that's a good start there as well.
I do think that it's important with the college and career
readiness standards that we look at what our States are doing
and allow the States to determine what those standards are. And
in Kentucky, we've begun that work and are certainly very
appreciative of that opportunity to set the standards as a
State.
There are some things with the reauthorization that
certainly should be looked at and thought about thoroughly
before we move forward with anything--once again, locally
determine what our college and career readiness standard looks
like; in addition, approving some assessments for our students
with special needs based on their accommodations set forth in
their IEPs. I think our local ARC, the release committees, can
determine what those assessments look like. And in so doing,
there's going to have to be a removal of the 1 percent cap on
some of our alternative assessments for our special needs
students.
An example of that would be if you look at Madison Central
High School, we are about 1,750 students. And if you take 1
percent of that for alternative assessment, that would be 17\1/
2\--let's round up--18 students. At Madison Central, we have
our severe disability students--we have three classrooms, 10
students each, for a total of 30 students. And so now we're
looking at an accountability that doesn't include the entire
population that could have an IEP that says that they should be
on an alternative assessment.
And so I would like for there to be an alternative
assessment for--just remove the 1 percent cap there and let
that local IEP--ARC committee determine that--that would be
really good.
An issue that we find that we struggle with, at least, in
my district and my previous district is the highly qualified
part of the reauthorization. Whenever we look at the highly
qualified, it's very burdensome. Our teachers struggle--we
struggle to hire special needs teachers. And as we are all very
aware, some of the best teachers don't come through a natural
path through certification, and so we'd like some alternative
ways and not really put the burden on the highly qualified
mandate about the testing--so, for example, to be highly
qualified.
We want to get highly qualified teachers for all of our
students, and special needs is one area that we struggle in. We
want to have high standards and put the best teachers in place
there. But to do so requires a very burdensome testing process.
We'd like to advocate for some local decisions there on what
that highly qualified status looks like.
And then last, just simply as a principal, I was very
fortunate a month ago to come to Capitol Hill and to petition
on behalf of principals across the United States. But certainly
as the Met Life NASSP Principal of the Year from Kentucky, I
just have to talk about the four school turnaround models that
we have that include getting rid of the principal in each one
of those models if they have been in their position for more
than 2 years.
Obviously, I think there are certainly principals out there
who are poor principals who need to be removed. But, certainly,
if we just put one assessment, or if we put one measure on
those principals and remove them, then it's going to be quite
difficult to keep some of our best principals. A really good
example would be in our home State, in one of our counties, our
principal has been there for just a little bit over 2 years.
And he is in the bottom 5 percent--his school is, and we want
to turn that school around, and he seems to be doing a really
good job.
And if you look at their college and career readiness
standards, they're doing very well. But based on the sanctions
listed by the 5 percent, he's got to lose his job. As a result,
I cannot support the four school turnaround models. And I would
like to just ask for a fair analysis first to determine whether
the existing principal is making gains and use some alternative
measures to make those gains.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Thomas.
Let's see, Senator Paul.
Statement of Senator Paul
Senator Paul. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the Chairman and the Ranking Member for
having this hearing. I continue to learn more about the issue
every time I hear more about not only No Child Left Behind, but
about various ideas. I think it's a recommendation for the
hearing that we have a packed crowd. We have had standing room
only the whole time. I think it is good.
And I, for one, see problems. As a physician, you try to
diagnose the problem, you try to fix it. And we should continue
to look at that as a problem solving sort of orientation for
this.
I do think that there is a large philosophical sort of
debate and battle that is part of this. For example, I hear
ideas from people who are probably Republican, Democrat,
liberal, and conservative on this panel, and a lot of them are
good ideas. To my mind, it's not whether it's a good idea or
bad. It's where it gets instituted that does make a difference.
For example, Mr. Grier has ideas. Mr. Seaton has ideas.
They all sound good. But I'm afraid that once we make them
universal--and while I would probably vote for Mr. Grier to be
superintendent or Mr. Luna to be superintendent of their
schools, I don't want them to be the national superintendent of
schools.
And so it is a big difference--how much is it Federal. I
think for the most part, the farther we--and this is a
philosophical point. The farther we get away from the local
school, the worse it gets. And the farther we get away from
local government to national government, the worse the
oversight gets.
I don't know that we can judge who a good teacher is. I
think Ms. Geisselhardt is a good teacher, but I would have to
know more. I would have to sit in her class, and I would have
to look at that. I would have to maybe judge on how well her
students are doing, but it's complicated. But I don't think I
can ever know here whether she's a good teacher or not. And
Columbia, KY is different than Memphis. It's different than
Houston.
My argument for it is to keep in mind that there is a
philosophical question here on local versus Federal. And I
think we're coming together in understanding that maybe Federal
overbearing or Federal overreach in education hasn't been good,
and that it sometimes makes people a number.
People talk about special needs kids and special education
kids. I think to put a number on them that makes them some sort
of abstract mathematical percentage is a mistake. I mean, I
don't know how I can tell whether 17 or 30 is right for the
school district in Richmond, KY. I would think only locally
they could figure that out.
I think we shouldn't have numbers in our bill that say--I
think we all are concerned. I don't think Mr. Thomas is not
concerned about special needs. He's concerned about being
judged unfairly or his school is.
I think we've gone a long way in the right--a long way
toward fixing some of these problems with AYP, with yearly
progress. But I still am concerned that we still have the
testing mandates, which will have people practicing to do
tests, to do tests. I don't think we fixed that. I think that
is still a problem that should be and could be fixed.
And so I'm glad we're having this hearing, because we still
will try on the floor--and I would encourage all of you through
your organizations--anybody through any teaching organization
to still continue to lobby Congress because I've been at least
given some indication that we may allow amendments on the
floor, relevant amendments to this. And I hope we will so we
can make it better. We don't do this very often. We haven't
done it in a long time. We need to try to make it better.
I am concerned and I'd like to ask this question--is that
we are still going to judge the bottom 5 percent the way we've
been judging schools. But we've kind of determined the way
we've been judging schools wasn't very good. Somebody can help
me out if I'm wrong on this, but I think we're still going to
judge the bottom 5 percent the way we've been judging schools.
The problem I have with that is my kid goes to a public
high school and it gets awards from either Forbes magazine or
Newsweek for being one of the best schools. But it's also told
it's failing by No Child Left Behind--37 States want out. And
so, really, that makes me think the law is not very good and
maybe we need more dramatic changes than what we're actually
addressing.
I guess my question is how are we going to determine--if
our model is not working for determining which is a good school
now, is it a good thing to keep the 5 percent judged that way,
or do we need to reassess how we judge who are the bottom 5
percent? And I'd like to start out with Mr. Thomas and see if
he'll make a comment on that. But then I'd be more than welcome
to hear other folks on this as well.
Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Senator Paul. Well, I just think
that it's very difficult whenever you use one measure to
determine what your school is going to be successful as. Under
the old law, certainly Madison Central High School has never
met AYP. And so, therefore, we have struggled historically to
meet that standard, and, of course, the standard, as it rose,
became quite frustrating.
However, whenever we look at our new model, Madison Central
High School is in the top third of college and career
readiness. So whenever you're using just one kind of goal to
determine what's meeting that standard, it's quite frustrating
because it becomes--one target is successful and another target
is not. It's kind of like what you're mentioning about your
local school--is that according to one standard, they're a very
good performing school. But according to another standard,
they're not meeting that.
And so that's the issue that I struggle with there as
well--is that we need to use multiple forms of assessment if
we're going to do that--not over-testing, by the way. I'm not
advocating for that. But let's look at the school holistically
and see what we're doing.
The Chairman. Might as well just continue on down the line.
I assume all of the ones are up to respond to what Senator Paul
said, I suppose.
Mr. Henderson.
Mr. Henderson. Let me say, Senator Paul----
The Chairman. I don't know if your hand went up, but since
we were there, let's just go this way.
Mr. Henderson. Thank you, sir.
Let me respond, Senator Paul, if I might, to your opening
observation that this discussion we're having today involves
primarily a philosophical difference about whether the States
are the best laboratories for establishing significant reforms
for education and whether the Federal Government may, in fact,
have a role to play. I don't think anyone is advocating the
nationalization of public education. The Supreme Court, as you
know, has already addressed that issue in San Antonio v.
Rodriguez, a 1974 case which has acknowledged that public
education is not a fundamental right under the Constitution.
But that same Supreme Court sought to examine early efforts
to implement a states' right philosophy with regard to public
education and found it deeply wanting and, in fact, offensive
to the Constitution, because the results of the effort did not
provide simply just an equality of educational opportunity but
significant investment in those communities that had the least
amount of political power or influence or were tainted by
racial bias which was evident in a number of the States that
spoke most loudly in favor of States' rights in public
education.
The decision in Brown v. The Board of Education
established, established, a Federal interest which No Child
Left Behind essentially sought to vindicate by ensuring that
the use of Federal dollars could be an incentive to improve the
quality of public education available to students. That
principle hasn't changed. It has been a bipartisan consensus
that included people like Senator Alexander, who, as Secretary
of Education, sought to implement similar efforts, and George
W. Bush, who, in fact, signed No Child Left Behind into law.
This is not about a philosophical conversation about how
best to educate students. It's about the practical effects of
the failure to recognize the constitutional interest that every
student has to a quality public education which was not being
adequately served by State law. And so under the circumstances,
I don't think this bill represents an extension of that
principle. I think it represents a fair representation of where
the principle stood.
Now, I've expressed my concerns about the accountability
system because I think under the guise of reform, the
provisions in the bill go too far to negate the legitimate
Federal interest that we recognize exists. So rather than
weakening that Federal interest, given the history of bias and
discrimination under the State system, if anything, we should
be looking to reinforce it in a more significant and positive
way.
I don't see this as a philosophical debate at all. I see it
as a practical debate affecting real live students and the
consequences of a failure to educate them properly.
The Chairman. Mr. Grier.
Mr. Grier. Thank you, Senator Harkin. As I understand the
bill as it's written today, the bill doesn't just address the 5
percent of the lowest performing schools or the schools that
have the largest achievement gap. It also gives States the
option of identifying additional low performing schools in
their States. And I think that the States should be commended.
Now, whether or not we get into a debate about whether or
not some States are different than the others--I happen to
believe that States ought to have some flexibility in that
arena, as I also believe local school districts should. When
our State told us last year that we had four low performing
high schools that they labeled dropout factories, well, quite
frankly, we had three or four other high schools that had--we
had some input--we may have decided perhaps needed more
attention than two of the ones on the list. They were
identified by one narrow definer.
And so how you intertwine all that local flexibility and
the State flexibility, I think, is important. It's often more
difficult to do than it is--than to say that we ought to do it.
The Chairman. Now, I'm going to skip over one, two, three.
I know that both Mr. Hess and Mr. Schnur have to leave. It's
11:30. I will go to those two and then come back to the three.
Mr. Schnur and then Mr. Hess.
Mr. Schnur. Chairman Harkin, thank you. I just got word
that I was able to move my meeting back, so I've got a little
bit longer to get back to New York.
The Chairman. Oh, well, then, I'll get to you later. OK.
Mr. Hess.
Mr. Hess. You've got remarkable power, Mr. Schnur--move
meetings from anywhere.
Thank you. I'd like to just say a couple of words about
Senator Paul's question, and then really just a couple of other
points I'd like to show the committee. One is I think Senator
Paul is precisely right. One of the design flaws in No Child
Left Behind was that--one of its great strengths, as Mr.
Henderson has indicated, was that it essentially took a
national x ray of where students were. It told us how students
were performing at a given point in time.
Now, the problem with that and the way it was used is that
an x ray doesn't tell you the cause. Knowing that students of
this demographic profile in this community are at this level of
achievement in reading or math or science does not tell us
whether that is due to the school's performance, whether it is
due to their home environment, or whether it is due to all of
their prior years of schooling.
One of the problems with that x ray that No Child Left
Behind took was we had tried to then use it as the basis for
identifying whether schools were performing adequately or not,
and I think that was a profound design flaw. Many of us pointed
this out close to a decade ago, and it is still--it is very
healthy to see the Senate wrestling with this today.
The superior alternative to try to identify this 5
percent--again, recognizing there's going to be murkiness about
whether it's the exact rate, 5 percent--is to focus on how well
those students are faring in the course of that academic year.
So what we really want to do is look at how much those students
are learning in things that we deem essential in the course of
an academic year. That is the right essential starting point
for identifying whether schools are doing their job well.
Again, because I think it is an imprecise science, because
I think no matter how well-intended Federal interventions may
be, they are, unfortunately, likely to do more harm than good,
I think it is not useful to try to prescribe models. But I do
think as, you know, picking up 10 cents on the dollar for State
and district outlays, it is appropriate for the Federal
Government to insist that States be identifying and coming up
with strategies to address these.
Just a couple of other points I'd like to make real quick,
since I, unfortunately, am required to leave. One, I think
we've heard a number of what I would regard as terrific
suggestions and practices about how to educate children in
schools and districts. I think the mistake is to imagine that
when they are good ideas, we need to try to then promote them
and encourage them from Washington.
It's not that--there is one question which the Senator
pointed--Senator Paul pointed out which is the philosophic
question. But even pragmatically, when Mr. Grier is trying to
drive school improvement in Houston, what he is doing is
working with a teacher unit, Houston Federation of Teachers. He
is working with a district over which he oversees control. He
is working with a board. He is working with employees who
report to him. That is profoundly different from what the
Senate or House are attempting to do in writing legislation.
All ESEA can do is empower the U.S. Department of Education
to issue regulations attached to funding, which then must be
funneled through State education agencies, which then must be
picked up by school district superintendents. And at the end of
the day, what we wind up with are rules, regs, case law which
create enormous and often unanticipated compliance burdens.
Just one very evocative illustration is--Robert Bobb did a
couple of years as a Detroit financial manager. One of the
crazy ideas he tried to promote was the idea that they ought to
be moving title I dollars out of substitute teacher funds and
field trips into early childhood literacy. The State education
agency told him he was not permitted to, that this was in
violation of Federal guidelines around title I. Now, the U.S.
Department of Education said that was incorrect, that he was
actually--and consistent with the appropriate interpretation of
the law.
But that's what happens when we try to write laws from
Washington and they wind up on books at the State and in the
district. We wind up creating enormous and unexpected hurdles
for people trying to solve these problems in schools and
districts.
Just two other really quick points--one, let me say that
when it comes to school turnaround, when it comes to teacher
evaluation, I have enormous respect for what Mr. Schnur is
talking about, Mr. Luna, Mr. Grier. But I would argue that
decades of experience in education, and particularly out of
education, tell us it's not whether you do it. It's how well
you do it.
There are three decades of research, for instance, on
turnarounds, total quality management, corporate re-
engineering. In the best case scenarios, these work 30 percent
of the time. To imagine that we can identify some models that
we will then require folks to use and imagine that that is
going to increase the likelihood that they will succeed is, I
think, just too--is to allow our aspirations to exceed what we
can actually competently and usefully do.
And just to give one very concrete example of--I think,
particularly on the teacher evaluation front--what I am
concerned about, you may have read or heard about new school
models, hybrid schools, like Carpe Diem or Rocketship academies
or the School of One in New York City. One of the important
things to note is these school models become very nearly
illegal under much of what we're talking about in terms of
state-of-the-art teacher evaluation.
These schools do not have a teacher of record in the
conventional fashion. So in order to try to track students to a
teacher and hold that teacher accountable in a hybrid model or
an online model or the School of One model simply doesn't work.
If you require that teachers are going to be evaluated in this
fashion, you either need to provide substantial waivers and
loopholes or make sure that we are not regulating in a fashion
that locks us into the 19th Century schoolhouse.
Thank you so much. I was honored to be here today.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Very good. I had three
more. I had Neas, Luna, Geisselhardt, and Schnur--I guess four.
If you could give me just a couple of minutes--because I want
to get to Senator Isakson and Senator Franken--just a couple of
minutes, please.
Ms. Neas. I'll be brief. I wanted to just review quickly
with the committee--who are students with disabilities, because
I think there is a great deal of confusion about who is a
student with a disability who's getting special education
services.
Eighty-five percent of students in special education have a
disability that does not prohibit--that does not bar them from
doing grade level work. If we look at who the categories are,
42, almost 43 percent of kids in special education have a
specific learning disability. Almost 20 percent have a speech
or language delay. Eleven percent have something called other
health impaired.
So for the kids who could probably be appropriately in an
alternate assessment on alternate academic achievement
standards, those 1 percent kids, if we added up all the kids in
the category of mental retardation, all the kids in the
category of autism, all the kids in the category of traumatic
brain injury, and all the kids in the category of multiple
disabilities, we have far--we're still close--not all those
kids are going to be incapable of learning grade level work.
But a lot of those kids are being directed to an inappropriate
assessment for them simply because of the nature of their
disability category.
I have been in too many IEP meetings, and I agree with my
colleagues here on the panel who say the test is driving too
many things. I've been in IEP meetings in Virginia for kids who
can do grade level work in certain subjects who have been told
they can't access the general curriculum because the test
dictates what curriculum they have. We can't put more kids into
this track where they can't have access to the general
curriculum, and they can't learn what all the other kids are
being exposed to.
I think that's just a really important point that we
understand--who are these kids. And a very, very, very small
number of them are kids who cannot do grade level work.
The second thing is, I think it's absolutely essential that
teachers have the skill and knowledge to do the job they've
been asked to do; and, third, that testing has to inform
instruction. I don't know why we're testing if we're not doing
something that's going to turn around and benefit kids. I think
the issues and concerns we have with the bill--we need to make
sure that we're not putting more kids in an inappropriate
assessment which is tracking them out of the general education
curriculum.
I want to add just one quick thing about accountability. As
you know, your bill limits accountability to the bottom
performing 5 percent schools. And with the other 95 percent of
the schools, one of the things that we're very concerned about
is--we still have the disaggregated data reporting requirement,
which is really good. But where there are achievement gaps, we
think there should be some trigger that something has to
happen. And I keep calling it Subsection Do-Something, where if
there is an achievement gap, we do something more than report
it--that schools need to look at why that gap is there and take
some action to address it.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you what that should be.
Schools know what that should be, but they need to do
something. Those are my two points.
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Neas.
Again, just a couple of minutes, I want to give Senator
Isakson-- who's been waiting a long time--a chance to say
something.
Mr. Luna. Thank you, Senator. I just wanted to comment that
under the current No Child Left Behind law, we are on track for
100 percent of our schools to be held to Federal sanctions.
Under the new law, it's 5 percent. I think it finds the proper
balance. I think it's also important to understand that States
have the responsibility--under the new law, States would have
the responsibility to intervene for all schools. It's just the
Federal Government is only prescriptive on 5 percent.
I think that finds the balance, Senator Paul, that I think
those of us who consider ourselves conservative are looking
for, what is the proper role of the Federal Government here.
The U.S. Constitution is silent when it comes to education, so
the 10th Amendment says it's left to the States. My
Constitution at the State level is very specific that I have a
responsibility to provide a uniform, thorough system of common
public schools.
I think there are some on this panel who think that if the
Federal Government does not mandate something, the States will
not do it. And I think our actions speak otherwise.
Ten years ago, we had a law that required--before No Child
Left Behind, we had Federal laws that required standards and
assessments for all students. But 39 States had opted out of
it. Today, we have States that, on their own, without any
mandate from the Federal Government, have adopted a standard
that is comparable to any academic standard in the world. And
we're moving toward assessments that will be less intrusive and
more informative, and we have put forth a plan for an
accountability system that is an even higher level of
accountability than the current No Child Left Behind requires.
I don't think that it's an accurate portrayal of the
attitudes of States today to move forward with a bill that is
based on the premises if the Federal Government doesn't mandate
it, States will not do that. I think States have demonstrated
that they're more than willing and on their own have adopted a
higher standard and a higher level of accountability.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Luna.
Ms. Geisselhardt, quickly.
Ms. Geisselhardt. In listening to Ms. Neas, I think
Kentucky must be a little ahead of the ball game, as far as
trying to close these achievement gaps. When we see these gaps,
that does mean something needs to be done. And that's the
problem, actually. We're working very hard at closing these
gaps. And I also agree with her that the ESEA and No Child Left
Behind have helped tremendously the majority of the special ed
students. As she was saying, many of those students are able to
work at grade level.
But the ones I was referring to were those that are not
capable. No matter what we do with those students, no matter
what interventions we use, they are not--they're identified
because they are not capable of working at grade level. And
they should be assessed according to their IEPs rather than
according to the assessment----
The Chairman. They fall into that 1 percent category.
Ms. Geisselhardt. That depends on your numbers in your
district. And we've never had the number in our districts to
fall into that 1 percent. They go in with our regular
accountability. And while I do have this mic, I do want to
emphasize what Mr. Hess said as far as funding. That is so very
important.
I don't think that more funding is the answer by any means
to education. The answer is to get funding channeled in the
right direction. There's an awful lot of waste in education
funding, and there just needs to be more flexibility as far as
the use of funds.
The Chairman. Very good.
Last, and then I'm going to go to Senator Isakson.
Mr. Schnur. Thank you, Chairman Harkin. Just three very
quick points on testing, turnarounds, and the urgency of
passing the bill.
First of all, on testing, Senator Paul raised a point that
I think we--in this country, there are schools and systems that
have become too myopically focused on tests as the one
indicator. And I think that we haven't seen a good organization
drive progress without a set of measurable goals that are
driving progress every day. I think we've gone too far in the
direction of one test.
I think this bill includes some important components, as I
understand it, to go beyond just testing, but to look at things
like--including not only high school completion rates but
college enrollment rates and the percentage of kids going to
college without remediation. I think that's a very healthy
move, to focus on goals and outcomes but not just tests. That's
one point.
Second, on turnarounds, I must say, from my perspective,
the capacity to turn around low-income schools is very limited
in this country. I don't believe just from a practical
perspective in the next few years we've got the capacity to
turn around more than a fairly low percentage of the most low
achieving schools. So while I agree with many of Mr.
Henderson's comments about accountability, I don't think we
should overreach in terms of the Federal Government trying to
do too much, too many schools directly, because we just don't
have the capacity to do it.
My concern, though, is on the achievement gap schools. I do
think--I was a public school kid. My kids are going to public
schools. There's a lot of public schools around the country
that are serving many kids well but not kids in great need and
kids of color. I think that those schools aren't going to
improve for the kids in greatest need if there's not some press
to improve that. I think that's an area for focus.
Then third and last, I would just say on the urgency of
this bill overall, this is a race against technology. It's a
race against the economy. You know, one piece of data that
strikes me is in 1973, there were only a quarter of jobs in the
United States that required some post-secondary education--a
quarter. In a few years, two-thirds of the jobs in the United
States will require some post-secondary education. This is a
change of seismic and rapid proportions by historical
standards.
We were once first in the world in college completion
rates, high school completion rates. We've slipped to 15th by
some indicators, not because we've gotten worse. We've stayed
the same, while other countries are moving ahead. And the
economy is demanding more technology. It's demanding more--I
think we don't have the luxury of sitting around--I think the
leadership you're providing here to move this is important. I
think kids and educators and teachers are not looking for a
prescription from Washington, but they're looking for
leadership from Washington. And I salute your efforts to
provide that here.
The Chairman. Senator Isakson, thank you for your patience.
Statement of Senator Isakson
Senator Isakson. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
courtesy. I want to thank all the guests that have been here to
testify today. I have--as I always do, when educators are
present--learned something. You've all had a great input today
into the conversation.
I know Ms. Neas and Mr. Thomas have both expressed
themselves already on the issue of special assessment of
special education kids. I'd like to ask Ms. Danks and Mr.
Seaton, who are in the classroom every day--and I think you're
the lead special needs teacher. Is that not correct, Ms. Danks?
One of the things I have been an advocate of, as the
chairman knows, in this committee is some flexibility in the
assessment of special needs children, in particular, and
propose that rather than having a limited narrow waiver for
cognitive disability that instead we allow the IEP to determine
the assessment vehicle each year that the special education
child is subject to, because that's the one time you have the
parent and the teacher and the school present making the
decision for that child in terms of how you're going to measure
the progress of that child in that next year.
I'd like to have Ms. Danks and Mr. Seaton just comment on
that.
Ms. Danks. I agree with you. I think the IEP process is
great at getting everyone together and focusing on that one
student. I think when we come to assessing based on State or
national standards or whatever we're talking about, we really
forget that individualized part of the individualized
educational plan.
I know at my school we're constantly battling between the
State standards that are far beyond our students' cognitive
abilities at this point in time and their IEP which actually
does address the skills that they need in order to function
after they're done with the public school system.
Unfortunately, a lot of times, those two documents aren't
working together, and so we're using a lot of our time to
figure out that balancing game.
As far as assessing students with special needs, I think
it's essential whether--I think an alternative assessment is
great. I know in Maryland, we had the typical assessment that
most students took, and then we also have an alternative
assessment. For a while, we also had a modified assessment for
those students that fell outside of that 1 percent but still
were not able to complete grade level work. They are doing away
with that, and I'm not sure of the policies with that.
But as far as assessing students with special needs, I
think that our students have enough obstacles, and for us to be
another one saying that they can't do--I think that's such a
disservice to them. I think we need to continue holding our
high standards and provide an effective assessment, and I think
that can be determined at various levels. Like you had
mentioned, with the IEP process we can do that during--we can
assess students based on the IEP and we may be serving them
better.
At our school, we actually went through a process where we
created an assessment. We got a waiver from our district
assessments, and we created an assessment to look at our
students' continuous progress, and that's the exact phrase that
we used. And it took us about a year to create this assessment.
We were continually looking at student progress as it relates
to that student's capabilities.
We're not holding them to some standard that someone else
told us to. We're actually looking at what the student is able
to do throughout the school year based on what they have been
able to do and what we hope we're able to push them to do in
the future.
Senator Isakson. Before I get to Mr. Seaton, would you
please, if you get a chance, allow the committee to have the
Maryland alternatives that you're using in terms of measuring
progress for those special ed kids? I'd love to see what you've
developed.
Ms. Danks. Sure. And, again, that's just at our school
level, and----
Senator Isakson. I understand.
Ms. Danks [continuing]. And I think that autonomy was
fantastic because we were able to go through a process that
taught our entire school staff so much about our students and
our staff needs. And coming away from that process, we have a
much greater appreciation for how difficult it is to create an
assessment, and so we applaud people for doing that. But I can
certainly share that with you.
Senator Isakson. Thank you very much.
Mr. Seaton.
Mr. Seaton. I do agree also that the IEP is a great place
to start with using it as a driver for assessment. One of the
things that's happening in Tennessee now is we have guidelines
that are set for alternative assessments. And what I've found
in my classroom is--I try to make sure that I do a thorough
evaluation of the records and try to find anything that will
allow me to use alternative assessments if that individual
needs it. If they don't, I continue to use the Tennessee
standards that we have--a little more work for me, but I
outline those things that I believe are necessary at the time.
I stay in compliance nationally to make sure that I'm
meeting the special ed requirements--so you're looking at an
IEP inside of an IEP. You have a set of standards that says
that--regulatory standards that we have to have that are grade
level functions, but then I have another set of functions that
are necessary for that young person to be successful enough to
want to go to the next level and then move forward.
Senator Isakson. I thank you both, and I don't have time to
go to another subject, except to say, Mr. Luna, or Dr. Luna,
whichever it is, Idaho is doing a great innovative thing by
engaging parents more in the education of children. I know in
your pay for performance, the parents actually have some say in
that merit-based system, and I commend what you all are doing
very much.
Mr. Luna. Thank you.
Senator Isakson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I'd like to ask Ms. Neas--I know you put
yours up right away to involve yourself in that last discussion
with Mr. Seaton and Ms. Danks.
Ms. Neas. Thank you, Senator Harkin. I think what my two
colleagues here on the panel described is exactly what's
appropriate and available under current law. Under the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, an essential
component--an essential decision that each child's IEP team
needs to make--and the IEP team includes the child's parents--
is which assessment is appropriate to that child.
Does the child take an alternate assessment based on
alternate achievement standards? Does the child take the
regular assessment with or without an accommodation or
modification? That is something that's currently required under
IDEA. What my two colleagues just described is exactly what's
supposed to happen. For those kids that are on alternate
achievement standards, you have to design something that's
appropriate to that child.
Those kids are in a unique place where they are not on
grade level. I oftentimes call them act of God kids. Short of
an act of God, these kids are never going to be on grade level.
It doesn't matter how much their mother loved them, what they
had for breakfast, how many books were in their home. These
kids are not going to be on grade level. They need a different
measure.
But they need to make progress. Someone needs to be making
sure that this year they learned more than they learned last
year. And whatever it is to that child is what we need to have
continue.
There's nothing in the law that says for those--what my
concern is, is that when you put kids who don't belong in that
category of kids with the most significant cognitive
disabilities, when kids who are outside of that are put in that
and then otherwise----
The Chairman. I think there's some confusion here, if I
might interrupt. There's a 1 percent rule----
Ms. Neas. That's right.
The Chairman [continuing]. That says that schools can
automatically--I guess that's the right word--automatically
take up to 1 percent of kids who are in IEPs?
Ms. Neas. What the law says is that up to 1 percent of
kids, all kids, which roughly translates to about 10 percent of
kids with disabilities, can have their progress measured on an
alternate achievement standard--an alternate assessment based
on alternate achievement standards. What the current regulation
allows is that States can count those 10 percent of kids in the
1 percent as proficient. There's nothing that says States can't
give more tests--can't assess more kids, but they can't count
them as proficient outside of that 1 percent.
And that's what we're seeing in a number of States where
they're giving--more than 1 percent of the kids are taking this
alternate achievement standard, and that's where our concern
is. We think that too many kids are being inappropriately
placed in that 1 percent. But we absolutely believe that there
are kids who are appropriate to that 1 percent.
The Chairman. Do you disagree with that, Ms. Danks?
Ms. Danks. I don't disagree. But I know something I've seen
in a lot of IEP meetings with students who attend a
comprehensive school--so that other percentage that we've been
talking about, not the students with the most severe
disabilities. And a lot of times, when the parents come to the
meetings, they say, ``I don't want my kid to be taking that
test, so we'll just opt out of that,'' because this testing and
assessing has just gotten so out of control. And the parents
see that it's out of control, and they don't want their child
participating in it.
Sometimes there is a lot of pressure from the parents to
exclude the student from that general assessment just because
of the stigma attached with that. I agree that that's an issue.
I'm not sure if 1 percent is the magic number. We're talking
about States' rights versus the Federal Government. I'm not
sure if 1 percent is the correct number. I'm not sure if there
is a correct number. But I do know that that's definitely
something to be considered.
I also think on top of that--just to go back to the
original question, I think that a huge component we're missing
with this 1 percent are the life skill standards, so that--we
could use the IEP, which are those academic standards, and some
life skill standards. But there are no States--there's not a
requirement that States have those life skill standards, and
some States do and some States don't.
I think that's a huge disservice to these students, and
we're not preparing them for what happens for most of them when
they're 21 years old and they exit the public school system.
We're not doing a good job of getting them ready.
Ms. Neas. Senator Harkin, if I could just add--I think this
whole notion of life skills is so important, and I don't know
the answer. But it may be an IDEA issue and what's appropriate
to that child and not necessarily an ESEA issue. I just wanted
to raise that.
The Chairman. Mr. Seaton.
Mr. Seaton. Yes. For Tennessee, we have built in a way to
kind of catch some of that 1 percent. Young people that have a
certain IQ score, we use that as a baseline. If they are
average functioning, close to, they are not allowed to be
placed in that alternative assessment bracket. So one of the
things that--people who want to opt out are not able to do that
just based on the fact that their young people--or you believe
that this will be better for your scores.
Ms. Danks. I'm sorry. Could I just add one thing? I think
the problem we're falling into, too, is there's either an
alternative or what everyone else does, and children fall in a
lot of spots between those two extremes. And so I'm not sure
exactly how it's worded in the law, but the idea of continuous
progress can mean a student takes an assessment and they score
30 percent in this month, and then they score 35 percent the
next month, and that's continuous progress.
And for some of our students who don't fall in that 1
percent but who are also not performing at or above grade
level, that's still a way for that student to show that they're
making that continuous progress and for the school to
demonstrate that they are providing the instruction that
enables that continuous progress.
The Chairman. Senator Franken.
Statement of Senator Franken
Senator Franken. That's kind of a good jumping off point
for my--where I want comments from, and it's about computer
adaptive testing. And to what extent does this--certainly in
terms of special ed kids and measuring growth.
I've been struck by some of--Mr. Luna talked about the
growth model. And I know Mr. Luna is concerned with gifted
kids, and I know that from teachers I've talked to in
Minnesota, the way the testing has been done in No Child Left
Behind is what percentage of kids exceed a certain arbitrary
benchmark of proficiency. And so you can take those gifted
kids, and you know that kid's going to be proficient no matter
what you do to that kid, so they ignore the kid. And I think
Ms. Geisselhardt talked about that as well.
Ms. Danks, you talked about computer adaptive testing, and
I want to followup with you on--or you to followup on that, if
you like.
Mr. Thomas, you talked about a growth model and why a
growth model is so important. And Mr. Hess, before he left, was
talking about just how kids are progressing during the year,
and you can do that with a computer adaptive test, because you
can take it multiple times during the year instead of what
we've been doing, which is giving a test at the end of April,
and the results come back, and they're autopsies.
Mr. Schnur, you talked about the importance of doing it
beyond one test. And the thing with the computer adaptive test,
you can take it multiple times over the year and you can
measure growth.
I'd just kind of like for anyone who wants to talk about
what--if they see any downside to the computer adaptive test.
And we've made it--one thing we've done is made it voluntary. I
mean, maybe that's one of the federalism issues that we've
responded to. I think every State should have computer adaptive
tests, but I've deliberately said this is something you can do,
you may do, you're allowed to do.
Does anyone have any feelings about that, or thoughts?
Mr. Grier. I'd like to just take a quick stab at it. I
think you're spot-on in what you're proposing. I think the
infrastructure across the country is very sorely lacking for
schools to be able to do this on a large scale basis, because
you just can't march kids into one computer lab in a school in
groups of 25 and think you're going to be able to do this.
I've worked in school districts where we had computers in
every classroom, and it was wonderful. Teachers could do quick
assessments and get the information back on really a daily
basis, every 2 weeks, or whenever you wanted them to. But I
work in a school district now where we don't have that type of
infrastructure----
Senator Franken. Do you have a computer lab?
Mr. Grier. We have a computer lab in most of our schools.
But very few of our schools have a computer in every classroom
for every child.
Senator Franken. Right. Not everybody at the school has to
take this the same day. You can go----
Mr. Grier. No. If we're just talking about special ed
students, that may be different. But I think this technique
you're talking about applies to all students. It makes it just
much more difficult in a 3,000-student high school.
Senator Franken. Yes. But what I'm saying is that I don't
think all grades have to take it the same day. The third grade
can take it one day, or one classroom in third grade can take
it one day, and one classroom--they can go down to the--as long
as you have a computer lab, which I think schools probably
should have.
Mr. Grier. With all due respect, I'm just saying to you
from living it every day, one computer lab in the school would
not support the kind of testing model you're talking about. It
just won't do it.
Senator Franken. OK. In Minnesota, they seem to be able--
I've talked to schools where they've had one computer lab and
they've been able to do this. But maybe they're smaller schools
or something. I don't know.
Mr. Luna. Mr. Chairman and Senator, in Idaho, we've done
computer testing since No Child Left Behind started. We never
did the paper and pencil. We could see the writing on the wall,
and we've done computer tests all the time. In fact, the first
test that we rolled out was an adaptive test, and it showed
growth. But it did not then pass muster under No Child Left
Behind so we had to take a step backward.
The law that is being considered today is going to allow us
to go back to the kind of tests we were actually doing 8 or 9
years ago, where we could actually measure growth without a
floor or a ceiling so that we could actually see where a
student is--how they're performing. I think what you're talking
about, Senator, is right now, we have assessments of learning.
We give them at the end of the school year. Those are great for
accountability systems, and they help inform instruction
somewhat for the next year.
But what we need are assessments of learning--or, I'm
sorry, assessments for learning, where there are assessments
that are less intrusive and they happen during the regular
classroom period. I've gone into classrooms before where the--
it's a very high level of engagement, where children are
engaged and there's a lot of learning going on. And all of a
sudden, the teacher says, ``OK. It's time for the quiz.
Everybody close your books.'' It's just like somebody sucks the
oxygen out of the room.
The technology is available to capture assessment data
during a regular lesson plan while it's being delivered. It
means a heavy dose of technology in every classroom. It's not
going to get done with just one or two computer labs per
school. In our State, we've chosen to make heavy investments in
technology, not with Race to the Top dollars, not by raising
taxes, not by spending more money on education, but by--we're
willing to spend the money we already have differently.
I won't go into the details of our technology improvements,
but they're very expansive. And every one of our classrooms
will have the technology available to do the kind of
assessments that you're talking about without relying on
rotating kids through a computer lab.
Senator Franken. My only reaction to that is I've seen
tests--or I've seen classrooms where you can immediately--or
they do exactly what you're talking about, and that's fabulous.
What I'm advocating on computer adaptive tests is one of the
aspects of it is exactly what you're talking about, which is
that the test results, if they can be done as the year is going
by, they're fore-learning, because the teachers can see what's
going on and use the results for instruction.
I think Ms. Danks is probably going to speak to the special
ed fact, which is that if you're measuring--if you're allowed
to go outside of grade level, you're able to measure growth,
and that makes the problem we were talking about before--it
actually, I think, addresses it to some extent, anyway, which
is that if you're at least measuring growth, kids who are below
grade level--you can still see that they're learning.
Ms. Danks. I think you make a great point, and I think that
applies to all students, not just students with special needs.
Seeing that continuous growth is going to be much more rich
data that the teacher is going to be able to use than that one
time in March or April where the school has probably completely
stressed out the child to get ready for this assessment. The
parents know about it. The city knows. Everybody knows about
it.
Those results don't come back until June, and, like you
said, it's like an autopsy. And then that information is not
always useful. A lot of times, it's given too late. Well,
here's this skill we taught in September that this student
never mastered--wish I would have known that in September.
I think that testing has become such an event, and it comes
with so much pressure. And like you were saying, it doesn't
need to be--everybody does it on the same day. It could be two
to three kids coming in and--some of these kids know how to use
a computer better than anybody I know. As far as that being a
barrier, even for students with special needs, I don't think
that that's an issue.
Our school does work with a partnership board, and they've
helped us tremendously in raising a great deal of funds. We
have several computers in every classroom, a Promethean board
in every classroom, and I would really encourage schools who
are struggling to gain that technology to reach out to your
community partners, businesses that are getting rid of
computers, because then you can implement this in your schools.
The Chairman. Mr. Schnur, did you have a response on this?
Mr. Schnur. Just a quick comment.
Senator Franken, I think you're absolutely right to focus
on computerized adaptive assessments. I think in the future
that's going to be universal in education at some point. I
think it's a good example of something which, you're showing
judiciousness in not, like, mandating it. There have been lots
of bills where people in both parties have said, ``I like this
idea and require it.'' I think it's right not to require it. I
think it's good to support.
The one thing I would say about the goals that drive this
is that the changing--the transparency and the goal
requirements and accountability to enable growth and
improvement is crucial to help all kids, lowest achieving and
highest achieving. One thing I think is that at a minimum,
States setting goals for kids to get some absolute level of
performance----
Senator Franken. Absolutely.
Mr. Schnur [continuing]. And proficiency advanced high
school graduation. I think it is important. Otherwise, we're
going to make slight improvements, but not keep up with the
race we're in against the economy.
Senator Franken. I think we're talking about mandating a
certain rate of growth so that by the end of the 12th grade,
they're ready for college--is what the goal is, anyway.
Mr. Schnur. I think that's the right direction.
Senator Franken. I'm not sure how that language is in the
bill in terms of mandating that every year, there'll be a year
of growth.
The Chairman. Mr. Seaton, you put your card up, and then
I'm going to go to Senator Merkley.
Mr. Seaton. Yes, sir. I teach in the Orange Mound
Community, which is the second oldest African-American
community in the Nation, only behind Harlem. And one of the
things--when you start looking at technology, we need--and we
are raising money through our district. But we need the support
of the national government in order to fully use technology
throughout our system.
I believe that the rapid assessments that we can get
through those computer-based tests will be fabulous for us to
use it as an ongoing tool. But I think that we still need to
think how long will it take to get that type of technology in
every school. And I think that one of the things that was
mentioned, the common core standards, is--and this is where I
believe we need some national leadership in having those common
core standards as a base for our national assessment. Since
we're looking at being competitive globally, we need to know
where we all are from California to the bottoms of Mississippi.
The Chairman. Are you saying, Mr. Seaton, that there's an
inequality of funding for schools based upon their zip code?
[Laughter.]
Mr. Seaton. No, sir.
Senator Franken. We should rectify that.
Mr. Seaton. No, sir. I'm not saying that at all.
The Chairman. You should be.
Senator Franken. Can I read this language just to respond
to Mr. Schnur, because now I have it in front of me. It says,
``If the State chooses to use student growth as a
measure of academic progress and to determine if
students are on track to college and career readiness''
this is how--
``a student performing below the on-track level of
performance for the student's grade level under
subsection . . . on the academic assessment for the
subject under subsection . . . is attaining a rate of
academic growth in the subject that indicates that the
student will be on track to college and career
readiness in not more than a specified number of years,
and two, a student who is performing at or above the
on-track level performance for the student's grade
level on the academic assessment for the subject is
continuing to make academic growth.''
For States that choose a growth model, we are addressing, I
think, what you raised, I think. Are you satisfied?
Mr. Schnur. I think that's good. My view is that having
that federally prescribed but state some big goals about
increasing the percentage of kids who are meeting big goals is
important. But I know that's a longer conversation. But I think
that's a great step in the right direction.
Senator Franken. Thank you.
The Chairman. We have a rollcall vote that just started.
Senator Merkley has been very patient. I'm going to go to him.
But there's a rollcall--I know it's going to be at 12:15, and I
think we're probably not going to come back after that.
Mr. Merkley.
Statement of Senator Merkley
Senator Merkley. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you to all of you for bringing your expertise
here to the Capitol.
I'll followup on the computerized adaptive testing. Oregon
was an early adopter of this, and I think folks can't imagine
any other way of doing it. If schools out there are still using
paper tests and the results come back months later, that is
crazy if you're trying to have teachers be able to utilize the
results in order to understand how their students are
progressing. And the cost of the technology has come down so
much that I certainly would encourage folks to explore it.
I wanted to note another issue, which is we're replacing
the
current requirements for adequate yearly progress for college-
and career-ready standards and the goal of developing statewide
accountability systems in order to receive Federal funding by
2014 and 2015. States vary in terms of the progress that they
have made and will be making to develop this new accountability
system based on college and career-readiness.
I thought Superintendent Luna, perhaps from Idaho's
perspective--and other people are welcome to chime in--could
give us a sense of how the State is progressing in developing
and adopting these new assessments or the process that's
anticipated and the expected timeline and kind of insights
about the challenge that will occur in terms of this
transition.
Mr. Luna. Mr. Chairman and Senator, Idaho, along with
Oregon and a number of other States--I believe there's almost
30--are part of the Smarter Balance Consortium that is working
to develop the adaptive computerized assessments that we're
talking about. I believe that they will begin piloting them in
2 years, and then after the pilot begin to administer them.
At the same time that those assessments are going into
place, we're also going through the process of adopting the
common core. And so we have to go through the process of
aligning our curriculum to the higher standard and now an
assessment that measures to this higher standard, and all of
that is, as I said, in place to be piloted, I believe, in 2014.
And then the year after, it becomes part of the accountability.
It's the measure that we use in our State as part of our
accountability system.
Senator Merkley. And so do you anticipate that the AYP will
continue to be used between now and then? And if it's piloted
in 2014, do we anticipate wide adoption the following year or 2
years later?
Mr. Luna. Mr. Chairman and Senator, I think that's going to
be up to the plan that the State puts together. I know that if
it's a State that--I believe that if it's a State that's
pursuing a waiver that there's actually 1 year where everything
kind of stays the same, and that is the transition year. And I
believe that is 2013, and then there's the transition. But I
think it depends on the plan that the State puts together.
Senator Merkley. Do we have time for any other feedback on
this question? Thank you.
The Chairman. Yes. Did you have feedback, Ms. Geisselhardt?
Ms. Geisselhardt. I wanted to address what Senator Franken
said in regard to formative assessment. I think there is a lot
of emphasis on formative assessment now, and it is being used
and used for instruction. But as far as the tests that we would
use for data collection in comparing students, whether we're
comparing growth, which is what we hope to be able to do in the
future, is compare growth--we would have to have--as I said, we
would still have to have a testing window, where testing is
done within a particular timeframe in order to use it for
comparison.
Mr. Luna. Mr. Chairman, I had one more quick comment, and
it was in response to Senator Paul's early concern where he
said that currently we have basically everyone that's
frustrated with the current law, but now we're going to just
take what we're frustrated with but only apply it to 5 percent
of our schools. Under the new law, the 5 percent are not going
to be held to the same frustrating parts of No Child Left
Behind today. We will use a growth model, which we cannot use
under the current No Child Left Behind. It will be a growth
model that we'll use to measure how those schools are
improving.
I think the most important part is now, under the new law,
there's flexibility. We receive Federal funds right now where
it's very prescriptive, where the school may need to focus on a
specific area but the funding forces us to spend it elsewhere.
Now, because of the flexibility in the law, we can take the
Federal dollars and we can combine them and focus on the area
where we know that low 5 percent school needs assistance. It is
a different approach, and I think it'll be a far more
successful approach.
The Chairman. I'll entertain a couple more, but when the
second bell has rung we've got to go.
Mr. Schnur, you have something, and then Mr. Grier, and
then Mr. Henderson. That's it. OK. Go ahead.
Mr. Schnur. Mr. Chairman and Senator Merkley, I think your
question is a really important one. And I think there is a
risk--as I said, there are many good elements in this bill. I
have some reservations, significant ones, about the incentives
that I mentioned before and on teacher evaluation and around
the press for accountability and transparency.
I think there is a risk without more steps being taken that
you won't in this bill drive the crucial transparency needed to
look at performance across the whole system. And in the effort
to provide flexibility, I think your question got at this risk
that we may not actually give the public the transparency and
how well States and schools are doing in educating kids at all
levels at achievement gap schools.
I think that flexibility is good. But I think there's some
important improvements that need to be in this area. Otherwise,
what you've suggested may become a real downfall of this law.
But I hope that can be addressed in this legislative process.
The Chairman. Mr. Grier.
Mr. Grier. Yes, sir. Real quick, I want to come back real
quickly to this issue about comparability. This is really a
serious issue, and I might suggest that the committee consider
a detailed impact analysis from the General Accountability
Office or the Congressional Research Services on the impact of
these changes before you move forward.
The last thing I wanted to say is that most of the really
good charter networks in this country that are doing a great
job are spending between $1,000 and $2,000 more per student in
these low performing schools and are getting good results. This
is in addition to the title I money. And I want to come back
again--I'm really concerned that if we don't look at some type
of set-aside to provide some additional title I funding for
these low performing schools that we just aren't going to be
willing to make the tough political changes that we need to
make in giving them the amount of funding they need to do this
work.
The Chairman. I thought that was ringing a bell. My staff
just reminded me we have a 4 percent set-aside in this bill
just precisely for what you're saying. There's a 4 percent set-
aside for that.
Mr. Grier. For those bottom 5 percent schools?
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Grier. OK. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Henderson.
Mr. Henderson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because this
discussion is coming to a close, I just want to make a
concluding observation if I might, which is that we began at
the outset conceding that No Child Left Behind isn't perfect
and in need of reform. I don't think anyone disputes that.
I think there are some who would argue, however, that the
current draft bill represents an, shall we say, overreach on
the part of the Federal Government by using its Federal dollars
of investment to try to guide State accountability. I got that.
The truth is, however, that ESEA really establishes a floor,
not a ceiling, on accountability and that States are obviously
free to exceed and create new standards that, in fact, hold all
students accountable.
My only point is this. Look, I celebrate the fact that over
the last 50 years, the country has changed significantly for
the better and become a more perfect union. But I also
recognize that Americans often are ahistorical and fail to take
into account the specific elements that led to the change that
we support today. Had the Federal Government not chosen to
intervene in States' activities in this area, we would not have
had the improvement that we've seen.
And those who seem to argue that States, when left free to
their own devices, can achieve the kind of goals that we all
seek need only look at the record that has been established
over the past to recognize that the States themselves are not
perfect, and that they have, in turn, improved their academic
involvement because of the Federal Government, not in spite of
it. And so I think, in that sense, this does the discussion of
government's role a disservice to the extent that we fail to
recognize the contributions that the Federal Government has
made in improving the quality of education for all.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Henderson.
Thank you all very much. I thought this was a great 2
hours. Here, I guess, as chair, I get to have the last word.
Let me just sum it up this way. The whole issue of
elementary and secondary education is a complex issue. But we
can't just throw up our hands and say because it's complex, and
there's all these moving parts, that we can't do anything and
we walk away from it.
What I've heard here is that there's a role to be played by
the Federal Government, the State government, and the local
government. We've just got to figure out what those roles are,
and they may vary from time to time, depending upon
circumstances.
I will State that this bill that we have will not solve
every problem in elementary and secondary education. Mr. Luna
said when he talked about No Child Left Behind--he said there's
the good, the bad, and the ugly. What we've tried to do is get
rid of the bad and the ugly and keep the good and try to expand
on it somewhat. So, yes, we've retreated in some areas and
advanced in others.
Every bill that passes a committee or a Congress, I can
poke a hole in it. No bill has everything everybody wants. I
understand that. This bill is not Mr. Enzi's bill, and it is
not mine, either. But it is ours. And in that way, we make
those kind of agreements.
I think the essential question is: Is it better than the
present bill? Does it advance the causes of finding the proper
balances between Federal, State, and local? And does it warrant
general support across a wide spectrum, knowing full well that
everyone here has something that probably they would like to
change in that bill, including Mr. Enzi and me.
But the question is: Does it advance the cause of what
we're trying to do in finding those proper roles and trying to
provide a better structure and framework for every child in
America to get a really good education so we have really good,
effective teachers, good leaders in school, that we have
comparability, that we have--that we even out the--Mr. Seaton,
I don't think you got my subtlety in that, you know.
Jonathan Kozol wrote about this a long time ago, about
savage inequalities, and those still exist today. In Fairfax
County, our schools have the best computers and everything that
you can imagine. Why don't your schools have those? Well,
there's a little bit of inequality in zip codes.
We have to figure out how we make sure that kids who happen
to be born in bad circumstances, have a bad family
circumstance, low income, impoverished area, maybe English
language learners, maybe have a disability, maybe have a
learning disability--how do you keep them progressing, too? How
do you reach down to that child who has the least and make sure
they get the benefit of our education system?
That's what we're trying to do, imperfect as it is. That's
what we're trying to do.
I thank you all very much. It's been a great discussion.
The committee will stand adjourned. Thank you.
[Additional material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Prepared Statement of Alan Knapp, Director of National Policy--
Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21)
Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Enzi and members of the committee,
thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony as the committee
continues to further deliberate on the reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Every child in America needs deep core subject knowledge and
essential skills to succeed as effective citizens and workers in a
demanding global economy. These demands require that students be fully
equipped with proficiencies beyond the basics of reading, writing and
math. Skills known as the 4Cs; Critical thinking and problem solving,
Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and innovation, and the
ability to learn, apply, and adapt them to all subjects are becoming
increasingly more important for college and career readiness. Colleges
and employers agree that students who learn to fuse subject knowledge
and these skills in school are better prepared to enter the workforce.
However, these skills are not expressly defined or stressed in
Federal education policy and are not found currently in this bill. P21
is pleased that the ESEA reauthorization bill includes a number of
references to skills aligned with standards and assessments as part of
college and career readiness throughout section 1111 and section 1131.
This is a good start. However, we would like to see a more clarified
definition of the 4Cs or perhaps reference a set of criteria from the
U.S. Department of Labor which closely resembles P21's Framework for
Learning, such as their O*NET Content Model, and add this to section
9101. This would help guide States toward fully incorporating these
skills into their learning and accountability structures.
As mentioned previously, this bill does a good job in our view of
including a number of references to skills aligned with standards and
assessments as part of college and career readiness. However, we remain
concerned that nothing in the bill requires local professional
development applications or allows local uses of funds for professional
development to enable educators to help fuse these skills with content.
Additions to this bill to this effect in section 2122 and section
2123, along with an expanded definition of professional development in
section 9101, would create the environments and resources for our
educators to meet this challenge so that all students can apply a range
of skill competencies alongside core academic subject knowledge and do
so in real-world contexts.
P21 strongly believes that students become more engaged and take
ownership of their education when project-based learning opportunities
are emphasized that allow students to apply their knowledge and skills
in real-world contexts. The ESEA reauthorization bill includes a number
of uses of grant funds to help implement innovative and effective
secondary school reform strategies to ensure students graduate high
school ready for college and career, including service-learning,
experiential, and work-based learning. However, there is no mention of
project-based learning. The addition of this principle to section 1201
would allow opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and
skills in real-world contexts.
Many of these principles are currently embodied in the 21st Century
Readiness Acts, S. 1175 and H.R. 2536, which represents bicameral and
bipartisan legislation that P21 and its members strongly support and
endorse.
Sixteen States and many local school districts throughout the
country continue to unite with us around a shared vision for student
outcomes and success that are based on identifying and delivering
rigorous content knowledge and skills that students need to be
effective workers and citizens in the 21st century global economy.
States realize we are in a skill-based economy and seek the opportunity
and flexibility in Federal education law that helps their education
systems meet this challenge. This momentum isn't sustainable unless
Federal policy recognizes and creates environments that support and
encourage State and local innovation in this direction.
Our Nation's future depends on our ability to prepare children not
just to succeed, but to lead in the 21st century. P21 believes that
fusing rigorous content with the mastery of these critical skills is
essential in order to prepare our students to be global citizens who
can fortify the American workforce and democracy.
ABOUT P21
P21 is the leading national organization that advocates for 21st
century readiness for every student. As the United States continues to
compete in a global economy that demands innovation, P21 and its
members provide tools and resources to help the U.S. education system
keep up by fusing core subjects (the 3Rs) with the 4Cs (critical
thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration and
creativity and innovation). While leading districts and schools are
already doing this, P21 advocates for local, State and Federal policies
that support this approach for every school.
Prepared Statement of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools,
submitted by Ursula Wright, Interim President & CEO
Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Enzi, thank you for your
leadership in sponsoring a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA). We appreciate the committee's diligence
and hard work spent updating the ESEA to better reflect the lessons
that we've learned from No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
As the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), we are
the leading organization advancing quality, growth and sustainability
for the charter sector. We take an integrated approach to our advocacy
work that has an impact at both the Federal and State levels. Our
mission is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic
achievement for all students by fostering a strong charter sector. At
the Federal level, the U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools
Program is the prime focus area for the NAPCS and the charter school
movement. As such, most of our comments are focused on title V, part D:
Charter Schools Program, even though as public schools, charters are
subject to the wide spectrum of obligations under the ESEA.
ABOUT THE CHARTER SECTOR
Forty-one States and the District of Columbia currently have State
laws that allow charter schools. The NAPCS estimates that there are
more than 5,600 charter schools serving more than 2 million students.
While those numbers are small in comparison to the overall size of
public education in the United States, they mask much larger
percentages in a growing number of communities. Today, six American
school districts have at least 30 percent of their public school
students enrolled in public charter schools. These include such major
cities as New Orleans (leading with 70 percent) Washington, DC, Detroit
and Kansas City. Additionally, 18 school districts have 20 percent or
more of their public school students enrolled in charter schools, and
nearly 100 districts now have at least 10 percent of public school
students in charter schools. The large majority of charter schools are
independent, community-based schools, most often founded by parents,
teachers or local organizations. Less than 30 percent of charters have
outside management, either non-profit or for-profit. In almost all
States, it is the governing board of the school (itself a nonprofit
organization) that holds the charter, whether there is outside
management or not.
According to the most recent national data (a study by researchers
at Ball State University), charter schools receive about 22 percent
less in per-pupil funding than other public schools, a figure that
varies by State and community. The biggest contributor to this gap is a
lack of dedicated funding for facilities. Only 11 States provide direct
funding for leases, mortgages, and major renovations.
Nationally, charter schools enroll a significantly larger
proportion of Black and Hispanic students than do other public schools.
Charters also enroll a slightly larger proportion of students eligible
for free or reduced lunch. They enroll a roughly equivalent percentage
of special education students as other public schools (11.9 percent vs.
12.4 percent nationally). In all of these cases, the numbers will vary
by State and community.
There is an emerging picture that charter schools serve
underrepresented students well--low-income and minority students in
charter schools do better on standardized tests and have a higher
likelihood of college entrance and completion. Perhaps the most
intriguing study is one just released by the National Charter School
Research Project in which researchers reviewed a set of studies chosen
for methodological rigor. The team did a meta-analysis of the various
studies, looking through a series of lenses at a vast amount of data.
Their findings are not unalloyed good news for charter supporters, but
they did find evidence of strong performance in elementary reading and
math, and middle-school math, and especially good results in urban
charters.\1\
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\1\ Julian R. Betts and Y. Emily Tang: The Effect of Charter
Schools on Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Literature.
National Charter School Research Project, University of Washington-
Bothell, 2011. http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/download/csr_files/
pub_NCSRP_
BettsTang_Oct11.pdf.
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There is an impressive body of evidence that charter schools are
effective at closing achievement gaps, with most research focused on
racial gaps in urban schools. However, a CREDO study also found that
low-income students in charter schools, and English Language Learners,
both outperformed counterparts in district schools.\2\ A new study of
nonprofit charter management organizations (CMOs) found that while
their overall average effect on achievement was small (and pulled down
by some outliers on the low side), those at the upper-end of the
performance scale were achieving remarkable results.\3\
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\2\ Margaret Raymond: Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance
in 16 States. Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Stanford
University, 2009, P. 6. : http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/
MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf.
\3\ Joshua Furgeson, et al. Charter Management Organizations:
Diverse Strategies and Diverse Student Impacts. Mathematica, 2011:
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/Education/
cmo_final.pdf.
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Charter schools can be a lever for change in education reform. As
we try to improve the quality of education for all children in this
country, and the reauthorization of ESEA is a key component of this
work, charter schools are raising expectations with high standards and
creating innovative programs to better prepare children for 21st
century life and workforce demands. The programs at the Federal level
that support charter schools can often spur positive improvements in
State law and incent States to adopt and support innovative methods of
schooling.
THE FEDERAL CHARTER SCHOOLS PROGRAM
There are four Federal programs that support public charter
schools: the Charter Schools Program (CSP); the State Charter School
Facilities Incentive Grant Program; the Credit Enhancement for Charter
School Facilities Program; and the Charter Schools Program Grants for
Replications and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools.
Created in 1994, the CSP provides financial assistance to help
cover charter school startup costs. Through a competitive process, the
U.S. Department of Education awards grants to State education agencies
(SEAs). In turn, SEAs make sub-grants to charter schools. If an SEA
doesn't apply for funding or if its application for funding is not
approved, the Department of Education can make grants directly to
charter school developers. Since its creation, the CSP has received
almost $3 billion in funding and has impacted hundreds of thousands of
public school students.
Created via the NCLB, the State Charter School Facilities Incentive
Grant Program provides Federal funds on a competitive basis to States
to help cover charter school facility costs. The program is intended to
encourage States to develop and expand per-pupil facilities aid
programs and to share in the costs associated with charter schools
facilities funding. Over the past 7 years, the program has received
over $100 million in funding and has leveraged over $1 billion dollars
on the behalf of charter schools, serving over 472 schools.
The Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities Program
provides grants on a competitive basis to public and nonprofit entities
that enhance the ability of public charter schools to raise private
capital to acquire, construct, renovate, or lease academic facilities.
Since 2002, the program has received over $221 million in funding
helping over 335 charter schools finance facilities. It has done an
exceptional job of using those funds to leverage private investment in
charter facilities. In fact, more than $9 private sector dollars have
been raised for every $1 dollar in Federal funds.
Last, in 2010, the NAPCS, with help from bipartisan leadership in
both the Senate and House, secured language in the appropriations
process that allowed for a portion of the CSP funds to be used flexibly
by the Secretary of Education to establish a grant program for the
replication and expansion of high-performing charter schools. This has
allowed the Federal Government to provide funds to high-quality charter
models that have a strong track record of success.
ESEA DRAFT PROPOSAL: TITLE V, PART D
The NAPCS is optimistic regarding the proposed updates from your
committee to the Federal charter schools programs. The provisions
related to charter school quality, sustainability and accountability
are aligned with our organizational strategy and the best thinking from
the field. Specifically, we support the provisions related to the
replication and expansion of top-performing public charter schools,
including allowing CMOs to apply directly to the Department of
Education for funding. Expanding the Federal law to allow this
important growth of the sector will give charter schools the
opportunity to continue practices proven to deliver results and expand
innovations designed to meet the needs of 21st century learners. We
also applaud the bill's rigorous levels of reporting; oversight and
accountability for public charter school authorizers; focus on
equitable funding; and prominence given to improving access to
facilities for public charter schools.
There are a few areas within title V, part D that NAPCS would like
to see strengthened as the bill moves through the Senate. We would like
to expand access to grants in subpart 1, the Successful Charter Schools
Program, to nonprofit intermediary organizations with a track record of
success in supporting high-quality CMOs. We are also supportive of the
National Activities grant that bolsters charter school quality and
encourages dissemination of best practices. In order to achieve the
full impact of this program, the NAPCS supports increasing the
percentage of funds reserved for section 5420. We'd also like to see
further assurances in place that will require eligible local education
agencies to demonstrate that they are actively supporting environments
for charter schools through such measures as having district-wide plans
for charter growth and enhancing the availability of loans or bond
financing for facilities.
The NAPCS is concerned about the definition of ``high-performing
charter school'' as it may be too narrow, including the requirement
that schools track persistence rates at institutes of higher
education--some States simply do not have this capability. Also, by
requiring that student achievement and growth be a primary factor in
decisions around renewal could present conflicting requirements for the
charter schools between authorizing State laws and the Federal program.
We suggest that the word ``primary'' be removed to allow for multiple
measures of academic performance.
Moreover, we have concerns that the definition of high-performing
charter school applied to subpart 1, section 5411, may have unintended
consequences in the form of unfairly limiting credit availability to
worthy charter schools that desperately need it. We have heard from a
number of public charter school leaders, who have achieved amazing
results in their schools, that some of the terms of this new definition
would have prevented them from receiving financing or would restrict
their expansion plans.
In addition to reviewing the Charter Schools Program, we thank you
in advance for examining all parts of the bill to ensure the same
levels of accountability found in title V, part D are applied
throughout the law. It is essential that our Nation do more to meet the
educational needs of all children--including children of color, low-
income students, populations with disabilities, or non-native English
speakers. We would like to see title II bolster efforts to provide
children from underserved populations with exceptional teachers. The
NAPCS has consistently witnessed that high performing charter schools,
which typically serve a large proportion of low-
income and minority students, attribute much of their success to the
caliber and commitment of their teachers. We support requiring some of
the strongest provisions that are optional under the current proposal,
such as recruiting, preparing, placing, supporting, rewarding and
retaining highly rated teachers and principals in high-need, low-
performing schools.
We thank you for the opportunity to submit written testimony. We
look forward to continuing to work with your committee as ESEA
reauthorization moves forward.
______
National Conference of State Legislatures,
November 8, 2011.
Hon. Tom Harkin, Chairman,
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
428 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC 20510.
Hon. Michael B. Enzi, Ranking Member,
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
833 Hart Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC 20510.
Dear Chairman Harkin and Senator Enzi: We are writing on behalf of
the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) both in response
to recent legislation reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA) that passed out of the Senate Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions Committee and to present the views of the Nation's
State legislators as you discuss the current iteration of ESEA, No
Child Left Behind (NCLB), in today's hearing. NCSL's policy on ESEA
reauthorization is attached for your reference.
Because State legislators have a constitutional responsibility to
establish and fund public education, they have a compelling interest in
the reauthorization of this statute. In February 2005, NCSL's
bipartisan Task Force on No Child Left Behind issued a report that
recommended changes to the law, and discussed a productive and
efficient role for the Federal Government in what has traditionally
been an area of public policy funded and administered by the States.
The law is now almost 10 years old and has not been reauthorized.
Reauthorization of this statute will allow all States to benefit from
corrections to the current law.
First and foremost, we applaud the committee's recognition that the
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) metric based on achieving a 100 percent
proficiency standard in reading/language arts and mathematics based on
standardized tests was a flawed and static measure. NCSL believes that
the ability to focus on student growth over time, and the ability to
use multiple measures rather than relying exclusively on standardized
tests to evaluate performance, provides a more robust and appropriate
measure of how schools are performing. The committee's approach of
allowing States to set career- and college-ready standards is a more
workable method, enabling States to build on the work they are already
doing in content standards and on assessments.
The Federal involvement in developing common standards and tests
should be based upon and circumscribed by the language Congress used in
Public Law 96-88 in 1979 to create the Department of Education, which
did not include a directive regarding State allocation of their own
funds, or for determining what paths States must follow to enhance
student performance. The true virtue of the standards movement is its
genesis in the States and its adaptability to State-specific
conditions.
One of the biggest problems with NCLB was that it was set up to
over-identify failing schools. The Senate committee bill allows a focus
on the lowest group of low-performing schools, which means more
resources can be targeted to the schools that most need additional
assistance. The bill is further enhanced by the flexibility offered to
States to design a school turnaround plan that makes sense for its own
schools.
We hope that as the bill comes to the Senate floor, Congress will
continue to discuss the appropriate way to set academic content and
achievement standards for special education students. NCLB has required
that special education students be tested at grade level, but the
Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), the Federal law governing
special education, mandates that these students be taught according to
ability. This is a basic conflict that presents difficulties for States
as they seek to raise the achievement of all students. NCSL is pleased
that an amendment allowing special education teachers to be exempt for
the requirements regarding highly qualified teachers was adopted by the
committee. Many special education teachers must teach multiple subjects
and having them prove content knowledge in each subject is unrealistic.
Data collected as a result of NCLB requirements has given us a better
picture of the academic performance of special education students, and
we look forward to continued discussion about the best way to meet
their needs.
NCSL is also pleased that the committee's legislation contains some
additional flexibility from NCLB provisions regarding highly qualified
teachers. There is no disagreement that well-prepared teachers with
strong subject matter expertise can provide the kind of instruction
every child needs. However, NCSL supports common sense provisions in
the committee bill that allow States and districts to deal with the
realities of staffing classrooms. These include allowing teachers of
Native American, Native Alaskan and Native Hawaiian culture, language
and history to be exempt from credentialing requirements that apply in
other subjects, and allowing a teacher in a rural classroom to be
supported by distance learning. This is another area where we hope the
discussion is beginning, not ending.
States are firmly committed to evaluating teachers and principals.
However, decisions about these evaluations and how they should be used
are best left to the States, and NCSL appreciates that the committee
did not require this.
NCSL remains concerned about possible Federal incursion into State
school finance formulas. The committee bill requires that State
education agencies develop and implement a plan to ensure that combined
State and local per pupil expenditures are equal between title I
schools and other schools. The complex issues around school finance
equity are best resolved at the State and local level, and this action
has implications for State funding formulas and finance laws.
While the legislation does not contain every change in NCLB that
NCSL is seeking, it represents a mostly positive step in correcting
some of the worst imbalances of a well-intended but flawed Federal law.
We applaud the Senate HELP Committee for its work so far. Knowing that
many issues remain to be discussed when the bill comes to the floor of
the Senate, NCSL looks forward to continued refinement of this
legislation.
For further information, please do not hesitate to contact NCSL
State-Federal affairs staff Lee Posey ([email protected]) or Michael
Reed ([email protected]) or call NCSL's DC office at (202) 624-
5400.
Sincerely,
The Honorable John Goedde,
Idaho Senate,
Co-Chair, NCSL Education Committee.
The Honorable Roy Takumi,
Hawaii House of Representatives,
Co-Chair, NCSL Education Committee.
______
Attachment--NCSL Policy: Reauthorization of the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act
The current incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), significantly shifted control of K-12
education to Federal officials and away from State and local-elected
officials. While the original intent of NCLB--to identify the unmet
needs of all children in our education systems and promote education
reform--is commendable, State legislators believe that current Federal
policy dilutes the impact of limited Federal resources. NCLB also
mandates the use of a flawed and discredited method of measuring
academic progress that over-identifies failure and promotes a process
and compliance model of Federal-State interaction, instead of allowing
for State innovation.
NCSL calls upon Congress to complete the overdue reauthorization of
NCLB. State legislators believe that NCLB should be rethought in its
entirety and calls on Congress to swiftly adopt legislation that:
Incorporates the recommendations of the NCSL Task Force on
No Child Left Behind. These recommendations include revitalizing the
State-Federal partnership; overhauling Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP);
amending the State-plan approval process to make it more transparent
and less arbitrary; and changing the sequence of consequences for
under-performing schools;
Follows the concept of incentive-based programs as opposed
to the coercive, punitive system at the heart of NCLB;
Acknowledges State constitutions and State-elected
officials as well as basic principles of federalism;
Focuses on the need for effective teachers in classrooms,
rather than meeting a Federal definition of ``highly qualified
teachers''; and
Avoids penalties that reduce Federal K-12 funding for any
State that shows continuous improvement in student achievement, and/or
a closing of the achievement gap in that State, using any legitimate
metric that is incorporated into State policy.
______
Advocacy & Consulting for Education,
Wayne, PA 19087,
November 7, 2011.
Dear Senator Harkin: I am a federally trained special education
advocate in Pennsylvania and am writing to you about the HELP Committee
hearing tomorrow. It is my understanding that my name was submitted
along with my biography to your office in preparation for testifying at
tomorrow's hearing to discuss the reauthorization of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act. I wanted to follow up with you about offering
my testimony tomorrow. I have thoroughly reviewed the reauthorization
and am well-versed in the topic. In addition to my close review of the
document, my training has provided me with a perspective that is
particularly appropriate for this discussion. I am one of about 75
people in the United States to have successfully completed the only
Federal training for special education advocates, the Special Education
Advocates Training (SEAT), offered by the Council of Parent Attorneys
and Advocates through a grant from the Office of Special Education
Programs.
I am traveling to Washington, DC today for a Department of
Education roundtable in advance of tomorrow's hearing, in conjunction
with Parenting Magazine's Mom Congress initiative. I have previously
served as the Pennsylvania representative for Mom Congress and
currently function as the Special and Gifted Education Mentor.
Following this discussion, I will be meeting with staff from Senator
Bob Casey's office at 4:30 p.m. to discuss both the ESEA revisions and
the TALENT Act. I would be honored to have the opportunity to speak
about any part of the bill before the HELP Committee tomorrow, and to
this end I am including three statements I have prepared. The first
discusses the Act as a whole and particularly its stance on parental
engagement, a key piece of this legislation that I am well-situated to
discuss given my experience representing parents and children. The
second statement discusses the TALENT Act, and the third is a
combination of these two topics.
In advance of the hearing tomorrow, I wanted to confirm that you
had received my bio and share with you my thoughts. It would be a
privilege to be able to provide feedback about this Act before the
committee, and I am fully prepared to do so. Please let me know whether
time and space will permit me to participate, and I will look forward
to hearing from you or one of your staff. I can be reached today at
(610) 529-9350.
Sincerely,
Melissa Bilash.
Attachments
ESEA AND TALENT ACT-COMBINED TESTIMONY
Providing high quality education is about expectations and
accountability. When we think about America's children we are
considering a diverse and exceptional population capable of astonishing
things. As you consider reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act I would urge you to not forget our history, the realities
of education, or the heights that our children can reach. We are poised
to strike a balance between our greatest aspirations and the on-the-
ground challenges in education. It is my hope that, by enacting the
TALENT Act and reauthorizing a more accountable Education bill, we can
strike that balance.
My name is Melissa Bilash and I am here to speak on behalf of
parents and families. I am a federally trained special education
advocate. My practice in Radnor, PA spans seven States and is dedicated
to providing assistance and support to families of exceptional children
seeking appropriate accommodations in the school setting.
While the possibility of new methods is integral to progress in
schools, there are some basics that we can never neglect. Every student
should have a thorough needs assessment performed for each academic
subject, each year. Students do not just have needs related to their
academic ability, but related to their age, developmental abilities,
social and emotional abilities, home life circumstances, and many other
facets of their lives. All needs that will affect a student's academic
capacity must be met and it is imperative that we do not overlook other
educational needs because a student is able to do ``well enough''
without additional support. We must be providing support that makes a
child's full potential a reality. The proposed bills are about seeing
students as individuals and seeking to support them in meeting that
potential.
In this vein, I would encourage the committee to re-evaluate both
pieces of legislation to provide tangible accountability wherever
possible. The proposed parent and family engagement and differentiated
education in both bills are promising steps towards this kind of
accountability. I would ask that we take these measures even further.
Parent and family member engagement can be strengthened in the
reauthorization to assure school accountability. Establishing school
compacts must require the written approval of at least 75 percent of
parents and family members for enrolled students. Schools must be
mandated to make and maintain contact with parents on a quarterly basis
and also to be able to demonstrate this contact through careful
recordkeeping. Finally, I would suggest that when providing assessment
data, all parents and family members receive written notification of
the family engagement mission statement of the ESEA and their rights
within it. We know that parent and family member engagement is one of
the most primary factors in student success. We would be short-changing
this country's students if we did not demand accountable, documented
parental engagement.
The TALENT Act proposes a renaissance, not just in gifted
education, but in the way we educate all students. I am excited to see
this kind of goal-setting and evidence-based progress in education and
would encourage the committee to do everything in its power to make
these aspirations a reality. All schools should be required to return
the results of at least one new strategy for identifying gifted
students, one new strategy for instructing gifted students, and one
gifted strategy that has been implemented in mainstream classrooms for
the school year. By requiring the documentation of these strategies we
are giving schools the opportunity to thoroughly assess their methods
and evolve their programming based on the effectiveness of the
strategies and the need of their students.
If the No Child Left Behind Act has taught us anything it is that
education is not a numbers game. We, as a nation, are invested in high
quality instruction and career readiness for our students that
acknowledges their learning needs and stimulates academic growth.
Having worked with the families of many exceptional children I feel
strongly that every child needs to be treated as an individual. To this
end, we must continually develop new ways to identify needs and engage
students and their families. This process will be unique to each school
district, classroom, and student, but that does not remove the
necessity of accountability to certain standards.
My experience tells me that schools are often only able to meet the
minimum standards required. If this is what we can expect of our
schools, then we have a responsibility to set the expectations
appropriately. I would appeal to the committee to mandate careful
documentation of family engagement and to require schools to provide
parents with information about their role in the educational process.
Furthermore, as schools enact new strategies for identifying and
instructing exceptional students and apply these methods to the wider
population, I would encourage documentation and reporting of this
progress. Accountability affords schools the opportunity to evaluate
family engagement and new education strategies and to benefit from one
another's experiences. This bill represents a bipartisan effort to
reform our current educational policy; we must make the most of this
momentum to ensure that our children have access to excellent
educational opportunities as well as the chance to share our successes
with the wider community. In this way, schools across the Nation can
move forward together toward higher quality education.
Thank you.
ESEA TESTIMONY
Streamlining: the act of altering a process to make it more
efficient and simple. Listening to the conversation about the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act Reauthorization, streamlining
public education seems to be lauded as its highest virtue. A simplified
process will localize decisionmaking, reduce the number of
participants, and remove many voices from the conversation As good as
this sounds, a free, appropriate, public education will never be this
simple.
My name is Melissa Bilash and I am here to speak on behalf of the
parents and families of exceptional children. I am a federally trained
special education advocate. My practice in Radnor, PA spans seven
States and is dedicated to providing assistance and support to families
of exceptional children seeking appropriate accommodations in the
school setting.
A free, appropriate, public education involves the efforts of many
individuals. It is necessary that administrators, teachers, school
staff, and parents all work in conjunction to create programming and
services that suit the needs of each unique learner. This can be an
arduous and lengthy process that is ongoing throughout a child's
academic life. Without the cooperation of each of these people the
academics and overall development of a student can suffer irreparably.
We cannot simplify, or streamline our way out of this conversation. We
are learning all the time that parent and family engagement is vital to
success in education. My greatest fear is that our desire for
efficiency will offer only nominal opportunities for parent engagement
or exclude families from education altogether.
Karen Mapp, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has
synthesized 51 studies examining the influence of family and community
relationships on academic achievement. The studies spanned a wide
diversity of cultures and the full range of K-12 grade levels. She has
found not only that parents have the desire to be involved in their
child's education, regardless of their own education level, ethnicity,
and socio-economic background, but that many are involved in whatever
ways they believe they can be. Without supporting these parents and
providing them with the best possible information about how they can
encourage academic success, we are ignoring a primary resource in a
child's life.
The ESEA Reauthorization addresses parent and family member
engagement; however, we must require more than schools offering simple
opportunities for parent and family member involvement. We have to
approach this matter as it is presented to us: currently, many parents
do not have the resources to take proper advantage of the opportunities
for engagement that schools provide. Whether it is time, finances,
education, or otherwise, we cannot assume that simply being given a
greater chance to participate will allow parents to do so. This
legislation needs to mandate greater communication between public
schools and families of enrolled children. Schools arc responsible for
setting curriculum, providing materials, and seeing to all other
aspects of academic success. We must also demand that they communicate
clearly with parents and go the extra mile to involve all necessary
parties to a child's education in decisionmaking and programming for
that child and for the school at large.
In my work, I see the reality of federally mandated parent
involvement every day. The process of creating and individualized
education plan requires parent agreement and approval of an exceptional
student's educational program. In these cases we are dealing with
children who need specific accommodations in order to access their
education, but all children should have this kind of specialized
attention. All parents deserve the opportunity for authentic
engagement, but in my experience, statutory requirements to involve
parents are not always enough to ensure that a child is offered or
provided with a program that meets their needs. These mandates do not
prevent parents from needing the assistance of advocates or, in some
cases, attorneys, in order to seek appropriate educational
accommodations for their child. As someone who sees the effect of
legislative requirements of parental involvement every day I would
appeal to you to make the mandate for parental engagement as stringent
and specific as possible.
Parent and family member engagement can be strengthened in the
authorization to assure school accountability. Establishing school
compacts must require the written approval of at least 75 percent of
parents and family members for enrolled students. Schools must be
required to make and maintain contact with parents on a quarterly basis
and also to be able to demonstrate this contact through careful
recordkeeping. Finally, I would suggest that when providing assessment
data all parents and family members receive written notification of the
family engagement mission statement of the ESEA and their rights within
it. We know that parents and family engagement is one of the most
primary factors in student success. We would be short-changing this
country's students if we did not demand accountable, documented
parental engagement.
This reauthorization places us in the privileged of learning from
and correcting our mistakes. We have seen the detriment of highly
standardized assessment of schools and students and we know that this
is not a numbers game. To evaluate the true quality of education and
student progress we must move forward into a system of realistic and
measureable family engagement in our public schools. We must be wary of
simplifying education too much. Appropriate education for individual
students requires our careful and responsible use of all available
resources to meet unique needs. We would ask that the committee think
carefully about the balance of efficiency and quality education. Please
do not streamline parents and families out of the schooling process.
Setting concrete, accountable standards for public school engagement
with families is the only way to assure continued involvement and the
continued success of American students.
TALENT ACT TESTIMONY
The TALENT Act is an opportunity for schools to recognize the gifts
and unique needs of each student. This bill is a renewed chance to help
our highest achieving students meet their potential and to improve
programming across the board for all children. Teachers are regularly
reporting the low priority that high achieving students receive in
classrooms and schools. Coupled with the overarching problems facing
public schools this paints a disheartening picture of public education.
The TALENT Act could provide a renaissance in research, strategy, and
methodology for gifted education and a greater focus on the unique
needs of individual students of any academic ability.
My name is Melissa Bilash and I am here to speak on behalf of the
parents and families of exceptional children. I am a federally trained
special education advocate. My practice in Radnor, PA is dedicated to
providing assistance and support to families of exceptional children
seeking appropriate accommodations in the school setting.
According to the National Association for Gifted Children, 65
percent of teachers report that education courses and teacher
preparation programs focused either very little or not at all on how to
best teach academically advanced students. Fifty-eight percent of
teachers say that they have had no professional development focused on
teaching academically advanced students in the past few years. It is
clear that teachers are not receiving the support they need to properly
educate high achieving students. When we consider that they are as many
as 6 million gifted students in the school system, the lack of gifted
instruction in schools comes into focus as an educational crisis.
The best possible solution to the current state of gifted education
is supporting the teachers who instruct and observe students every day.
The Act's push towards specialized training for teachers and school
staff is a promising and exciting opportunity. Administrators,
teachers, and school staff should be afforded multiple chances to
expand their abilities and required to take advantage of at least one
training each school year. A commitment to supporting and providing
resources to these professionals will change the tenor of education and
refocus the system, not just on high ability children, but on how
unique the needs of each student are, regardless of their level of
academic ability.
Having worked with the families of many gifted children I feel
strongly that each of these children needs to be treated as an
individual. To this end, we must continually develop new ways to
identify and engage gifted students, based on the National Research and
Dissemination Center for the Education of the Gifted and Talented,
schools should be implementing at least one new method of identifying
gifted students and one new strategy for instructing gifted students
each year. It is vital that this research is implemented in schools so
that high ability children are identified and provided with appropriate
opportunities, but also so that we can begin a body of knowledge about
which gifted education strategies and how they best serve the larger
school population.
While the possibility of new methods is integral to progress in
schools, there are some basics that we can never neglect. Every student
should have a thorough needs assessment performed for each academic
subject each year. Gifted students do not just have needs related to
their high ability, but related to their age, developmental abilities,
social and emotional abilities, home life circumstances, and many other
facets of their lives. All needs that will affect a student's academic
capacity must be met and it is imperative that we do not overlook other
educational needs because a gifted student is able to do ``well
enough'' without additional support. The TALENT Act is about seeing
children as whole individuals and seeking to support them in meeting
their potential, no matter what it looks like.
As an advocate for families of exceptional children, I support the
TALENT Act and hope that it leads to real progress in differentiated
education, not just for gifted students, but for all students. This
bill is necessary to the well-being of children all over the country.
We have a responsibility to mandate the identification, appropriate
instruction, and support of our gifted young people. Currently, 18
States do not collect information about gifted students and 21 States
do not monitor or audit district programs for gifted students. For the
sake of these students it is necessary to begin requiring tangible,
documented efforts to improved gifted education.
[Whereupon, at 12:29 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]