iran. >> i need to correct -- amend my response. we have not been in jerusalem for 3500 years, we have been around only 3,000 years. pretty long. the second point that you asked -- time is running out. it is late in the day, but it is not too late. if there is a firm resolve by e international community to apply, crippling sanctions to our friends, hillary clinton, i think this regime will have to make a very difficult decision about its future course. is susceptible to this pressure,

what has been revealed in the recent events, a traumatic events for the iranian election, this regime does not enjoy the support of the iranian people, it is far weaker than meets the eye and if the resolve of responsible members of the international community is strong, firm, however late we are, the future is secure. this is our preference. ..

>> next a variety of speakers on subjects including politics, civil rights, and the future of social security. we will hear for some author james turner on his book voice of the people. and later entertainer at the. posted by international platrm association. this is about an hour and 15 minutes.

>> thanks very much. i'm glad to be here. i have one question. are you going to rebut him? i am not. i'm going to talk about an analysis that is different than the left-right, democrat, progressive, conservative analysis, but will address some of the point that david made. i want to start first by saying that david really very nice and oarsman of our book, which is called "voice of the people," and just very quickly he said they want us to look at issues from a new perspective, develop new ways of talking about differences that may be more illusory than real. and come up with some solutions that transcend theolitical and ideological discussions that so often government people of goodwill, the state often the

people of goodwill working together. that is a quick summary of what i want to talk about. i want to make a couple comments about marks introduction. first of all, what i'm doing now, which i believe i've been dog since i started working, it is comparable all the way through. the concept is that we have a way of thinking about and doing policy and politics in this country that is limited by our tendency to divide into two teams, and then treated as if it is a football game. now secondly, and i am going to argue that this is not a persuasive are to. i'm not trying to persuade peop to behave in a particular way. what i'm saying is if people actually already to behave any transporters and way. and our institutions are designed to screen that part of

our behavior out of our policymaking process. incidentally, just for the record, jim has been one of my heroes long before, while i was in college. and he is an amazing guy in terms of his absolute undying commitment to the first amendment, and being a very strong liberal on all kinds of ings, and being a very strong pro-life person simultaneously. and you mix that all together into one person and you have a very unique y, if you kind of want to watch what's going on in society, you could kind of watch his career path. you can see who hires him and who fires him and you will know what is up in what is now. one of the things about him that is so fascinating to me is that he was the chief biographer of america's greatest pacifist, a. j. muskie, was the first to train martin luther king in his nonviolence. is an interesting sort of stories about what goes on in america that most of us don't know anything about. and that is part of my argument

that we actually have a trans-partisan reality underway, below the surface of our politics. what we are doing in this book, and there are copies out there if anybody, as long as a last you can just grab one and take it, we are making an analysis of how the country works. and our analysis begins by saying there is not a great divide in america. there is not a great divide between people on this site and people on that side. and we cite you as of election data that show that what we have in the country is a very strong framework of general agreement, on every single issue, with two teams, one at the scene and one at that income in arguing with one another. a structural problem is that those two teams happen to control of about 100% of the political apparatus. so for example, in voting, roughly right now as far as

democrats voting in republican voting in elections, probably they account for something in the neighborhood of 30% of the american population. there are more registered independent and there are either republicans or democrats. and there are more unregistered legally qualified voters than there are democrats and republicans combined. so you get in a situation where you have a small portion, roughly 30% of the population or 30% of the political world -- 30% of the american society representing a political world. so theget any bill and they do a bipartisan activity, and they decide, to 30%, roughly half democrats and half republican, give or take bit here and there, this small minority of american society decides how all the resources are going to be spent. and the result of that is that

rest of us are sitting here and saying what is going on here? a very small number of people have been at these town meetings, yelling and screaming at each other. the interesting idea there, that i didn't think david was quite clear about and i think theres a better article and it in the post this morning by a conservative writer, former speechwriter for george bush, who talks abouthe town meetings and the whole phenomenon that is going on. and his argument is not democrats that, republicans good or whatever. his argument is we have a debate going on where both sides are behaving in a wreted manner. certainly you can see that when you watch the things on c-span. there is a whole dynamic underway, which is this that end of the spectrum, this end of the spectrum arguing with each other in public and all kinds of ways. and getting more and more and more invested in their argument.

remember, all of the people who are fighting in this partisan battle represent a small percentage of the total american society. that is the analysis that we are presenting. so how do we think about things in a new way in order to get around some of the stuff? first of all, as a matter of human nature, we believe really strongly that every american has in these debates going on inside themselves. do we need more of this kind of health care, do we need less? is it going to be expensive? and they are going inside themselves. and we need a way for that debate that people are having inside themselves to be expressed more in the social policy framework. that is what the founder were trying to develop when they created this country. it is quite different than any other political system. the idea was that we all have among ourselves, individually, internally, families, with our neighbors, we have a lot of

discourse, and other discussion. most people don't step up and say this is where i stand. where do you stand? most people say what you think about that? so that dynamic works on a local level. and begins to develop and mov up until it is cut off at the knees by the political process that moves it out over that kind of direction and create the kind of things we see in our politics. so we identify a range of individual act to be sickle on around the country that actually exhibit, already underway, a trans-partisan dynamic. in santa barbara there's a prison program, postprison term program that addresses one of the most contentious political areas in our society, about a thousand people a year are returned from the california peniteiary system to santa barbara. and people were sitting around saying these people aren't coming back, they are done with the terms. what we do? it was a real serious problem. so they got together with the

public defenders, the prosecutors, the social workers, the prison reform people, they hit their knuckles with a ruler people, all got together in a group. and they start saying look, these people are coming back to this town. we've got to make way for them to fit into the town or it's just going to be more trouble. now there were a lot of programs in existence for prisoners after serving, but for example, if you want to get a job you had to wait three to x to nine months to even get an interview in those programs. the local folks set up a system in which they were actually creating -- it's a service, a transition back into society program that began before people were left prison. started counseling them before they're out. started saying what you want to live, what you want to do in santa barbara, how do you want to handle this? and ashley came out again part of the network, a team unity. chan the whole framework for those folks who were in the

program. there is another example of a school. in the school, it's a san francisco school. it was one of the worst schools in the city, and probably one of the worst in the country. and there were only about four people who were taking the events mathematics class in high school, and they were all asian girls. new principal came in. he started building support for the faculty to do initiatives, creating, initiative and so forth. all programs that were designed to work on the local level bringing the paradigm, students and so forth. and now every student, every single student in the school takes advanced math course. and they have a high college placement situation, and the principal was identified as principal of the year in the u.s. after five years at being at that school. the point that we're getting at is that there would be very

close and intimate situations in which people are working to make things different, to improve things. and our cultural system, and our social system needs to support the. that is a dynamic. how do we think about that? first of all, the spectrum, left-right spectrum is a very, very weak tool to think about politics. for example, just think about a debate that went like this. my team thinks you shod walk on your right leg. miking thinks you should walk on your left leg. let's fight about it. we can do all kinds of things about whether walking only under right leg or on your left leg is right but when you get all done, no matter what the outcome of the debate you're going to have to walk on both your right and your left leg. that is the only way you make progress. otherwise, you would just be jumping up and down on one leg. our politics is like that. our politics is, we went to a bunch of mechanism for a little while. the left leg has control.

we jump up and down on the left leg. and didn't the right leg has control your we jump up and down on the right leg. we have to recognize that in making progress we integrate left and right. so what then, how do we think about that integration? well the way we are proposing is that instead of a spectrum, think of the matrix. income left, right, arbitrary, but it is part of the matrix. arbitrary purposes, and then think order freedom. is order freedom. left right, order freedom. this is all spelled out in the book. okay. now you look at politics and what do you get? you have one quaant is on your left, one on your right, when called as we write and one column is for you right. and what is very interesting is a whole raft of debate in the society pic free lesbian fe ride on one side, order left and order byte on the other side.

so take campaign reform. you have mccain, order left, order right. mccain pretty conservative center. feingold most liberal senator. opposed tohat mccain feingold, is on one hand, the american civil union and on the other in national rifle association. again, free left, free write. those teams are fighting. you can find them in the paper on issue after issue on th internet or the newspaper, and they usually get clustered under something called on fellow coalitions. there are places where people are going around saying ok at these strange people on the right on something. what does that mean? how does that work? what we are saying is that his fundamental. its fundamental. there is a tendency toward freedom on the left and on the

right, and a tendency toward order on the left and on the right. and progress requires the integration of freedom in order. if you have only order you will eventually have all pression. if you have only three of you will eventually have chaos. if you can integrate freedom and order, you can in fact have progress. because the more order you can organize that is not oppressive, the more freedom you can have that is not chaos. that's the key to what we call the trans-partisan imperative. and we are saying it's happening all across the country. where is the first point that we need to address this politics? the very first point is on the districting of legislative districts at the state level and the federal level. and the first successful trans-partisan initiative that has gone into politics that we

identify, maybe the first at all, is the california reapportionment initiative that was on the ballot last year. it one. and it is the first time, it is a reapportionment of state legislative districts. it one and the commission establishes now operating public hearings and so forth, it set up a commission quite different from most other commissions that have been set up federally and across the country. most commissions that are established in the political process requires so many democrats have so many republicans. usually whoever's in power gets the odd one, you know, because it is always three or five or whatever. in this initiative in californ california, it is roughly a third democrats, a third republicans and a third independent. independents have explicit legislated role in this districting program that is an extremely important breakthroh because now the way things will

get done, at ast there wil be voices there to say wait a minute, there is more of us then you're a, we should be considered also. and that kind of dynamic i think is the beginning of a real procs. what we would argue is that that kind of an approach with the passion of the term limit movement behind it has a real chancef restructuring a whole framework of american politics and policy. the term limit movement is a movement that does well in addressing the personality of politics. it does not actually address the underlying structure of politics. and the term limit will become the same small, all of the democratic republic is makes the decision. instead of sam, it is joe. after six years, joe takes over sam's job. there from the same group, the same club and so forth. and it is virtually impossible to put anybody out of office as a team, as a system, because

they control for example redistricting. right now a very small percentage, i think 30 or so seats in the house of representatives are actually -- made it a few more tha that, maybe 60, are actually amenable to a possible change by virtue of an election. all of the others are fixed. it is either republican or democratic districts changing that would change the framework of politics. in the objective for the change or the framework of politics is to allow the personal american conservation that goes on with and each american and wreckage american dinner table and in ending each american community to actually be heard in the political process. right now it isn't. it is close right out. and our analysis of the trans-partisan imperative is that this is the dynamic that

madison, for example, was talkingbout in federalist 10 when he wrote against the factions. the idea that he was working on was the fact that what goes on in the society actually has an important role to play to what goes on in politics. and we cannot allow a faction to dominate politics. and frankly right now, we have a faction dominating politics. it's the partisan politicians, republicans and democrats. the opening of the book, i would just like toive you two examples of things. our first chapter we say although the evidence shows that our country does suffered deep political and cultural divisions, the conflict are not among ordinary people. they are between ordinary people and political elites. and are highly stylish little structure, everyone, winners and opponentslike, play dehumanizing roles that pose the whole apparatus to resemble a cross between sumo wrestling and

kabuki theater. [laughter] >> people are playing roles. they are not actually expressing anything real. they are playing roles. that distort our whole application of resources. now i want to just read one other quote that we borrowed that i find useful in setting the context for what we are doing. in 1990, during the more hopeful times after the end of the cold war, nobel laureate plessis united states america at the fulcrum of world progress. in an essay titled our universal civilization communal, and this is 1990, the idea of the pursuit of happiness is at the heart of the attractiveness of the universal civilization for so many outside on its periphery. i don't imagine my father's hindu parents would've been understand the idea. so muc is contained in a. the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of

vocation and perfectibility and achievement. it is an minsk human idea. it cannot be reduced to a fixed system. it cannot generate fanaticism. but it is known to exist, and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away. that's the dynamic that we are talking about when we say if you harness the actual conversations that are going on within and among americans to our political process and begin to have our policies formed by intelligence, the concern, the commitment of the american people, you will end up with a strong vibrant moving forward society which will raise all of us and the world itself. is an important notion that we're not trying to persuade people to do this. they are already doing it. we are saying let's construct our political apparatus to reflect what the people are alreaddoing. thank u very much. [applause]

>> if anyone haa question, there is a microphone. >> can they just asked for the -- from the table? i can repeat them. >> well, our c-span audience wouldn't be able to h them very well. so please use the microphone. i'm going to kill one antidote. and let me make this antidote the first question. one of my mentors, many, many years ago when i was in the only state legislature was a distinguished general by the name opark levees and it was a trusty and trustee of the well for the university of illinois. the legendary story about park is that he was working with the president of lasalle national bank and went in one day to have a conference and he said bosse, back in the 44 democratic primary?

and the president of the bank said in part, i'm surprised that you. the bank has to be strictly neutral in these things. we don't take sides. we can't back anyone. we have to be neutral. and park said yeah, boss, i know that but what i really need to know is who are we neutral for? [laughter] >> the international platform association is not neutral for anyone. we believe in free speech. we've had a person with a one time the circle progressive background this morning and the one time -- and a chairman of the american conservative union. but jim, my question has to do with the general laws of civility that my mentor, parker, so championed. he said always, can't regional people have reasonable if it is of opinion without questioning the motives of other people. is that part of what you and david have been talking about today? >> well, i think the civility issue is crucial. and i thinkhamy own feeling

about the civility is about tiger update the fact that people want to say and want to be heard saying are squeezed out of the process. and so i think two things are driving people lack of civility. one of them is not having an option to go somewhere and talk. i mean, it's not only the democrats and republicans are liberals and conservatives. we have a lot more on our agenda now than we used at. so there's not a lot of time and space for people to actually be heard, but i think more importantly, i think there's a lot of fear that is out in the world. i think it was a lot of fear of course after 9/11. i think that was at least institutionalizing to some the things that both david and i agree, i would call them egregious us of federal power to block people. but also the economic downturn has a frightened people in your muslim. i think people are very, very upset right now.

so even their own internal debate i think is probably less civil than it used to be. and i think even discussion among families. that is a very big challenge for the cultu. i am curious about these articles in the post this morning about health care debate are very interesting and they do focus on the civility issue. but i am curious about, there's a very interesting statement about, for example, obama care. but obama hasn't taken a real position on health care yet. some peoe are saying that is a bad thing. it has led to problems or ybe it is a good thing. but his strategy clearly was to let the debate take place. everybody that we can, scream and yell. i don't think anybody really expected the level of civility to be this low. i mean, it's enormous. i am among other things chairman of the board of an organization called citizens for health, and we have a constituency that really is a trans part of the constituency.

anywhere from extreme left and extreme right. extreme order. it is all mixed tether. and we are not very happy about mandates. that institution is not very happy about any mandates of any kind. and it is a tricky problem. and i think that is doing a lot of people who are out in the community. because they are fearful that they are going to be told how their health care is going to be done. and the fact is that right now it is already happening. that's one of the things that we have battled for because we think health is a fundamental human right, and we don't think that ordering people on how to get their health car is a way of getting that. we are very concerned that there are many options that are being pushed off the table that shouldn't be. and that's from a constituency that is from a right, left, middle order, freedom. yo know, -- >> thank you very much. >> anymore questions? >> our next speaker is here.

[applause] >> jim, if these are your glasses you're going to miss them later today. our next bigger has arrived. one of the themes of this international platform association meeting is celebrating the advances made over many years in education for african-americans, especially higher education will be honoring today later the bishop, who actually died more than 100 years ago in 1896, but he was a post-civil war president and he was an asian tour that slater frond which roughly had a mission earlier in the 19th century to the united negro college fund today and some of the same colleges were beneficiaries of the slater fund. but a friend of mine is here today from the national park service who is assistant director at the mar mcleod house here in washington, d.c.. mary mcleod mcnairn a historic

figure in the advances in civil rights. she s a founder of the national council for negro women and she was also a founder of a school in daytona florida, was at the bassoon school? or the bassoon cook school? [inaudible] >> somebody will correcte. but i'm very grateful to margaret for coming today to tell us about the life of mary mcleod and to invite you while yoare here to visit their house near logan circle. margaret coleman miles, i have to remember you are married and now. congratulations. , for. thank you for coming. [applause] >> good morning to everyone. can you hear me? >> i am going to thank you for inviting senator wrote. i always refer to them as

senator although he is state senator from illinois. i still do still that honor upon him. i want to thank you for inviting me here to talk about a great american woman who had a vision -- oh, my god, years ago. her name was mary mcleod bethune. she was a political activist. she was a civil rights activist and she was the founder of the first founder and first president of the national council of the national council of negro women. and she also was an educator who founded the bethune cookman college, now university. mary mcleod bethune, let me give you just a bit of background about who she was. she was born in 1875. she was in a place called maysville south july. do i have any south carolina and in your? okay. wonderful. she was the 15th of 17 children.

can you imagine having that many brothers and sisters? but in those days that's what the family size would have been. she was born 10 years after the signing of the 13th amendment, which meant after the 13th amendment had been signed, most southern states were very slow about setting up public education for negroes here in america. so what happened? churches got themselves together and they would dispatch a pastor and a teacher to a particular rura area. in this particular church would have bn the presbyterian church. the presbyterians dispatched a pastor and teacher to the small world, one room house, set it up as a school. and this is how mary mcleod bethune was a recipient for the first few years of her life. after nishing the school. that school would've only gone up to the third or the fifth grade. that was a. there was no other educational opportunities for negroes during

that time, especially in the rural area. it so happens that, the school would have taught writing, reading, and arithmetic. as they say, the three rs. and en they would have taught moral values. to the individuals in that community. and so after that was over, there was nothing. but bethune was fortunate, not only you see the stry that i'm going to give you today and to you about how bethune had the determination, and the churches came in and he began to help her fulfill the deam and a vision that she had for not only basic education for negroes here in america, but a collegiate level of education here in america. and around -- the schl was over in 1883, the presbyterian church, but bethune did graduate from the basic courses that they had there. just so happenthat a quaker seamstress very kindly quaker

seamstress from denver, colorado, wrote her teacher. heard name was mary. and mary was trying to exemplify her faith in god. and so as she was pondering how she was going to do this, she got an idea. she wrote a letter to the bad pastor and teacher in south carolina and it went like this. i name is mary, and i'm interested in paying 10% of my income for the continued education of one of your students there at the school. she did not know any, and she asked the teacher to choose which one of her students there to receive the seven-year scholarship, which would've taken that student to the seminary and concordes after a lot of. well, the teacher chose mary mcleod bethune. to be the recipient of that education. she had demonstrated that she was interested in education, not

only was she interested in education, she helped her family because during this time how people got money in their household right away, they grew cotton. cotton was so valuable that you could go a. it was a one season crop it you coul go get. you could pick it. you could take it to the waystation and you would get cash money on the spot. and so by her parents in the literate, they would depend upon whatever that person at the waystation would say that they had. and bethune, going to the school, even at a young age, she knew the responsibility of helping her parents get a fair price for their cotton. so she did help them not only them, she also helped the others within that community. so when the scholarship was offered, should already demonstrate that she was not only interested in education for herself, but also helping her family as benefit and the community. the day that she left maysville, there is a called rack and no.

it is the biography of mary mcleod bethune. it is out of print but you can find copies in your local library. on that day when she left, she was betwe 11 and 12 years old when she boarded a train by herself leaving mayesville, south carolina, going to concord, north carolina, to the seminary. the whole community turned out for her because they wereo excitedor the fact that she had the opportunity to get a larger educational opportunity, to graduate. d so she did attend the seminary. she did graduate in 1893. that quaker seamstress was so impressed with her performance there at the school, and she was the first african-american to be able, or negro during that time, would have been the term, to have graduated, to have attended and graduated from the school. after graduating, that quaker

seamstress was again so impressed that she paid an additional year for her to attend the moody bible institute in chicago, illinois. she graduated from movie in 1895. her greatest desire at the time was just to be a missionary. she want to be a missionary. she wanted to go to africa. well, she did not discover that moody was not sending any negro missionaries to africa. so she then had to then think about she's going to be. she was disappointed and unlike the sinuses of negro missionaries to africa as early as 1830, would have never sdnt a woman by herself. the criteria for thehurch would have been you send them out to buy two. and that two by two would have been a hband and wife delegaon. well, bethune did not get married until 1898, so she did not qualify. she could've also accompanied a

husband and wife delegation, but she would have then been taking care of their children. so none of that came into play for her. and i know onhat day when moody said i'm sorry, your application is denied, that she was disappointed. and so would any of you would have been disappointed with the fact that you had prepared herself, and you did very well, and you were denied. and as she stood there been beig disappointed, she never dreamed in her wildest dreams that she would be the founder of a college, or a college president. october 4, 1904, mary mcleod bethune started the daytona normal industrial school for negro girls. she started off with five girls, from the ages of eight to 12 years old, and her son. by that time she had married another fellow teacher by the name of a vertis.

and so i she started off, she had a very meager amount of money which would've disappointed a lot of us to that i'm not going to even make an attempt as i can do anything with a small amount of money. believe it or not, she started off with $1.50. she convinced the person. she started the school in her home near the railroad tracks. and she convinced the owner, the writ was $11 a month and she convinced him just let me on the property and i will raise the rest of the money for your. and sure enough she did. she then began to train and teach her girls. she had so many. she started off with fe but daytona beach during this time had large economic boom. the railroad was bng built. the east coast railroad was being built, and most of the railroad workers had cldren. but in daytona beach there was

no educational opportunities for negroes during this time. so the thune otranto and bethune said i'm going to start the school by so. she got a large influx of girls. she boarded the girls in her home that she had. the railroad worker sent their children to her for her to take care of them and for the safety because they had been bordered. they didn't have to worry about it because they knew mrs. bethune was going to teach them academics and have to carry themselves as a lady. in daytona beach, people used to identify bethune to girls when she gets her a girl, she didn't accept voice until 1908. they knew if they saw a young woman walking in daytona beach, and she had on a blue skirt and a white blouse and a straw hat, looking qui elegant, they knew she was a student from mary

mcleod bethune school. because they've had never seen negroes look as good before. and bethune d'amato was when people have a negative opinion of you, you put your best foot forward, not sure where to put forward. and you don't play to them that it can be. be. atsushi trained and taught her girls. now, let me tell you how she showed the florida board of education and the floridians that blacks could learn. and she had that task because there was a rumor going around that blacks could not learn. and that is why the florida board ofducation and a lot of other board of education's in daytona beach and the southern area would not expand the money. there was $2.75 for every black child's education that was expanded from the government, and $11.75 for every white child's education but to keep them from issuing the money for the black child education, they sent us that blacks can't learn.

bethune was inriated. and to what she did what she came up with one of the smartest ways of how to show them that blacks could learn. she went to the various hotels within the daytona beach area after she had trained her girls. they were looking very nice pick their uniform, and she said in the book there was only one hotel in daytona that was used to allow her to come in. but the others she proved her point. she would go in, she would introduce herself to the hotel providers and she would say hello, my name is mary mcleod bethune. and i would like to come to your hotel and put on a little light musical selection with my girls. and you know, they say music? everybody knows black folks can sing. so bring them on in. t them come right on in and will have us a nice little soirée in the hotels. so when she would, she would go in. the girls had their little uniforms on, and she would be so

bold because bethune had a lot of confidence wiin herself. she said i believe in god, but i also believe in mary mcleod bethune. and also what was doing the right thing to do. she would get to the hotel's. people were in amazement to see these little girls looking so uniform and ready to sing. and bethune, of course, remarriage was trained as a missionary. so that meant 11 missionaries learn how to play the piano. piano. she would get in that lounge and she would play that piano. and the people would, oh, my goodness, look, look. they were just thoroughly entertained and overwhelmed of their presence, how they carry themselves. and then after the musical selections was over with, guess what bethune would have the girls to do? read shakespeare poems. complex literature. and people were blown away. they would say oh, my god. and this is how, as she was

going forth of gatherng support for her school, she met three of the wealthiest men in the world in those hotels, two of the minolta. one was john d. rockefeller. in 1902, he did establish a fund to add on to educate negroes in america. and it still exists to this day. he was so impressed by what he had seen mrs. bethune and those girls to. he came up and shook their heads and asked him how much does it cost to go to the school that you all are going to? then he proceeded to say to mary mcleod bethune, i'm going to pa for each one of the girls education, and i'm going to come and i'm going to visit your school. that you can imagine bethune was just saying okay, ce over. and then she met another joan by the name of thomas h. white who was the president of weitzel and machine counted if they were so enthralled with mary mcleod

bethune. they said we had to come to your school. when they went they didn't see the pristine college campus that you see now in daytona beach. buffoon in her girls were still in there to room cottage. they were using milk crates as their chairs. bethune said the same thg as her girls. her desk was a barrel with a board over at. and they said wait a minute. you are not going to tell me you did all of this fine teaching in this, and i know headache had to catch himself, when they said dump. so then they bowed right there to bethune i'm going to help you build your college. and another gentleman who she visited his home, his name is james gamble, one of the founding sons of procter & gamble. all of these men had summer homes in the daytona beach area. and so he was so impressed with

bethune's directness and drive that he became her first board of directors and trustees of that school. the school moved quickly in 1908. she began to admit boys. in 1923, she merged with another school, and that is where the cookman part comes from because a lot of people say who is cookman. you see the name bethune-cookman college. who was cookman? well, cookman was an all boys school, one of the first of its kind in the south. i won't say america, but it does say in the right of on alfred cookman, on the school there that it was one of the first schools after the civil war that was set up by the freedman's bureau to educate negro boys only. the methodist minister that was there decided a name, they had to decide a name for the school. and there was another methodist minister before him, who he

thought hs whole ambition was to educate negro boys. his name was alfred cookman. now the freedman bureau opened the school, alfred cookman had died, but the other methodist ministers that had labored and that was working on the school that the freedman bureau opened said we can't name the school anything else but after alfred cookman. because of his eel, his determination, and his interest in wanting to educe negro boys. and so that was the name of the school, the alfred cookman institute for neg boys. in 1923, you know how it goes. when the government gives you money for a while, they expect that some period of time that you support your own self, and the funds get cut and you are wondering how in the world am i going to keep this school sobran without this funding. well, bethune heard about a. this to schools merged.

became a junior college, and the rest is history when it comes to the school. also, as a school group, in 1941, it gained accreditation to offer a four-year liberal arts college. mary mcleod bethunetepped down as president in 1942 and then she turned to school over two united methodist church. and they are the ones who own and operate the bethune-cookman college to this day. now, in 2004, another woman comes on 100 years past mary mcleod bethune, takes the helm of the presidency. her name is doctor trudy read. doctor reid decides, because the alumni association that went to the buffoon cookman college was so grateful for the educational opportunities and things that was afforded to them at the college, that they brought back millions of dollars and they were very successful, poured millions of dollars into the

coege. and doctor beebe says okay, it's good that we have money to provide ecational opportunities for others that cannot afford it, but it is now time to get the accreditation so that we may offer masters and phd programs. february 14, 2007 the bethune-cookman college cease to exist. it is now the bethune-cookman university. not bad for a lady starting out five girls,1.50, and she built a college out of her home. if you see now a college campus whe it is located now on day she was second at a. they have renamed it to the doctor mary mcleod bethune boulevard there in daytona florida. it used to be the city dump. bethune coffee owner into selling the lot to her for $250.

that was a lot of money during that time, but it certainly is not the value of that land, but the gentleman was so convinced was the talk of mary mcleod bethune and what she wanted to do with the property that they sold the original porsche loveland were the colleges now which used to be the city dump to her for that amount of money. guest worker down payment was? $11. that's all she had was $11. and so she then convinced, if you just let the other property. they signed an agreeme, and that she would have the money and a couple of years, the whole $250. just as she raised the money? she sold sweet potato pies and made homemade ice cream to the railroad workers. and she raised that money. so whe there is determination, and you convince other people of your dreams and vision, i mean, you can really work miracles like mary jane mcleod did.

i would like to share with you one last piece about mrs. buffoon. august, the same year that she died, she gained one of the profound entities with john johnson who was the president and sole owner of johnson magazine in chicago, illinois. and it is entitled mary mcleod bethune legacy. and a lot of people gained a lot of inspiration from this. and i hope you do too. it goes like this, sometimes i ask myself if i had any other legacy to leave, now not only did bethune start the school there in daytona beach and was the first president for the first 40 some years, she also was invited by four u.s. presidents. it was the latter two president, president franklin delano roosevel in 1939 appointed mary

mcleod bethune to be ahead of the department of negro affairs and the national youth administration which made her the first black woman in america to have a u.s. federal agency. when president truman came along after roosevelt had died, remember president roosevelt had signed the executive order to end discrimition in the federal gernment in the defense dartment. and it was truman's lot in life to complete that. he appointed mary mcleod bethune and 11 other outstanding african-americans to the assistant secretaries to the department of defense to eure that african-american men, or negro meat the time, were not initially discriminated to join any branch of the military. that african-american women were not omitted from the initial inception in two the army. is my time up?

>> just about. >> okay. let me finish reading the articl truly, my worldly possessions are few. my experience has been rich. from them, i have distilled principles andolicies from which i believe firmly, and they are as follows. i leave you love. love the built. it is more positive and more helpful than hate. i leave you hope. i leave you with the challenge of developing confidence in one another. i leave you a thirst for education. i leave you the respectful use of power. i will lead you faith, i believe you racial dignity. i leave you desired to live harmoniously with your fellow man. i leave you finally a responsibility to our people. our junk people, because they are the futures of america.

and we need to build and help them this much. and this is how individuals that i talk to about, the quaker seamstress, the methodist church, the episcopal church, all worked together. because she could have never accomplished what she accomplished by herself. but with such fervor of her spirit and are looking to the future to provide a collegiate level of education foregroes here in america, she did just that. thank you so very much. [applause] >> margaret, thank you for sharing that inspirational story. i want to say that we did invite toy dorothy height, who is the current president and has been president for the last 50 years of the national council of negro women, and she unfortunately, well not unfortunately really, she is on a cruise today named

after her. so she said otherwise you would have liked to ha come to be with the ipa today. now we have to leave this wonderful inspirational story, and talk about the topic of government waste. we had peter grace here speak to the ipa in the year 1990. and his successor is here. tom, would you pase come forward. tom schatz is the chairman. and what i asked tom to talk about in part today is tell us whatever happened to earmarks. we heard a lot about earmarks in the last several years and they were supposed to have disappeared. so i am going to ask tom, did they disappear. please welcome tom schz, president of citizens against government waste. [applause] >> thank you very much, mark. is a pleasure to be back speaking to the international platform association. the last time i was here, taxpayers were up in arms about wasteful spending and earmarks,

pork and that was 10 years ago. deficit was an outrageously high number, d i and for schilling not much has changed. the one thing that has changed is that we know more about which members of congress are asking for the earmarks, but they still take great pri in pork. this is something that citizens against government waste has been doing since 1991. and at that time, we still like to call it pork barrel spending. that was the terminology. so we were doing it are marked before they were really cool and out inhe public and it is good to know where it came on. the time that we did the first congressional page book, got $3.2 billion in pork. this current fiscal year, $19.6 billion in pork. so the record year was 29 billion in 2006. lower than the record, but higher than last year. one of the things of course that happened in 2006 was the loss of the majority by the republicans.

and while many thought it might be the war, it might've been other issues. people were very upset about the lack of accountability and transparency by the republicans when he came to earmarks. one of the reasons that earmarking exploded under the republicans was the takeover in 1994 of the house and senate. and about a year later, speaker gingrich, newt gingrich, decided that one way to help republicans get reelected and keep the majority was to encourage the appropriations committees and the house and senate to put earmarks into the legislation, into the districts of vulnerable republican freshman. so this was at that time for the first time really a campaign reelection tactic. and many members of congress will say we have to do this, it helps us locally. but the real objective and earmark is to get reelected. i don't know how the people that don't take earmarks like john mccain and senator and

representative respectively, and mike pence o indiana and several others and how did they get reelected without the earmarks. because they have a principle that says they will not take earmarks. and so the members under the speakers suggestion, what really hogwild, if i could say about pork. and earmarks proliferated throughout congress. the way that it is divided has nothing to do with anything other than who is in the majority, by the way. about 60% of the earmarks go to the majority party, 40% go to a minority party. there was a discussion between then chairman of the appropriations committee senator ted stevens of alaska, who has been now forced out of congress, and senator daniel in a way of hawaii who is now the chairman of the appropriations committee. and this was before the 2006 elections. and there, and was we really don't care if we get the

majority. because we will still continue to do business as we have and we will contie to get our earmarks. so many often say that there are three parties in washington on the democrats, the republicans, and the appropriators. the appropriators do business a lot differently than the rest of congress. that's one of the reasons why spending is not really under control. bout earmarks are not a large part of the budget. i mentioned $19.6 billion but that's less than one half of 1% of this record 3.5-inch billion dollar budget. and of course we have a one point a trillion dollar deficit. but when neighbors of congress refuse to give up the pork, regardless of how large or how small it is, it makes it more difficult to address larger issues. and temptation in news is always to go spend more money. there aren't enough members that say we have to get spending under control, or we don't really need this new program,r

we already have 125 programs for at-risk youth, let's find one that works and stick with it. that's not really the tendency or the objective. they have a lot of committees and subcommittees. they like to hold hearings often on the same topic. agencies get called up and they speak of five or six different subcommittees within a few days on the same issue. so it's not that well organized, if you want efficiency, if you want spending, it is incredibly well organized. you know, when you look at these town halls all over the country as the first two speakers spoke about, this is not just about health care. this is really about the size and scope of government. something that has been going on forever. and it is something that i think politicians need to pay attention to. because the change that they wanted, and apparently was not a lot more government, even though many of of us thought that is what we would be getting and a

certain heaven to support us in that regard with the stimulus and t.a.r.p., auto bailouts. could you imagine in the past but that past thinking that the president could force a 80 chairman of the company, let alone gm? this is what we have. the earmarking is part of that control and part of the desire in washington to g and spend more money. and the partisanship stops when it comes to the appropriations committee. many members of congress like to say that this is something that has been going on since the beginning of the republic. that is in fact a quote for majority leader harry reid. . .

the agency's ignore the their marks at their peril because the appropriations committees make it very clear that if they don't fund the earmarked they will cut their budget the following year. that was literally what happened when citizens against government waste first of the -- started looking at here marks in 1989/1988. the head of the office of management and budget listed all of the unauthorid programs and projects that were in the propriations bills and technically should not be funded by the administration. he got some phone calls and a letter from the appropriations committee chairman saying if you ever come up with such a list again we will cut your budget in half. ey can't cut our budget because he was working with us for much of that time.

we decided they can't do anything to citizens against government waste so we will take up this effort and a few years later in 1991 we did issue the first congressional takeover we give out anchor awards, leave these big books in our newsletter in the backs and see what the organization has done. this year in particular out of the $1,946,000,000,000, we had a few good anchor awards. we also have pork by kappa by state. here is the pig itself, comes every year. they include the logrolling award, wood utilization research, in ten states, 19 senators, at 10 representatives addeto this project. we knew about wood utilization for years because we spent $90 million since 1985. one of the things we figured out

what to do with this widespread product, need to spend 4-1/2 billion a year. the industry doesn't have enough to do with itself. also the narcissist award, a l of members of congress would like to name themselves, these other monuments to me earmarks, named specifically. the pat roberts intelligence scholars program. members of congress, they named it after themselves, we have a little affecon called bird droppings, everything we he found in west virginia named after senator byrd, 40 or 50 places named after the senator. basically a big reelection, you go past the robert byrd freeway, the robert byrd center,

everything else you see, there's a statue in the capital, there is a lot in west virginia, they made and representation for senator byrd, if you stand close enough he appears to be reaching into your pocket. senator byrd will get reelected until he can no longer go on. he is unfortunately quite ill but that is what the members of that state apparently like. the other one we have is the water taxi to know where award. this is the latest version of the bridge to nowhere. $1.1 billion. therwas a bridge that burned down ten years ago. representati chris lt not

for that reason. this is what we see in these various appropriations bill over time. as we have noticed, they are not disappearing. they are still proliferating. the democrats, more transparency, not enough. is n a matter of what you see, it is what they spend. look at our newsletter. in the newsletter, one more quick thing, there is a summary of an article by professor james savage who talks about an non monetary consequences at the office of naval research and how it interferes with their functioning. spend the money on my dear mark, takes away from much more important issues related to the defense of our country when these individuals and the contract and officers are faced with the choice of doing their regular basis or answering a call from a member of congress, they don't understand the process and house things work.

that is another way these earmarks are not helpful to the country. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> i apologize to tom for rushing him but one of our guests from california is here, he is one of our silver bowl award winners. jim martin, please come up and introducat boone. i have the marine corps flag right here in your honor. >> thank you, my friend. if i dn't know i was going to get the honors, my fend, pat boone, i had a seniors' group lled the 60 plus association. when i asked mr.. a few years ago to the our natural spokesman, now that i admit that i am 60 plus, i will

be your spokesman. it is an honor to have pat here to receive this award. he needs no real introduction. everybody in this audience knows that he is one of the top recording stars o all time. in hollywood they say you reach the height of your career if you get a star on the hollywood walk of fame. pat boone does not have a star on the hollywood walk of fame. pat boone has three starts on that walk of fame, for music, one for movies and one for is writing career, his singing career. records. all-time record -- come on up, it is an honor. a [applause] i think they will give you an award later but they want you to say a few words. she knows and from hollywood

days. >> i am sorry. i am relieved because when i first heard i was receiving this honor, i thoug you said silver bull award, i thought i was being awarded for something different. but anyway, i am a singer, but icing words. i learned the value and the impact of words, particularly the spoken word. if you and mus to it, that is very persuasive. to think that for some reason i have been selected to join this august company of people like margaret thatcher and ronald reagan and winston churchill, going back to daniel webster himself, just makes me think even more about the impact words have in our lives.

the bible starts with in the beginning god created heaven and earth comment and he said, spoke, let there be light conlan there was. that shows the immense power of words. thomas jefferson said in the declaration of independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator, the one who spoke the world into existence, with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, lately i have been singing and campaigning for a couple words in the pledge of allegiance, under god. the words that have been in the pledge since 1954, which 99.99% of the american public want to keep in the pledge but one man that doesn't like those two words, so he convinced the ninth circuit court tt they might be

unconstitutional i our pledge. i disagree and i have written a song and recorded it and it went to number 15 with a bullet in the billboard top 100 with those words, under god. [applause] words are powerful, they persuade, they influence, they change history, patrick henry, give me liberty or give me death. words like charlton heston, from these cold, dead hands, words ring, they ring with authority, with truth a to be able to speak those words, employ them effectively, is a great blessing. if i deserve this in any way, i am grateful, i am a spokesman for jim martin 60 plus, having come out of the plaza -- closet, and confess that i am a senior

and have been for me time. i now speak on behalf of seniors, we want to take care of all americans in the latter part of their livds, preserve and use the great experiences they have developed. thank you for this, i am greatly honored. [applause] >> my sister told me a story about you, i would like you to tell it if you wld, one of the theme is todaye have been talking about, aances in education for african-americans, you have a story about early days -- >> we're going to brdak away from this ogram to take you to las vegas, reaction on the passing of senator ted kennedy, and senator harry reid. live coverage on c-span2.

>> the kennedy family and the senate family have together lost the future. my thohts and prayers in the united states senate, with vicki kennedy, senator kennedy's children, many nieces and nephews, the entire kennedy clan. one of the highlights of my life was to work in the united states senate with ted kennedy. he was such a friend. an american icon. so many different times, the kenned family history, they called and turned to their uncle ted for comfort. so many critical times in our country's history america turned to ted kennedy for the same comfort. i think we all remember he walked solemnly with the first

lady to national cemetery. i will never forget how his deep love for his brother, bobby, helped him somehow summon the strength to deliver that defining eulogy, how his patriarch grief wit us for the loss of john john. for decades, ted kennedy was a rock in his family. the impact he has edged into our history has left us to remember the man who helps remember so many others, to celebrate the senator, helped so many live better lives. i have been at the cody of the kennedys for longtime. as a student at utah state univ. i for the first young democrats club. i got a letter from

president-elect kennedy between the time that he had been elected and before you was inaugurated. i have saved it all these years in the capitol office. it was very often that ted would come and look that letter. he was proud of his brother and proud that i have that letter. i immensely appreciate the opportunity to work with such a strong champion, stands for caring for others, quality and progress. senator kennedy's legacy stands with the greatest, most patriotic servant in congress.

because of ted kennedy, more young children could afford to be healthy. more young adults could afford to become students. more older citizens or for citizens could get the care they needed to live longer, ller lives. more minorities, women and immigrants realize the right our founding fathers promised us. this man of wealth fought for those less privileged because of ted kennedy, americans are proud of our country. ted kennedy's america is one which we could all pursue justice and join quality and freedom. ted kennedy's life was driven by his love of family that loved him and his belief in country and belief in him. ted kennedy's dream was one which the founding fathers fought and his three brothers died. the liber lions mig be roar,

i will always remember, now falls silent and his dream shall never die. i will be happy to take a few questions. >> can you tell us something we don't know about you personally? >> a lot of people have a tendency, that he would charge forward, he was a man who believed in compromise. ted kennedy was thepitome of what a federal legislator should do. he was a strong liberal progress of this legislation does not have the mark on it, youas willing to make deals to get these done for the american

people. >> -- >> the kennedys loved america. there are a lot of stories during his heyday, his brother, one of my pro accomplishments, helping save. lake. john kennedy was fighting with that decade the 4 i got involved. people say he is a kennedy liberal, a way to put down kennedy would be the last to tell you that i was with him on everything. he gave me value, always true crowds, always keeping the first fund-raiser. he felt very good.

i thought of this this morning. no one stepped out of their shoes to help meore than 10 get any -- ted kennedy. yet the mountain is dead. one of the reasons, people have fallen ted kennedy's lead. there are nuclear power plant in massachusetts, ted kennedy knew this was important to me, he believed it was good for the country. the and utility company against me. any other questions? thank you very much. >> live picture on your screen at the u.s. capitol, the senate side of the capital, you can see the american flag at half mast, for the passing of senator ted

kennedy. this saturday at 8:00 a.m. and midnight we will bring you the last lion, the fall and rise of ted kennedy. the team at the boston globe putting that together, a recounting of the life of senator ted kennedy from his childhood and familiar relations to his political ascendancy and his tenure in congress. the event was hosted by the boston public library last march. we will have for you again at 8:00 a.m.. starting in teninutes we are back at the federal commission's forum on making broadband internet access available across the u.s.. a look at jotraining and effect on the work force. as we await more of your phone calls, your reaction to the passing of senator kennedy in this morning's washington journal. >> the president of the united

states, barack oma,aid be lost the greatest senator of our time with the death of ted kennedy. for five decades, every piece of legislation to advance the rights -- at the massachusetts senator, his home in cape cod, mass. with brain cancer, he was 77. the whole of senator kennedy's political career, the good and the bad of it? >> a long, legendary career, public service that lasted lifetime, he has been in office longer than many americans have been alive. he came from a historic battle, is two brothers in public

service. it seems at a time when he wasn't ready for it, he came into the job of the united states senator. ultimately he was one of the most respected figures, you will deeply be ssed. >> how do you think the senate's effect going on from here without the presence of senator kennedy? >> there will be less by partisanship than there is now. he had the gravity that you don't see very often in the united states senate. he was a rare figure. he was a generatnal leader who was able to talk to republicans.

simply because of who he was, what he adored, how much he overcame, the fact that he was a very principled politician, he was able to compromise, he was able to work with president bush and ronald reagan as well. is presence, the health care debate would be much farther along than we are right now. some bipartisanship is going past some of the sticking points. >> i read mewhere he has influenced 2500 pieces of

legislation. what he was concerned about, his issues for poverty. >> addressing poverty the disparity that he himself caused in his lifetime. the school lunch, every issue the can't think of, had an interest in helping shape or helping get a certain amount of consensus on housing, education, no child left behind was another

one. he cerinly had a hand in it. >> there's a story by peter c e canell canellas, it quoted one of the professors talking about his career, when the subject of chappaquiddick comes up, michael corrigan, he finally put chappaquiddick behind and not by doing penance but through public service. how would you respond to that? >> i agree with that. that was the defining moment of his life. someone who wasn't all that serious, somebody did a good vantage of his name and place. it was short hand, the

presidential ambition would hunt him for decades after that. through working hard, getting past the disappointment, not becoming president himself. he managed to overce and grow into the job of becoming united states senator from massachusetts, a liberal icon. by becoming this strong voice and using the skills to champion the cause so much less than he did. >> you hear the name kennedy, you associated with politics.

is it over as far as this passing or are there other kennedys so iolved in politics at you might be willing to take of the standard that he said? >> politics is the family business, the family is pretty broad. his son, patrick, the u.s. congress. that kind of came and went. it could emerge as the next kennedy standard bearer in a world of public service. he is irreplaceable. it will take the next kennedy to evolve and reach that status. it doesn't seem immediately apparent at this point, but the family business is significant.

strongly and deeply enough that there could be a kennedy that will emerge. >> that the bureau chief for the boston globe, thanks for your time this morning. for the remaining moments of this segment, your thoughts on the passing of senator kennedy. is 202-275-26025, from ssachusetts residents, 0-268-0184. we hear from mary on the democrats's line. >> good morning. i want to give my condolences on the air to the family and say that ted kennedy will be very mess and how that fairly expired, the first time i ever ted, i have been a voting

rson, all the things senator kennedy did in his life inspired my children, myself. he has done so much, he is going to be very miss by the people who believed in him. >> diane on our republican line calls us from arkansas. >> i don't want to put too much negativity into this but let's remember how all the negative and 8 calls came in when president reagan died in 2005. ted kennedy got by with too much as far as i am concerned, as far as chappaquiddick is concerned, as far as his womanizing is concerned, his drinking, no republican would have gotten by

with at. they wouldn't have gone by with it. i have sympathy for the family but as far as our country is concerned i think he did more harm than good. >> the president is expected to addrs the nation later this morning about the passing of senator kennedy. we don't know details as far as when that will take place but when they are announced, for moren that, windham, conn. the independent line. >> for the glory of christianity is forgiveness. nehr three of his brothers gave their lives for this country. my family is from cape cod even though i am from connecticut. these people had a huge influence on locals in the region. we are going to miss him dearly. >> host: if you're just joining us, senator ted kennedy passed

away early this morning. we are taking calls on his political career. 202-727-737-0002, mass. residents can call 202-628-0118 or e-mail us at the journal@c-span.org or send a sweet to twitter, here is the statement from president george h. w. bush on the passing of senator kennedy. he writes that barber and i were saddened to learn ted kennedy lost his valiant battle with cancer. we didn't see eye to eye on many political issues through the years, i always respected his steadfast public-service, so much that i invited him to my library in 2003 to receive the. award for it influence and public service. kennedy was a figure in united states senate who answered the call for duty for 47 years.

we send our condolences to the family. we go next to many on the democrats' line. >> good morning. i wasn't going to call, but then this woman call from arkansas, and her opinions were so negative at a time like this. i am sure other politicians who have done equally as much as him in the negative sense, but he was out in the public so everybody knew about him. what she alluded to have done even worse. but i called to say that i am very proud that he was an american and he represented not only his state of massachusetts,

but he helped people in the district of columbia where i used to live. he did quite well, and he was standard bearer not only for the few americans that loved him, but also for many people around world. thank you. >> host: from north carolina, the republican line. >> caller: my heart goes for the family and staff. but back in the 50s and 60s, he was t what he was now. when he was -- he was -- >> we're going to break away from this recorded portion of washington journal and take you to the federal communications

commission for about making broadband internet access available across the u.s.. live coverage on c-span2. >> i will turn it over to jane to moderate and get your insights. we are grateful for yr participation and for those of you on line, there are folks throughout this institution watching us. we have had people participating from the far corners of the globe as well in a number of these workshops. primarily the goal is to benefit from your insights and establish a public record about the ways in which broadband can address challenges that we face in job-training and access to job placement as well. so thank you. this session is part of something that in the strategic plan we are calling national purpos, congress specifically asked us to address 15 policy

priorities and thinkbout the ways in which broadband could improve those priorities, and job-training and work-force development is a very critical one of them. we are looking at issues related to education more broadly, healthcare, public safety, economic opportunity, generally speaking, government operation, things related to improve the efficiency and civic participation and several other areas. this is extremely important as a first step, we're looking forwarto all your insights, it is a pleasure to introduce release:at the end the table, director of adoption on the broadband team. thank you for being here. >> thank you for being here. >> we actually have a lot of

rticipants who are logging in. people who are watching us on broadcast, if people want to submit questions and participate in the workshop, you can go to twitter.com/s p c dot and you can also use bb w k shp. during our workshop today, we are going to focus on the potential impact of increased broadband access to job training and job placement. how can broadband bring about innovation and technology and new ways to approach job placement? what role should the government play in shaping broadband where we can have on line job-training. these are the questions that frame this workshop. the purpose of this workshop is to develop this open dialogue

with the pubc and establish public record on broadband's potential impact on job training and job placement. we are actively seeking comments from everyone. this is the initial phase of our research of the national brdband plan. i am so pleased to introduce our panelists today who have traveled here and rescheduled vacations who have come from the airport to participate. thank you so much. we have representatives from the department of labor, communications workers, the work force alliance, precede the learning, monster and blackboard, they're all leaders in their respective industries, we are happy to be here with you. each of our panelists will present their presentation, about ten minutes long and after everyone has had a chance to present, we will open it up to questions for the audience on

twitter. and webx as well. heather is director of innovative training and work force development at rutgers university center for women at work as well as director of the center on innovative training and work force development. we are grateful to have heather he travels to d c to speak at this panel. >> thank you for having me here, i am pleased to talk about this. i am the director of the sloan center and innovative training and work force development which is at the state of new jersey. at the center for women at work, we really have been dedicated to assisting state, county and city government departments and workforce investment board's institutionalized online learning alternatives for non college-educated workers. our work has shown a research

has shown a viable solution to the barriers that exist for adult learners in accessing traditional classroom based education training. we believe it is a cost-effective method to train the millions of low-skilled americans who need training in order to ride the ladder on the socio-economic scale and tilt self-sufficient jobs. delivering training by computer and internet h been successfully utilized throughout the united states and incorporating high speed broadband programs as improve the flow of learning and enhance the variety and breadth of learning that is available on-line. it is also affordable and flexible and helps to democratize access to training and education for those who otherwise might not be able to get it. to day i will talk about three topics. i will detail the barriers that low skilled individuals face.

by traditional venues, how on-line learning can address these barriers. i will provide examples of innovative on-line training programs for low-skilled adults throughout the united states and the limited access to successful delivery of this online training. there is a lot of agreement in the country about moving up the ladder requiring education and skills training. it is skill that this training as a positive effect on earnings and ability to reach self-sufficiency and have an income they can use to support their families. the real challenge for many adult learners is getting classroom based education is difficult because of road blocks that may stand in their way, transportation, cost of transportation, cld care and other barriers that stand in a way of getting education. many of these people who need education and training to ride the latter are women and females with care and responsibility.

caring for elderly and children, family members, stand in their way of getting this training and entry into traditional classroom education is limited because it is not flexible. you have to be at a class medicine time to take a class and if you have a challenge you might not get child care. flexible learning on the internet, still work in the waitressing hours, they have hours in the morning. they could go on any time of day and not interrupt their course work and training. many of these individuals who need training to rise up the ladder and get self-sufficiency are excluded by default. that could help to improve their economic status. online learning offers a

solution to these barriers, it alleviates many problems that exist. this demands work schedules, regional, ethnic differences, financing -- it is most effective when it allows the various roles. many adult learners maybe students, workers, caregivers and we need to work training around them instead of asking them to fit training in to their busy lives. delivery of online course work is not a new concept. universities drought the country have successfully employed online learning for decades. there has been a great job promoting online learning for universities and it has become something that is pervasive throughout the united states.

the women's bureau. to deliver on-line skills training to sing the working poor mothers in the state, participants. under the direction of eileen applebomb, there positive of the 128 women. ninety-three% completed the program. the annual wage increase 14%. the success of this pilot program demonstrated this works for low-wage workers. online learning provides significant advantages that are not available in traditional classroom basic education. in addition to providing

benefits to the single mothers themselves, there were some familial benefits shown from this study, children got skilled in computers, december did in these families. online learning has been used as work force development in a lot of states, there are 21 states currently who are using food in some way and it has continued with different situations like native americans, rural americans, those who have been incarcerated, displaced homemakers, domestic violence victims and other groups. many people may question whether on-line learning is as effective as classroom based learning, you may have seen the new york times report the other day that talked about the international study that showed online learning on average, students in online learning programs perform better than students in classroom based programs. that is an interesting initiative. there have another interesting innovations in this program, the

center for work where i work build skills for work, this is a website that will be available in the fall. elis is the internet and contextual base lending to provide a very interesting literacy work force program. it will be available at no cost to learners and is out for the work force development and general literacy community. it demonstrated deepened the standard of how adults learn and is designed to engage adult learners without tutors. this is online learning for anyone at any time. the skills that are taught are based on the national work force readiness credentials and future standards, including interpersonal skills. online learning can be shaped to the variety of adult learners

and utilize in creative ways. broadband is essential to online education. without online education, certainly suffered. research shows, lot of my research shows one of the major challenges to successful technology base indication is internet access. high speed broadband access is essential to the effective delivery of on-line skills training and education. yet many americans still do not have high-speed access. it is not available to them in their communities. studies have shown that learners who have access to high-speed internet can more easily navigate their course work and finish course work faster and are more likely to finish. they don't have to connect to the internet, they don't have dial up problems,his courses don't fall down and they get a wider spread of course work. there is more available if they have high speed internet. high speed internet can not only

offer better course work but also more interactive course work through voice, data and video sharing. it can facilitate a successful online learning experience and can train people -- can improve the competitive united states economy by training people who are working in the united states economy. as you know, the uted states currently ranks fifteenth among thirty nations in the information technology and innovation broadband rankings. other countries include china, the netherlands, japan and singapore, all outpace the united states in broadband access and speed and broadband policies are needed to ensure broadband access is universal, high-quality and affordable. this agenda will benefit low income individuals and improve availability and quality of training and education available to them. in conclusion i would like to say ing on-line learning to deliver education and skills training is a viable option in the nation's work force development and education system utilization of the internet and personal computer and the

delivery of such programs, interesting for work for stevenson's specifically because of the ways technology can promote flexibility and access to education and job-training programs for low income individuals. this is especially important for the many low skill americans who need to improve their literacy skills to get out and assist the socioeconomic ladder and assist themselves to self-sufficiency. the internet is convenient, flexible and high-quality, offered with broadband, can deliver really wonderful training that can be available to all americans at a low cost. educatnal programs continue to be developed and technology continues to be enhanced, the flexibility offered by online training will help democratize access to training and education for adult learners and raise low-skilled workers out of entry-level jobs on career pathways for sustainable, self-sufficient earnings. thank you. >> thank you, heather. for sharing your experience and pilot work force development

programs for skilled labor. our next panelist is from the u.s. department of labor, mr. richard horne, he says a senior policy analyst, he says supervisory research analyst for the office of disability employment pocy, and he is here after having rearranged his vacation, so thank you. >> thank you, a pleasure to be here. i am with the u.s. department of labor's office of employment policy which was -- it is a new office with the department of labor, we have only been around for six year's so i have actually created a federal agency with a large department and is quite a chore. i cruciate everything you said, t i think, when we are thinking about this particular topic, accept ability matters, it matters tremendously. individual learning styles matter. a matter tremendously.

for people with disabilities, the internet is a blessing and a curse. i have two blind employees who i supervise. we do n have one piece of software in the the, the flavor that they can use, they can't complete their own time sheets. they can complete their own forms. because the software is not usable by screen readers. online course work does a lot of video. the video isn't caption, then people who are deaf or hard of hearing may not be able to take advantage of it. if the flow of the content doesn't adjust for cognitive disabilities, from mental retardation on, learning disalities to dyslexia, we are going to miss a whole population of fol who cannot take advantage of it. it is usually the last thing thought about. when you mention universal design, i have a concept of

universal design that is universal, in that everybody needs to take advantage of that. i also find the vendors think about this last. within the federal government we do a lot of procurement and don't pay attention to the law that says procurement must be accessible according to the 508 standard of the real devastation act, everything from our online course work. it is easier to create it up front end it is cheaper to create it up front than it is to retrofit it o the back end, particularly for cours work that uses a lot of video links, made link to inaccessible websites that are not 508 compliant, and translate materials from a lot of other virtual kinds of networks. we have created a few on-line training mechanisms through research that we have done at

the office of disability employment policy and one of the ones we took on early, thinking about broadband, we designed a program, we targeted folks who are on either federal or state workers' compensation programs, interestingly, returning service members. we found one of the advantages for this particular sub group of people with disabilities is the broadband provided a bridge for return two. that is another brilliant -- online training, not only improves work skills but can be the bridge in coming back into the work force and for many people with disabilities who have been injured on the job or returning from service overseas, this is a very critical and important strategy. what we found with our initiative was that part of the trouble, again, was the accessibility of the internet

and the internet providers, don't really think about it. some of the other challenges that we face, i am sure everybody faces, what happens with a lot of the down time, the comcast connection goes out, something happens and the course gets interrupted, i think the social networking and the group learning that needs to happen for people with disabilities is not really addressed as thoroughly as it should be with online courses. many people with learning disabilities tend to learn better in groups because there are people who complement whether it is a visual, perceptual problem work dyslexia or something else. there are many things that need to be built into the system. it should be universal, university designed, it should be done up front, not

retrofitted. but we are really challenge in not only getting this out to the work force development system, which we bug a lot, something i enjoy doing. also, really working with the colleges and universities to unrstand, make the connection between the content they are delivering through online training and to their audiences are. with that, i will put my plug in and thank you all and turn it back over to you. >> thank you for telling us about the challenges that citizens face especially in the online learning world. hopefully we will find some solutions in the future. our next panelist is from the work force alliance, a national coalition of community based organizations, community colleges, unions,usiness leaders and local officials advocating public policies that invest in the skills of american

workers. mr. kermit kaleba is senior analyst for the work force alliance. >> thank you very much for inviting us. it is exciting to be here today to talk about how broadband create opportunities particularly for low and middle skilled workers but the limitations we see with online learning. i just want to flag those in advance. we are national coalition of businesses, a community-based organizations, community colleges and training providers advocating federal policy and state policies that advance the skills of the american workforce. there's a broad agreement that education and training is a key to economic competitiveness, a key to expanding equity in this country. something we focus carefully on. what we focus on are the needs of folks that are often excluded from policy conversations around education and training, low and

middle school working adults tend to be beyond the k-12 system, they don't connect with the additional postsecondary education system the way policy designed, we advocate policies to help those folks get access to education and training. it is exciting to be talking about online education, exciting to be talking about technology and learning technologies that can help these individuals because i think they face unique barriers and there are some advantages to online learning. a couple quick facts, little things i know about online learning, things that are of interest, it is clear that online learning is here to stay. 10, 15 years ago, there was question about one and campus will replace classroom based training completely, a camp that still exists that there is no use for this, it is a bunch of junk, correspondence courses on computers, we now know that there has been adoption in the

private sector, american society for the state of the industry report for 2008, indicated that a third of private sector learning is taking place, ele n elearning 3.9 million college students taking at least one online course falling 2007, from 1.6 million, more than double. you are starting to see federal policy moving toccept online learning a little bit more. in 2006 you had the higher education reconciliation act, a repeal of 50% which placed a lot of restrictions on online learning for institutions of higher education and their ability to access title iv financial assistance and you have also seen the president back in july, announced his community college initiative, a major new initiative to expand, to improve how community

colleges surf americans. part of that is $500 million investment and also in the house, a legislation, the student fiscal responsibility act which includes $500 million over ten years to the development of on-line education, in high school and post secondary courses, free online education, we think that is fantastic, that is wonderful, a wonderful initiative and it shows how far online learning has come in the last 10 or 15 yes. the advantages of online learning, i am sure other people talk about this as well. we know that it works, otherwise the private-sector and hired education sector, we know it works on some things very wl, the private sector and higher education sector would not be adopting to the degree that they are. obviously it is an effective method of information transfer. as we get more sophisticated technology, more sophisticated models and instructional games, had held devices. there are a lot of things about

online learning that were effective. for low and middle skill workers, what is of great value is this increased access to education and training. 3-quarters of today's college students are classified, have at least one nontraditional factor. they are working adults, financially independent, they have to work full time, only going to school part time. for those individuals, online learning is a real boon because if you have to deal with kids, if you have to work full time and can only go at night, the flexibility that comes for online learning, the ability to self pace, the removal of geographic limitations, the fact you don't have to be sitting in a classroom with the teacher to re-education, that is very positive. we support any investments to expand access to training and

learning for working adults particularly low and middle still working adults. there are some limitations on online learning. as a model, we know for example that is not necessarily good at replacing some hands-on training and education that has to happen. lot of the jobs we are talking about, creating through a federal investments and infrastructure and health care and green jobs, a lot of those are jobs that really do have a lot of hands-on experience. online learning is steadily going to be a component, it shld be a component of how you prepare people for those jobs, you can't necessarily do everything through on-line learning, we need to be sensitive that online learning is going to have to be combined with on-the-job training and probably with some traditional classroom training just to make sure that people are learning and they are able to do the job. obviously online learning is like any other kind of learning, if it is contextualized to actual work experience it is a

lot more effective and if people can affect their learning in the classroom or learning on a laptop to the job they are going to do, that will be more effective. i think there's also in general still a little bit of not much clarity on what kind of credentials come out of online learning and whether or not those are being adopted by the business community. any kind of training to be effective need to be leaning towards a credential or a degree or certificate that has value in the labour market or has academic value. it is not clear yet how well the business community is adopting, they are adopting it and when they provide internally, it is not clear how well it is being valued at steadily by institutions of higher education and by the business community. ..

>> if people don't have the support of services and the literacy that they need in order to te vantage of online learning, it's not going to be a great deal of value. so as we're moving forward, we need to be thinking about how we link online learning and

traditional learning to the certain kind of supportive services and remedial services that are critical to the success of lower and middle skilled workers. so there's a range of services that we know are necessary that need to go along with his. obviously this is not something that you guys can necessarily addressed through the broadband policy, but it is something to keep in mind. we know that for people with very significant detachment from the labor market and with significant barriers to employ, one service we need is recruitment and outreach. it is great to have on line thing available but you need to have the ability to reach out to these underserved communities, rural communities, and high povey committees. and actually bring people to the training. if they aren't aware of it and they don't know how to use it and it's not going to be as effective as you want it to be. assessment programs. we need to be able to assess oples skill levels inrder to figure what kind of training is appropriate for them so they can move into the jobs and careers that they want. i know for example that a lot of states have adopted the work key

stem that acp has. that's one example of where i think jan on line program that is working within the public workforce system to help people sort of assess their skill levels and help decide what training is necessary. but you need to have thnse services alongside on my drink and we also need services to promote persistence and completion and support of systems. heather mentioned run childcare and transportation to kind of a point on that, you know, on line training does reduce a lot of geographic barriers and it does reduce some of the sort of spatial barriers. but it doesn't reduce them all. in order to do on line training you still need computer, and you still need a chair to sit in. you know, or you need a laptop or what have you. but that means that the online learning has to take place somewhere and it has to take place somewhere in time. so that's something you need to be thinking about it you can talk about if you build it, the question is whether or not they will come. the question is where are they going to go. a lot of the folks that we are

talking about, low and middle skilled workers, they don't have laptops and they don't have a personal computer at home. we need to be thinking about where on my turning is going to take place. a couple of areas come to the obvious suspects, there is the public workforce investment system under the workforce investment act. and then of course community colleges are another area where u could be doing on line training. but a couple of points on that, i hate to be -- hate to sound negative but the workforce invement system in both the workforce investment system and the community colle system in this country are substantially overwhelmed at this point. workforce investment system under the workforce investment act in the 12 month period ended in march of 2009 serpa 31 millioneople which was up from t year before by about 12 mlion people. it is a substantial increase. this comes at a time when they already had 18 years of budget cuts and staff cuts. so there is not as much capacity in the system as there was may two or three years ago. the same thing with community

colleges, they are also facing state budt crises and substantially increased enrollment. so in some cases you are sinking nearly colleges are actually thinking about limiting admission for the first time in the fall of 2009. something to keep in mind. people need to be able to access on line training. we need to be thinking about where they're going to be accessing on lincoln. we need to be coupling expansion access to computers and facilities. and also be thinking about career counseling. you can tell someone to go look at a set of job listingor take assessment test that the, you need to sometimes to help them to connect that to what training they need, what skills they need, what jobs are out tre. also need to laugh technicians together are people who can should have to use a computer because a lot of those folks that lack basic literacy don't have digital literacy. they will also need help accessing computers and accessing online learning. last but not least i would've talked very briefly about conductivity. we have a very disconnected and discombobulated workforce system

in this country, you know, just one example we have job-training federa job training services in this country are administered by the department of labor under titli of the workforce investment act. adult basic education is administered by the department of education under title ii of the workforce investment act. there's different funding streams. there's different agencies, different state agencies, different local agencies, different performance measures. so when you lookt adult education and job training in is country, the colin will rate between adult education and job training is actually less than 1% which would you think about the number of people that we talked about the lack basic literacy, it is pretty daunting. so we need to be thinking about as we think about how do we expand access to on line training and support services, how can broadbent also sort of bridge the gaps between tse systems to make it easier for low and middle skilled workers to access the servers, particularly expanding access on line training to create seamless

pathways between these different systems so that workers n't have to sit and try to figure out where do i go from here, will this be accepted at the next place. we also need to think about whether or not on line thing is connected to business needs within the community. it's wonderful to get on line training but if it doesn't result in a job, then it's not necessarily as effective for the lower or middle school workers. so one innovation that is being carried out on the state level to help increase business involvement and job training are what we call industry sector partnerships or you bring together multiple stakeholders connected to an industry, multiple employers, labor groups, community based organization, public workforce is in, education and training providers. i suggest that's one innovation that we see on the state level in terms of workforce development that might also help determine what are the best on line models available and the best way to sort and a great online learning into local and regional industry development. i think that's it. so sor if i went overtime. >> thank you so much.

our next panelist is mr. christopher edward etesse. is the vic president of preceding grant him a technology company that designs and implements education management systems for higher education institution. chris? >> thank you. and thank you to the rest of the panelist for having me today. we could go to slide three, so my background is quite interesting becse one of the early employees of blackboard, another panelist, and also spent some time at moter government solutions, iet another panelist. in the on line education world, pretty much since netscape's early browsers saw the growth of blackboard and other e-learning providers, and really the phenomenal adoption by cleges and universities and for-profits over the last 10 to 15 years. presidium is a service delivery platform for education. we got our start about, next slide, please, thank you.

we got our start about six years ago supporting online learning's on the i.t. side with questions around their learning management system. we been branched out to supporting 80 different i.t. applications from microsoft office today to tell, oracle, we have around 800 employees in rural southeastern kentucky. that's up from around 60 employees there three years ago. so we're the fourth largest employer in polski county down there. and knyon to to bring jobs to that region that is been quite hard hit byhe current economic environment. we answer questions relating to i.t. enrollment, financial aid. so we have a number of clients that will call in to our personnel and ask about their financial aid packets. asked for a transcript, find out where they mail a check in. we have over 800 clients that we are supporting across th united states, everything from higher education, community college,

for-profit, as well as k-12, and continuing education programs. we have a consulting organization that helps deployed our services across these organizations. and really help them maximize customer service for these learners as both heather and kermit mentioned that these are folks that are also workg. they have childcare responsibilitiesnd really they want to be able to get on line and learn as quickly as psible with as few interruptions. and offer a number of technology solutions at assist us in doing that. one of the commonhallenges that we do see across education, next slide, please, is really the seasonality and arrival patterns when our folks are answering the phone, chat or e-mail 12 of his online learning. 50% of our volume is in january, august and september each year as folks are going back to school. during the week 50% of our volume is on mdays, tuesdays and sundays.

and especially sundays continue to increase. but during the day, 50% of our volume occurs between 2 p.m. and midnight. what we are seeing as we're talking to folks that are continuing their education, they may be putting their kids about it and they are logging on at nine, 10, 11:00 at night. and would provide a service that if they are having trouble walking on or they're having trouble understanding, they can call us and they can get a live operator 24/7 365 year. what's most important about that, and some of you may hav seen the front page of u.s.a. today's money section yesterday. looking at the max and minim broadband speed across the united states to give you look at some of the western states, you know, they max out around two megabits per second. which is one 10th of the average speed in south korea, for example again, you, the learners that we are dealing with, their needs at home, they need to be able to get on, complete their activity,

and then get off and continue with their lives and so forth. so not just access to broadband is important, but high speed broadband, consistently roughout all of the communities in the united states. what i would like to do now is kind of go through some examples -- next slide, please -- some clients or some potential clients. western governors university, for emple, was formed in 19 state governors. it's all on line. they offer as one of their programs teacher accreditation and 49 states. so if you are a public school teacher and you nd to be accredited, and you need to do so every two to five years, whatever the state or the department of education mandate is, you can attend their program i public program, $6000 a year for the program vers 20000 for some traditional programs, and it's hoppity-based learning pairs of uri learned something in the classroom they don't force you to retake that credit. you just have to prove through

testing on line that you have learned that. teachers are nontraditional students. they have different hours, they have different responsibilities. again, many are parents as well. and rural high speed broadband at home is key foraintaining their jobs and educating tomorrow's leaders. another example of large for-profit k-12 institution runs charter schools -- next slide, please -- throughout the 50 states. the student stays at home. they are logging on and on line to take their course work. they receive district credit for that dloma. you know,here are expands capabilities and also for students who have that need, whether it is for that type of learning or there may be a disability involved and they can't attend a school. you know, i don't think we want to limit today's learners and future leaders to, you know,

what i would classify as 1980s dial-up speed because of the location. we have another for-profit institution that is actlly, does tutoring to low income and at needs students and some of the key metropolitan areas throughout the country. beta, for the last three to five years that has all been dial-up for those students. they partnered with a large provider and actually rolling out wireless three g. cards which again is allowing their students to complete these tutoring sessions. sometimes three times faster, five times fasr. still getting the educational content they're looking for here but again getting on line dog what you need and then ntinuing with your life. next slide, please. as a number of you have mentioned as it relates to continuing education, job training, community colleges, you know, we are seeing that seasonality and that peak usage monthly, daily and hourly. and as kermit said, campus

admissions were on campus for committee colleges seemed to be flat to slightly declining, but community colleges, they're all my programs are increasin quite rapidly. and again, those are the students that need that broadband, doesn't matter where th live, they need to be educated and we need to b able to provide that to them. we have another client that does offer transcribing and coding for the medical profession. again, a lot, 90% of their students are mothers, stay-at-home, and they are doing that program at night on line and they need access to high speed bandwidth. next slide, please. emergency preparedness, swine flu come and natural disasters. b-schools and the the students being able to access presidium support personnel to be able to continue to learn on line in the event of an emergency when the

physical school, library, etc. are not accessible. it is rural broadband for the students and adequate broadband for them. but it is also -- next slide, please -- an educational provider, you, we need toave dual redundant broadband so we are in a very rural area in southeastern kentucky. we have voice lines that come in on one carrier. we have internet that comes in on a second carrier, and then we have a redundant third carrier for internet. and i think as we go through this, it is important to think about that dual redundancy, that we can bring rural broadband, we can get out there toll of these locations across the country. but when they become dependent on it and they're learning is dependent it and it goes down, what do they do? so let's not offer something that could go away or may not be stable. adn, you know, my final thoughts, you know, next slide, please. is math problem really. it comes down to who doesn't

have adequate broadband two megabits per second or above, new, where they are grouped and how do we achieve that 90% penetration with existing technology, such as wimax, 40, lt, etc. and also avoid that misperception that we have to dig up the entire country to achieve just the basic broadband infrastructure that o student of both today and tomorrow are dependent on thank you very much. >> thank you so much. thank you, chris. i think after the panelists presentation or want to go back and ask you about dual redundancy and haveou elaborate on that a little bit. of a. so o next panelist is from monster worldwide, mr. eric winegardner. is a vice president of client adoption, and we all know that monster isn't on line employment

solution for job seekers and employers. >> think he. it's very exciting for us to join the dialogue. pleased that it is happening personally for me it is a passion point, so i look forward to the question answer. i also applaud you for doing a conversation, or facilitating a conversation about broadband via webex over the internet. so i will address this to most of you who are wating us at this point. the context of our conversation today is really around job-training, but also how do people find jobs bayoneted a fine job tomorrow. so the idea is tt i'm going to do sometng meaningful with his job training, which is get a job. and how is that all going to happen. what i'm going to talk about it about today is hopefully with iquitous access to broadband, you actually be able to see tools in the private sector that actually help you figure out where you should be doing job-training. what can you do with the skills you have today, but also what would you really like to do, and dare we say, love doing. those are the kind of things that i think access to, you

know, affordable, reliable access to broadband. the possibilities are limited lives. in our business, a being in the.m spe as many wer often referred to, it is easy to take for granted that everyone has an home high speed access like i would imagine the panelists here. in this exercise, in this dialogue, it is alarming how many people do not have internet access, let alone broadband access. because companies like mine build intricate applications that require fast processing of data, billions of data points to act to provide a meaningful experience for you, that you now do something with. for this individual apartment that is actually not happening if you don't have something as simple as broadband access. so i think that to find us there is some assumptions that we should all be able to make reliably in this day and age.

and first is that knowledge is powerful. weak references several times you picked information is free and at our fingertips. is it? and education takes many forms. traditional, nontraditional in classroom, on line. and that the digital divide is real. so i think that one of the assumptions that i would like us to look at here is that broadband access it goes opportunit and growth. par for the context in my presentation to make sure that people don't see this as a monster commercial,ecause that's not what it is about at all, is that we are not the only player in the space i think that's what is also exciting about ubiquitous access is that there would be more competition and competition leads to improvement. but i also want to make sure that people understand that there are many players in the on line career space for representing it on my reference tools and technology that we employ and things that we believe to our core and innovate around. but it's also important to note that we were the 454th

commercial internet site. so we have been around for a long time, when you think of the access. in the last 15 yearsow have a meaningful psence in over 60 countries arnd the sole purpose of on one career management. this is our singular focus. it is what we are passionate about, and that we believe that a great job equals a great life. so when we are in tough economic tis like we are and we see unemployment rates the way they are, if i don't have meaningful jobs, that has a trickle-down effect, that is important for us to live on the table to discuss here. so there were nearly 24 million americans, american adults to use one of the three largest job board in 2008. so that shows that these are unique, you know, this is only counting one. so when they use one of us. 70 million, or 11.8% of all u.s. adults use monster, my site, to search for jobs at least once per month. and according to one technology,

there are over 5.2 million j openings advertise across all major ongoing job boards. those may be duplicate. there are not saying our 5.2 million jobs. but to .2 million of those postings a in august. so the concept that there are no jobs out there is false. there are job it's finding them, being able to compete with them in standout in something that you have broadband access you know you can get to those jobs. if you d't, you are further at a disadvantage because you don't even know where to look. maseratis he knows wherehe jobs are and where the trends are. we track and report monthly via the monster implement index, which many of your family with that comes out every thursday. or the first thursday of every moh. so i didn't want to kill us with statistics in his early conversation. the data iseep and broad, and we can go int it in many conversations. what i think the most effective use of the time today is to open up a dialogue around how

widespread access to broadband internet allows for innovation around career exploration and management tools, which are available today. in the beauty of these tools are they are effective and they are free to job seekers. they are free to anyone who is looking to better themselves. so i want people to understand that that is there. and that there are sites, i think mine are the best, but obviously there is competition around those. i want to make sure that so we are talking about. so if we go back into the first slider slide there, that was my setup. back, back. arrigo. for me, what i will talk more about at this point is that from an individual's perspective, effective access to broadband access should allow you an individual to allow all of these things that they should be up to exmoor navigate, learn and compare. who am i., was killed when have what i want to be when i grow up. i may ask myself that today.

you know, myetiring father may ask that when he grows up, right? but learning and comparing it to what opportunities are out there and which ones, how do they stack up side-by-side? and didn't want to know all of that and once i complete my job-training now, how do i find opportunities thaare available and could be to get them? this is really important and i think what we've seen already aroundocial mediums, some of the cool technologies that those of us to take broadband for granted are doing is we're looking at community in the sense of how broade are and how connected we are and how we help each other. this is pretty powerful with people who are looking for self-improvement can help other people who are doing the same thing. inedible to lose sight of the fact that whether his individual improvement improvement and equal access around jobs, this also drives down the cost and employment cost for employers. so we look at small medium sized businesses andave a can more effectively hire at lower cost, this is the icing on the cake of surrounding people with a good

expense. next slide, please. the first thing is exploring a nagging. i want to go on three tools that exist on my site that are free to job seekers that are built around this tremendous data that we have as an organization of resumes. so 80 million resumes, plus we have in our database in each of those were resumes represent a career path of an individual. when you throw all of those things together, it's quite compelling. these are real career paths of real people. how do we leverage th? we have tools that are available today, that allow a person to map their own career. so where am i today are wherdo i want to be and how di@ i get here or how do i get there? so if you go to the next slide. this is looking through the real resumes of real pple. so a lot of this, many of us don't know, there are 2600 occupational profiles that we track at monster. i couldn't name them all. i also know there are 2600 unique skills. to all of these things mashed up

togetherand for me to look at what opportunities are there, it can be simple as doing interfacesith people click and explore. so this is one treated here we what you actually go in and you can figure either where do i desire to be or where am i, and how do i get there or where do i go from here. so if we go to the next slide on this. it can be as simple as someone who says i'm a forklift operator today. wanted other people who are rklift operators do? and we know that this percentage of them when on to this area, this percentage went over here but there was this small interesting group that just went and did something else. that did you come in my opinion, it gives you the hope that you can do. but we don't just up there because along t@e way you're discovering jobs and careers in fields that you absolutely know nothing about. so it's not just about mapping and discovery. it is really ever go to the next slide your comment about understanding how do i learn about new jobs and compared it to something that i want to do. so if i am in a field that i don't know what else is next, career snapshot is a process,

helps people understand what all those 2600 different occupational profiles mean. and then the piece that i think is most out of this is what do i have to do to get there. so when we look at the snapshot piece, it would go to the next slide here, this help to definition of this job.textbook but then there are hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of people who do that job today. let's see what they say about it. so i bring some of that social media, web 2.0 component of let me share my experience with you. and it can be other people who are forklift operator or other people who are auditors who are either trying to convince you to do it or trying to convince you not to get the idea is that the exchange of information can be very meaningful for you. also have to understand what is the projection of his career over the next decade. how many jobs are there now. what are the jobs pay? one of the projection of what you'll pay? what training do you need to do in order to get there. that's really what is most important about this, is going

back to the concept of information should be at my finger tips and should be free. it would go to the next light-year. you can see that from a learning and comparing the concept of the reality check. so this is something that we really want to be able to say from a career benchmarking standpoint, where is the population that also has the skill sets that you have, or the desires that you have, and where does this careers back up with your aspirations. so understanding that if youre a high income person now and this is a dream for you to go into these things, here is the average salary. take stock. or the cost of my education combined with income i had today i'm going to be in a loss situation. however we look at these things. what is the quality of life, what are people looking at, all of the areas that are here. these tools are simply not possible without high eed internet aess. i would imagine as is or even referenced here, you know, over

dial-up, it would be a very short exploration. let's say that. so i think this is something that is incredibly importa for people. if you look at these tools and you put this on the front end of job training, this is someone who has done that, self-guided diligence of what it is they are interested in so they can come in and say these are theinds of training programs that i'm interested in. and i tnk that is something that all of us are very receptive to. give me the tools to help me. help me help me. it is going to be able to do for us. less reliant on the career coach can't do. absolutely you want that, but where is the scale? wears a skill that every single person that doesn't have internet access today would ultimately need some sort of career coach? empower me to be my own. i think if we go to the next slide, what we look at this point is outside of learning about what they are and comparing, now i have to find it in today's eironment i have to

compete. so it's not just a matter of i have all the skills, gss what, do other people. so how do i now stand out from the crowd? d i think this is something that is germane to his. we been doing this for years around helping you do and can get a job of your dreams. we're preparing yourself for one thing thing i want to walk through with this, in the future, not today but certainly how all this should work as all job seekers have to know is what do i want to do and where do i want to do it. and if there is access to both employers and jobseekers to be able to populate this information, that exercise should be very simple. today, this was done yesterday if i do a job search, next slide, in any major metropolitan area, i am going to have more jobs that i know what you asked to do it or filter or sort or fire mut how that happens. the contrast of this, i don't see exactly where this one is and probably boston, that's where it was yesterday. there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs in every

category. sales rep, analyst communal, all of these things that are happening. when you look at the percentage of job seekers in rural versus urban areas, that have monster profiles, and billings montana, 11.1% of the workforce in billings montana had a monster.com job profile. contrasthat with boston, where 29.7%. so not only is it a much larger area, so from a number standpoint, but the percentage is nearly -- it isver three times. nearly four times that of a rural area. you have to dig in and ask herself why. do just make week job-search empler, there are also jobs in those rural areas and. you know, i did this exercise yesterday where we put a map on the wall. a few days ago. would put a map on the wall and we did a darville becse we wanted to try to test ourselves, not stack the deck, where do we go. we came up with pikesville, kentucky. so you are probably familiar.

it's a little bit to the east but it is definitely a rural area and did you go to the next slide here you will see that in this rural area of the pikesville, kentucky, you know, when you do a job search on monster you are going find four or 500 jobs in that commutable distance of pico, many of them in pikesville. but what you'll see here is that u don't have near the choices. you don't have near the saturation of jobs in that area and you also have to say why is that? do employers even have access to be able to do this on line? and what i find, that i find it verynteresting, is that you will find in these areas that are more rural, companies that have large locations, or are domiciled in metropolitan areas, are recruiting in more world areas the same way they are recruiting in metropolitan areas. i don't live in pikesville. i am recruiting out of d.c. i sit in a centralized operation center and i put a job on a job board or on my own corporate careers site and i say pikesville a expect you to

find it. right? those of you, because there are those who do or there wouldn't be that widespread adoption that we talked about, with these organizations, those who do are at a very clear advantage over those who don't have something so simple as the ability to do a search for what they want to do, where they want to do it. so i think, you know, you should look at those things. it is not if there is no broadband access then there is no opportunity. thpportunity is there. it is if there is no broadband access for me, i don't have opportunity. and i think that is something that merits further exploration. one of the -- next slide, please -- one ofhe pieces that wre most proud of as an organization, because this is there are hundreds and thousands of pages of content around career advice. next slide, please. in the career advice areas you can learn not only about how to build your resume. you would be surprised that is a question we hear all the time, have to do that now and respond to whatever recruiters are

looking for in the internet age. how to interview. these are all off-line intercounty connect with people. how to network better. all those all happened together in one on my destination that peoplean spend hours in. they dig in at the sink and interface with a can ask other people that are there. all of these things happen in a way that we talk about the power of our off-line networks, but how many of us actuly ask those kinds of questions were off-line networks. it's not appropriate all the time, yet defined and there are lots of other people looking and i'n the same situation, it is a very meaningful and powerful exchange of information. so just do, i hope, i what was in my 10 minutes because i try really. people, you know when you talk to the people component of that, when you build this infrastructure, it is impossible for us to predict all of the value that com out of this investment. it is impossible. but thi alone, job training, job creation, in my mind, far

exceed the $7 billion investme investment, if you want the two system taxpayer. so when you look at the employer benefits that i mentioned at the end, when you look at getting my job seekers, the audience that i'm looking for, access, this is where we talk about the open market place their faces were look at if i am on line to acquire candidate, or i am on my to build my business or to work, preboarding or however i am doing that, there is all sorts of benefits. obviously the most expensive opening is the one that goes unfilled for companies. so when you look at the cost versus putting an add on the internet versusn your newspaper or putting a help wanted sign or everything else that we have in there, i think the driving down the cost of lost productivity, and making it more efficient for employers is absolutely their with much more ubiquitous job search -- excuse me, not job-search. broadband access. so in closing, i will say that

opens that monster is to provide our users and anyone who is out there looking for career exploration, and next to manage their careers, not just actively try to find the next job. in these tough economic times that we are in, being able to easily find a job is incredibly important. however, i tnk it's important that we take a longer view on this, and understand that if i subscribe to what i said earlier, that great jobs equals great life, you, these times will pass. and will want to make sure that we're doing is giving people the opportunity to explore and find, dear they go for their true calling, and i think that is why the future of the approach we've taken that monster is all about the job seeker. it is all about the long term view of your career and it is wide ubiquitous access to broadband is so important for us. that's it.

>> great, thank you so much, eric. it would be so interesting to continue a dialogue following up on what kermit was talking about before on career mapping and matching low skill and mittal steel workers to their careers that are actually available to eric's presentation about the technologies that are available to help workers and jobseekers and allies what kind of skills they hav and mapped into a career that they are seeking, or perhaps displaced workers who are outside of the job force, workforce who are seeking retraining and getting bk into the workforce. it would be interesting to make that connection to see if there is technologies that can, you know, bring job-training candidates together with career mapping and job placemt opportunities.

our next panelist is from blackboard, the new learning soware copy. mr. tim hill is the president of professional learning at blackboard. blackboard. cambric. >> think he. and air, there's nothing wrong with a short commercial about your company because the viewers and people in the audiee need to know what we'd do in why we are some level of some subject matter extra. at the problem is people at webex have logged off and are looking for jobs on their website. most of the palace panels, let's be honest, we will get back to our office in did on monster and check out what is open in our field. can you please jump to the next slide. i'm going to do a quick background on blackboard so you understand what our company is all about, some of our values and some of the date line is we have, worldwide a in education. and if you want to learn more, you go to blackboard.com and

there is plenty of content there so i don't have to share it with you here. but please don't blog off of webex and go to checkout our website until we're done. so everyday over 5200 institutions in over 20 million people use blackboard has an on line learning platform. so leading universities, community colleges, career colleges, k-12 school systems, as well as adult learners learning on the job in government, as well as as well as around department of defense. the reason is because our platform is easy to use. we are not alone. but we do have competitors. but what our industry has done is really revolutionize education so it could be accessible and affordable. the parts that are missing are wh we are here to talk about, which is how can we get broadband, make it a portal, make it accessible and how can we get content that goes on and on line platform like a blackboard to be constructed so it impacts people where they work and where they live their

lives. jump ahead to slide five. i'm eating jumping ahead on slide. so justo give you an example. people from all walks of life and over 65 countries use blackboard as their ongoing content delivery platform. it was built for teachers, proven by students, and proven by millions each and every day. so from the war fighter to the admiral or the general, to k-12 studts through a college profesr, people are using blackboard each and every day. now what all those people have in common is they have access through their university, through their organization. they have access to broadband. they have a computer. and what i want to talk about in this presentation is what about e rest of us, most of the people on th webex are on the webex because they are either at home using broadband on your computer orerhaps the library, perhaps a school. but there are others who whether they are in the ada, five oh

cant whether they are unemployed, under skilled, who are just looking for the opportunity to learn more to be re- skilled if they are out of work to get new skills with a can get back in the workforce. and that is where broadband can really dramatically impact access to education, access to training, access to the deployment certifications that will change people's lives on a daily basis. sonata bantu slide seven. so my group that i'm over at blackboard is about adu learners. so most of the people on webex and the audience have probably use blackboard or one of our competitors in your k-12 or high school experience with your children. your undergrad, and your graduate school. but there's a lot of people who would love to use it if they had access to it. and that is where broadband can make a huge difference. without broadband, without high speed access, the access to education to training whether it is education or training is very, very limited. we know that is the biggest

challenge. the cost of delivering content on a platform like blabod, the cost of building the content from most universities, colleges, community colleges, is not the goln screw. in other words, that is not the part that is not accessible for there are pell grants. there are other government granted as financial aid to get people the education they need. what is missing is if they don't have the tools to do it on line, if it's not convenient for them because of a child iss for a working mom or somebody who is actively employed and can only do a education in eating, then how do you get it to them. and that is where on line can make a big difference. so i think we skilling is a big work today because of our unappointed issue. there are jobs available. but many of them need someevel of professional experience, rtification certification, diploma or degree. and other people that need the rescaling are those of who are out of work from manual labor jobs, manual job.

there are jobsut there that they don't have the skills or the education or the certification or diploma to get into a huge disadvantage so it is kind of what comes first, the chicken or the egg. in this case they both set to be there at the same time and have to be affordable and accessible. so i will give you some real-life examples. we are members of the career college association, which is headquartered in d.c. as well as imagine america foundation, which is a nonprofit arm of cca, their foundation. and that my neck at the numbers extly righinto a kind of get the scale of what i'm talking about. and these have been presented by harris miller, the ceo of cca at different conferences. in the u.s., if you are an hca or heating and air-conditioning worker, you are still the only through on the job. your average salaries going to be about $20000 a year, probably paid hourly. if you get an hcv a certification, your average income will jump to $54000.

that is pretty dramatic. so how do you make that accessib to somebody, whther it's on the job, on line or through a vo-tech school? you've got to give them the opportunity do it,nd about the schools are half on line, half in person as you mention what i is a blended learning environment. another example. there is a lot of out of work auto technicians, auto mechanics because dealers have closed-end, factories have closed. there is one company, uti, that trained mechanics and autobody workers both on line and in person on the premium cars as well as nascar and formula one racing. now, any downturn economics, it seems like those are pretty high-end things. luxury cars, racing cars, racing circuits, etc. but there graduates average closed $100,000 a year. so they get the invesent. they understand it.

and it is made accessible to them it can dramatically change their life. go to the next light, please. sober talk about some of the demographics in the u.s., and what is becoming ubiquitous, and we all know that handheld devices that televisions, that computers are becoming pretty much ubiquitous, but not for everyone. those who ha access to them will usually pick and choose one device over a number one because of the economics. if there were grants that help high speed internet going from 39 to $59 a month, down to half of that, maybe a grant because you are pursuing a degree, right, that can make a huge difference in the affordability. so a lot of people think high speed internet or cable are only entertainment. and we are proving that wrong today taing about educational opportunities and access to education. so rightow i don't think the technology is a barrier to entry. it is there. it is available. content is there. education, certifications are

available. it is access because of affordability. i think that's the key challenge for the fcc as well as for providers of the technology of the broadband in the u.s. so look at the trend towards a dolorous. this is a bit of an older slide, but today there is a huge influx of adult learners into the educational marketplace. so community colleges might not be handled, be able to handle the influx but there are other alternatives. that everybody can go to college, maybe community colleges are heard by budget so they have to limit and role in. but you can do it on line. there are a vo-tech and career colleges that off excellent education, excellent degree options,nd you can do it either on line or a blended learning environment where you do have hands-onnd you do go to school. but this is growing dramatically because of displaced workers. because of people who have to

have two incomes to survive. so they are looking for the educational outlets, and many times they can get the opportunities through government grants to pay for the tuition. they can get to the campus or they can take i on line around their schedule. but what they can't afford many times are the equipment and high speed access to the content, which is critical. here are two good quotes. one from education dynamics people are turning to on line education in record numbers because of the flexibility. so those who are working, but they're looking to improve their life, those who have a family are taking care of extended families, those who volunteer on the side and they just don't work. they need to be delivered education and convenient modes based on their lifestyle each and every day. and then cnn money, i think is what earlier this year this go, 2 himself more marketable, 26% of workers plan to go back to school to obtain a degree, certification or other training. which is pretty impressive.

that is from career builder which has a local major office here. so let's go to the next light and you can look at some of the stats from imagine america foundation and career colleges foundation. this is an alternative, so blackboard is better to round 80% colleges and universities in north america. but we're also worng with her -tech, universities and colleges because of their massive growth and the fact that they offer access to people who can go to the traditional four-year college. so about 2700 instituons and growing dramatically tk there are a lot who are now starting up because there is demand in nontraditional forms of work, like biotech, like power, and they are starting schools to build workers for the next industry growth. to .4 million students attended accredited career colleges in 2007. that is 10% of the market of higher education students in the u.s. this is a great stat here.

and one that i think support for all those. six of the 10 fastest-growing u.s. occupational categories between 2004 and 2014 will require less than a four year degree. now, traditional knowledge is the son, dghter, you have got to get a four year degree. you've got to go to graduate school. the truth of the matter is there are jobs out there, right? it does take skills and some level of education to get them however. so a lot of jobs that manufacture asian manufacturers are throwing overseas may be jobs that our workers don't want to do, right? so they are manual labor. a lot of the jobs that they do have, however, are the skilled labor part. sof you can make that education and that certifications available to workers, it can dramatically change their lives without a doubt. over0% and roman growth at 100% on my schools. though schools are really providing a high quality education, high quality instruction because most of

them, the instruction gen by adjunct professors who teach at our colleges and universities and community colleges. and in the final slide, heather took a little bit of my thunder, but i actually put the quote in here because i think it is important for people to seek from "the new york times," august 20 addition. on average students and online learning conditions before better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. blackboard is really a facilitative platforms we believe in blended learning, evenhough we have a lot of clients tha he wanted to present on line. and there are things you haveo learn with hands-on and there are alternative learners, disadvantage, disabled workers learners who also have to have that hands on experience because of t way they learn or because of their disability. and in the final quote from that same article, the real promise of on line education, which are expenses are more tailored to individual students than is ssible in the clash appeared to you can get a lot of personalization with it on my program wherein a classroom in person you have to serve evil of

different backgrounds, demographics. so that's my spiel. if you want to learn more about the company it is a blackboard.com. and, thank you. >> thanks so much, jim. i think your presentation, and also your statistibs that you mention in your presentation really highlighted the importance for digital literacy in this country as kermit mentioned, i think 92 million americans lack the skills to pursue a post secoary education began as tim just mentioned, those are some of the people who left post secondary degrees or certificates, not for your college degrees, actually enjoy job growth over the next few years. so that's an area that we would definitely focus on. our next panelist is from communications workers of america, ms. yvette herrera.

>> thanks all for the invitation to be here today. i would agree with him that affordability is certainly an issue for workers in on line training, but we also want to remeer that there are still a lot of people in this country that don't even have access to high spe, which also is a big issue. communication workers of america is a labor union. we represent 700,000 workers in this country, and canada. and what i'm going to talk to you about is on line programs that our union have embraced and that we have worked with for the last 10 or soears. our union has always considered ourselves as an education driven union. and we take great pride in the pathbreaking education and training benits that we have negotiated. mostly without larger employers,

specifically at&t, verizon, and qwest. our long-standing commitment to education and learning ongoing learning for workers really has been strategic. in an effort to help our members maintain job security, as well as be able to move up into higher paying jobs. in the telecommunication industry, which is an industry where most of our members are, there is constant change in constant technological cnge. and in order to have any degree of employment security, you really do have two be a lifelong learner at this point. and you really do have to maintain your ills. but despite these pathbreaking education benefits that we have negotiated without larger employers, we were still finding

that large segment of our members were just not taking advantage of them. for any number of reasons. and also, our smaller employers where we not able to negotiate these nd o benefits, members there were n able to do going training. so about 10 years ago we decided to embrace on line training as another vehicle to reach more of our members, and to provide education and training to more of our membe. d we were particularly interested in some panel members have ari talked about this, and making training available to our members to a difficulty, whether it be because they were women and they were caring for children or older parent at home, or whether it was workers who were working late shifts, or whether it was workers who we had in rural settings where it would take them two hours to

drive to the nearest community college. so we thought again on line might provide us with a vehicle to expand the number of our members who are taking advantage of maintaining their skill. so what i want to talk about briefly is the two programs that we started 10 years ago, and they're both a little bit different. celeb and just first give you an overview. the first one is called macdowell and it is a neat telecom industryartnership. and it was designed and delivered on line, education. the members include two unions, cwa and ibew. and at&t, verizon, qwest and frontier citizen. the courses are developedith extensive industry and union input and what is important about that obvious is the courses are relevant and up-to-date which in the telecom industry is a little bit of a

challenge. our education paner for this program is pace university. and they have been really exceptional providing outstanding top quality on my curriculum instructors and student services. and i would say, and i can talk a little more about this later, that for on line training to be successful tre really ar additional contacts that are required if you're going to have the completion rate that you want. many more contacts than the traditional classroom requires. mac-tel offers a bachelor degree in telecommunications, and an associate degree in applied information technology. so quick statistics. since 2007( 2500 students have participated. we have had 200 graduate with degrees. we have students from all 50 states. we have a 95 percent course completion rate, which if you know about onine course completion rates is really off the chart.

we are very, very proud of that. 40% of our students are women. the average age is 38. and we have o average 300 students enrolled per semester. so that's mac-tel. or other on line program, that is a union sponsor and run on line training program. and although cwa net does offer an associates degree, really the major focus is much more to provide technical courses that lead to recognize industry certification the majority of our members who come to cwa-net come for one of three reasons. one is to get this industry recognized certification, which will either lead to advancement for them. oregon, just provide job security for them to stay in the job they have now. a cond reason they come is to

acquire a necessary skill set, some urgent need that has arisen either because of new technology or because of trends where they need a skill set that they don't have. and that may be just one or two courses. and then the third motivator that we find among our members for coming is a need to obtain an understanding, a knowledge of a technology. which will make them more comfortable and the work they are doing and will help them. the kindsf courses that cwa-net offers include fiber optic, a+, which is the basic pc course, net plus, and the cisco curriculum, ccn day, and a series of that curriculum. statistics for this program, 50% are women and 40% are minories. again, these are our members, so we were particularly interested in targeting members who were

not as represented in the other programs that our students come from all as the country to average age also very similar, 38. we have about 600 enrollments a year hit our course completion rate is 80%. again, very, very high for on line, and are certification rate udent who actually get to certification, pas the test because the certification tests are third parties, we don't do that ourselves or else our completion rate would be much higher. the certification rate is 30%. . .

taking these courses with a dial up. not very many of them. most of them start in dial-up and then realized ey can do it and so they will either purchase a high-speed internet dropout, because it's very frustrating, or manage to do it and who libraries and at work if they get permission for that. but when we first started ten years ago, it was not unusual at all to have on line workers have dial-up services. so we had to adjust for that and so one example was, and i have

forgten this actually before i came over to talk about this, when we first started ten years ago, we would do the video for e courses. so instructors would be demonstrating how to use a tool or how to perform task and you actually see the instructor doing it and he would be walking through it, and we would dos we would mail videocassettes to the students with the books, cassettes, i have forgotten about that. and that wasn't that long ago. so we don't do that anymore. occasionally we do have to send it dvd to a student that les in a place where they just do not have the speed they need for streaming video. but obviously now we are able to put those kind of videos, which are actually critical for the kind of online education we do online and most of the students are able to download without any

problem depending on how long -- we try to keep the did you -- there is still a speed issue in thisountry and so we need to keep if you short so we often are better off having many shorter ones than one long one because again, people do not have the speed in this country that you would find in oth countries and we are still behind and other panelists have talked about that. another change that we have the will to make, again because things have got it better, not where we want it better with high-speed access, is many of ou cwanet courses require at least 20 hours of the lab work, and this is physical lab work, so when we first started we built labs across the count in the local union halls so we actually installed raúl terse and servers and pc's across the country that we could only do so many of those. so our students as a requirement

to finish these courses they had to do these 20 hours of live, sometimes 25 hours. so they would drive to these lamps and of course thesere full-time working folks so they almost always want to go on the weekend. and then the drive 100, 400 miles to get to this lab and then of course they want to do it on the weekend. they would have to spendhe night in a hotel in order to finish all of that course work in one weekend. wealthy logistics of that for us we would have to get an instructor there for the weekend. we would obviously want as many students asossible that weekend to make the instructor cost-effective. the fact the student had to leave their family, spend a night away, the whole thing was quite logistically complicat and believe it or not, hundreds and hundreds of workers though did it because it was one of the only ways they had to get these skills.

now, all of our labsre done remotely so that students -- we no longer hav those physical labs, and now students can access raúl person remotely -- routers remotely from wherer they are doing their course work, usually their homes and the instructor can either be life, they can access the routt curve life and configure the routers which is part of the lab, they can do troubleshooting which is part of the lab and then the instructors can actually see step-by-step what they have done. so there is no requirement for them to go anywhere else. so this has been actually huge. it's very helpful to the students and to us. the video i've talked about that's also been important. the last thing i will say about the video is we also do video chatting where the instructor actually has a time and he can

speak to a colewort, a group of students, hi class, and they can speak back the rate again, because of speed what we would really like is to able to do an interactive video to a but the students just do not have by and rge the speed necessary for that kind of high-definition interactiv video. most of them can download high-speed not all of them but most of them can download highspeed video. but we still are not quite there. we don't have enough speed but we hope with the work of the fcc and policy for this country to be there shortly. some things we have learned and that would be the next slide, the bott, speed matters and i

think christopher mentioned a speed test that was and he usa today and that is a test hat cwa -- cwa did this shows the different spds and the different states and where the state's fall. speed does matte for instruction, so not only do you have to be able to afford internet, but you haveo have fast internet or else these courses are very tedious and frustrating, and the learning is not as good. instructors matter. you can't just take a classroom instructor and say now you're going to do an online course. it doesn't work that way. it's different. some classroom instructors make the transition very well. others don't like it and are not good at it. there is actually -- and this is something people often don't understand -- there is more instructor and student interaction oftentimes on line than there is in the classroom.

educational partners matter. you need to have a partner who understands online training and who is committed to it. we have two excellent partners in peace university and stanley community college. contant matters. i think somebody mentioned it is not just about having a correspondence course online. it's not just about xerox and chapters in a textbook and putting it on line, having people read a chapter at a time and then giving them a test but it's about using the technology to have the learning rich, and in many cases and people have mentned this it can beetter than classroom learning. online training is not for everyone. , it just isn't. some people cannot learn through this technology. it's n for them. and that's fine. and we've also learned courses have to have a start and end time. we like to say our courses are

anywhere, anytime, but there is a start and end time, and that's important for the structure of the training. and then lastly, online education and training can make a difference in people's lives. we see it everyday. we get e-mails, phone cls, letters, testimonials telling us what a difference it's made. just a few -- just a few examples i can share with you. we get quite a few testimonials from women. this has been mentionedy heher an others who have chilen or are caringor pardnts. the work full time because remember the population we are traing our full-time workers so these are folks that need to inease their skills or get a new skill set or certification. they want to advance or keep the job they have. so, for reasons they are caring for someone else at night they

can't go out three nights a week to the college. the on line program they can do at 2:00 in the morning, you know, whenever they want, five in the morning to really brings acce to them they would normally not have. we also hear peoe in some parts of the country in some places d't feel comfortable driving at night to go to community college, parking, going three times a night and they love the online auction and wouldn't have gone otherwise. we have lots of membersho work unusual hours and it isn't pmssible with for them for them too as monday, wednesday and thuray to community college from 7:00 9:00. they work weekends, nights, they're shift change, shifts or unpredictable and they just cannot do the traditional classroom. we get lots of e-mails sing i'd would not have been able to get this decree, i never would have been able to get the certification had it not been

for online training. we also have older members and by older i mean younger than me. we have members who have not been in the classroom for 20 years and this is an interesting one. this was ieresting f me but we get this a fair amount and there is a certain intimidation about going back into the classroom. and what we hear from them is that they thought it would be safer to get back into education through an on-line the new. we hear that, you know, they were not sure -- they didn't want to make a full of themselves. they were not sure they were up to it. perhaps they hadn't done well in school previously said they thought in an online setting it would be if i can say more private their failure would be more private or their experience would be more private and they wouldn't feel as foolish. of course theyend to do very well. they underestimate themselves.

but then ty get hooked and continue on. but that is a driver r a number of people. so too and i would say that anywhere, any time flexibility of online courses have allowed a lot of our members to do the training and to get the skills and get degrees that theyould not have been able to do if they had to go to a traditional, traditional institution. but i would say that we continue to bump into the problem that a lot of our members are either i a place they cannot get high-speed internet or even high-speed internet that's called high-speed internet is really not fast enough for the kind of things you need to do online to be effective. >> thank you for telling us about the two very impressive

and fascinating programs that cw runs. this concludes the panelists presentations. we have about 20, 15 minutes allocated to questions from the audience and from the calls on webx and twitter and also the panel here. [inaudible] >> you want me to start off? >> yeah, unless we already have questions that have been submitted. >> i will go ahead and ask a question of why we are checking on that. each of you have argued compellingly in different ways for the government to focus on access and access at high speeds that you can actually do something with. we hear that loudnd clear. the question is from your pepective, if you were charged with writing a strategy for the

country that focused on the way broadband could further work-force development job training what specifically would you recommend federal government to whether it is anything from addressing market failures, putting incentives in place for suppliers of job training or employers who would take seriously the programs offered online whether it is some of the barriers that you, kermit, mentioned regarding policy issues about 50% rule, whatever policies are out there. any specific recommendations you would like us to consider in our proposals? to congress. >> i can start with that. i think that one of the specific areas i would think is very important is bridging the digital divide dalia the issue of access, which is not only having affordable broadband inrnet access, but also having as kermit said, this case of

where you do your job training. where you do it hopefully is in your home and the best way to do that that i have found on the research is by providing a laptop in someone's home so they can take the laptop to work if they are able to do their job training atork if their employer says it is okay ty can do it in a small room. we have recently done a program with inmates who are going to halfway houses and having a laptop allows those inmates in a half house were the only have a blog -- on the bed and a chair and desk to providing that access to available throu the work force system to provide computers and laptops and printers and things. >> yes, please. >> i would say two things. one is harking back to telephone. there was a time in this country when very few people had telephone and then they got to have more and more telephones and there is a policy in the

country for universal access to dial tone which then pushed the telephone access to 90% if not more in a number of years. so, what we would like to see is the same kind of policy. they did that through subsidies so that there would be rural access in these things but there was a public polic to get as many americans as possible dialtone and telephone and then in a number of years that was accomplished. so we would like to see the same thing with high-speed internet access, and we think it is the telephone of our generation of this year. second thing i would say is we would like the definition for high-speed to be looked at again. >>hat is definitely condered right now. do you have a sense of how quickly what is reasonable, how hard would you push the federal government in terms of setting

benchmarks? >> i think it is an economic competitive issue. so i would push them hard, as hard as i could push them. five years and 90% coverage. [laughter] >> i would like to jump in there as well. i do believe it is open access so there are no state or local regulations that are in handling multiple competitors coming into these world marketplaces potentially some of the historical telephone regulations that existed in the state and also setting a mandate of five megabits per second, just if i look across the e-learning industry, tools people are trying to utilize it is a given. you need that to even begin to start to allow people not to g frustrated. and i go back to the statement no one wants to use the 1980's

dial-up. it's 30 years ago. >> i think the true value of the infrastructure that would be the hi-speed broadband internet access actually comes from the private sector and applications we dealt to actually utilize it, so i think it's important that you keep that top of mind and also look at it may seem odd to ca them incentives, but i think don't leave the private sector out of this as being someone who can contribute to the overl average will goal putting people to work toward helping them uerstand the possibilities they have. i think another component of this is more integration or collaboration with other agencies and other areas of the government to be able to align some of the goals strategically about this t be able to -- did i make you some friends on their? the department of labour may have a lot to say on this. [laughter] but i think that when we look at those things we have to remind ourselves whenever we decide to

build roads and to build electricity intoomes we didn't really get down to the level of the hair dryer is going to have a compelling impact on the work force. you have got to think about the tools or that are going to benefit from this. >> and i will jump in on that. i also think, miami researcher. demographics matter. and these things have to be built to again, the unie needs of those workers and how they learned and where the word. i also think that there's also a fference for at least in the community idea with of around the issue of labor force participation. when you look at the disparities in the labour force partipation rates with peoe with disabilities it's like 70% aren't even showing up so they aren't even getting on to these -- how do we begin to build as a work force strategy ways to market this and get out of reach to these underserved communities especially those who are

low-income will find this difficult to access and think you need to consider that as you think about more long-term proposal to congress. >> can i follow on that? i think that as you have all spoken today we have heard a lot about costs being a barer or access in one way or another and then use ability to read this is the first i think any of you have sort of mentioned the relevant point. there are a lot of people who are not using broadband right now because they don't see the point and particularly given the benefits you all talked about from a job training and educatiopepective i want to hear your thoughts on what we can do and what you are doing on your own to do outreach and make people understand the benefits ob thi to increase adoption of the understand the relevance of it. >> i think given the experience of someone hasn't experienced

something, whether they are displaced workers wh little skills than their rural area where there is high level of poverty etc. given the experience through communities, through the library through community activism etc. their allies will light up when they se it's possible when they experience the technology and in the last step is how do you meet the educational part. so we have a lot of displaced workers because of shoring jobs for example they want to improve the life, they want to move to a skilled labour job as we become a knowledge based economy etc.. so they are willing to go with trend is happening in the economy whether they understd them or not only if they can understand how to use the technology so y can always expect the government to pay for it. it can't be let's get a subsidy so all libraries and community centers can have high-speed internet. that would be great, right? provider have to make moneys well so maybe we try to form

some consortium of busineswith municipalities trying to show here is where you can shift some of your budget to add value to your constituents as well as federal, state and local. >> i think from the work-force development perspective again it is a system that is vy overwhelmed as you all acknowledged earlier. the extent to which we are -- we at sleeper in partnership with other federal agencies can create within stes virtual one stops. could greatly reduce cost when you look at the typical cost of operating a one stop this the kind of center and don't think we have donner a lot to test the concept of how we provide work force development services including rehabilitation stocks that are virtual and i would be interested to see some kind of partnership pilot between the fcc and labor on that would be really cool. >> i think from our perspective

to answer that question is there is also this compeing instance or this circumstance i find myself and then there is none that illustrates this more effectively than the job loss we have seen. if i had no other reason when i was working,n i vas employed, when i was one of the millions of people who worked a year ago that isn't working today i had no real reason to go out there and do a job search or career map but now that i am one of the millions that is out of work that may be my reason to have to go on line. banaa and there is actually i am behind now to figure out whas my path, what am i going to do to get their? now have to go through six six months or a year or four years to go through education. if we take this a little bit more pro-active approach and you look and say how do we do not reach it is to look at four of us our cheapest and most effeive way connecting with people is through the internet.

that doesn't help me very much if i can't connect through the internet. so when we lk at what we are doing it is incredibly creative around that. but the other way we get people in is that need they have and you will see more and more you want to know where the jobs or they are on lineith boards like mine but also companies, the government. everyone has their sites where jobs are but no one says jobs aren't online. so therefore i must g on line to find the jobs. >> i think anoer piece of the relevance and shoving people the relevance is having content available for them that serves their needs and as kermit was talking about earlier, there are 42% of americans don't have the work force skills, literacy skills the need to compete in the workforce and their nds to be programming out there that provides them with that. and in many cases there are iversity programs, things that serve the other americans but not people who need these workplace literacy skills and

that's one of the reason the center for work has been working to create this website on line called building skills for work which is going to serve those in our personal and academic skills needs. it is in its infancy now but i hope we are not the only ones who are gng to develop tools like this that people are going to look to serve all the populations out there and serve them in aay that looks specifically how adult learners learn and isn't geared towards children. a lot of it is geared towards childrennd it isn't usable for ult. >> one other thing -- we touch on the concept of career pathwaysearlier in the presentation. one thing i think is very difficult particularly for low-skilled workers is in order to d -- you really do have to go to one institution to get one kind of training and then go to another institution, get another training and then the first adult education basic skills you got doesn't translate to cut the

job training or to higher education, post secondary education so to the extent that we can develop a broadband strategy and educational work rce strategy that makes that process more seamless, that helps bridge -- this is across agency, cross system problem that if you are an individual learner trying to find the skills and education it's not very obvious. there's a way we can stick together and do the work force you so i can figure out what i need to learn and what credentials i am going to need to get there. we make it difficult for a lot of adult learners to get the skills they needo sue the extent we can use high-speed internet and on-line learning to sort of bridge the gaps i think that would be of immense value to a lot of learns in this country and help in lot of people get the skills they need to helpusinesses be competitive. >> i would add based on last 12 to 15 years, online learning companies like blackboard,

monster, the rapid change that we have gon through and will continue to go through, time to market is key for relevancy. something that wean get to the market, get a broadband into the hands of the communities underserved today and be able to reiterate on some of those programs, do experimentation and so forth. let's not wait any longer. let's see what works, doesn't work and then tweak it over time. >> hi process slower. i would encourage you or wou like to see that this rule doesn't equal low-skilled and i think that when we look at the focus and conversation tends to be about low-skilled workers or people who need a lot of assistance but i think the one thing as americans we work more than i do anything else. think about that i work more than i spent time with my fami, i work more than i sleep, work is so critical i would challenge all loveless can

improve our lot in life or work in a different w so i think it is brought back and allow us to add value to every worker were all the future workers and i think that is the component i would lik to see not just focused on low-skilled. >> i see one of the biggest -- is the microphone on? one of the biggest challenges, kind of the elephant in the middle of the room is those of us who are on the way in the audience we have probably high-speed internet, right? we are gainfully employed, we cannot afford it. we don't always loved the cost per month but it gives education, entertainment, access what do we do to keep integrity in the investment of the vendors and suppliers of broadband and high-speed and keep the margins without having the government

subsidize everything so that's the biggest challenge the provers to invest in the technology they can't get away. they maybe could reduce the marg has is how do we do that without expecting the government to pay for all of it and still make it accessible. it is tough. and maybe we have to convince the population that it's more important to have broadband and cable tv or something else. i don't know. we all want everything, the entertainment, the broadband, but we also want profitable companies like your members who can gainfully employed people that build it. so i don't know what the answer is that might be a good question to throw out. maybe too controversial. >> thanks, tim. i don't think it's coroversial. i think it's important -- it's

important to understand what their partnerships with in the private sector and between the private sector and public stor work, whetr they exist. i'm sure they exist but what is working and what partnerships are necessary and i think that in kermit's presentatioearlier he did talk about how relevant online training programs really need to happen when there are partnerships across agencies, a cross during is organizations thatouch upon this particular topic as well as the employers who are going to be creating jobs in the industr so, thank you for that input. we have a question from a collar on webx. this is about e-learning. i'm going to ask him to answer first. what is the biggest problem in terms of serving e-learning platfos? at of technological access,

w-speed internet or literacy and what is the best way to address this gap? >> that is a tough one to answer because i think it is a little bit of everything. again, millions of people use e-learning in some form. it may not b an educational platform, it might be going to a government website or go bowling something so you can learn a ill that's free online. so i think first is literacy, the digital literacy if you want the masses to have it, and industry, private public sector, everybody is responsible for trying to induce trial so people can get out there and have exposure because if you're not exposed to something you don't know any better. that is the first part. the second part is content, it does take time to build an fort to build meaningful learning content so you can't just throw a bunch of videos and text on line. it has to be organed in a

thoughtful mner around how people lea where they learn so every organization has to think abt that whether you are corporation training employees, university faculty delivering the course because how people interact with content and if it isesigned so they can learn from it and you can assess what they have learned and they can use it -- use it in their life for their job that is the critical component. >> all right, great. thank you. i think we have reached the two hour limit so i am going to conclude the workshop. we have heard a lot of interesting things during the presentations, and the few comments i have gotten written down here is the lack of equipment that is not available to people who are underserved and need e-training and job training the most andeople who really need to understand how to

use a computer, how to get on line, how to pursue programs that can help them get better jobs and better pay, and also lack of regulation, lack of this efficiency streamliningithin job training industrious and the government agencies that cover this topic. it isn't that type of collaboration that we have seen yet and that is something i think we should explore so those are some of the themes we talked about today and i want to thank you for carving out time from your day jobs to speak up this panel. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

eliasmn c-span funded? >> private donations. >> tax payers. >> grants and stuff like that. >> public television. >> donations. >> i don't know where the money comes from. >> literally. >> donors. >> america's cable companies created c-span as a public service, private business initiative, no government mandate, no government money. now a discussion on the future of charter schools and voucher programs. posted by the thomas before and institute, think take the risk is on education. this is just under an hour and half. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. my name is mike petrilli, onef the vice president at the thomas

fordham institute. very excited to have such a full role in a hot day in washington in aueust. not everybody goes to marthas vineyard from washgton this week so we are gla to have you here. is is going to be very interesting discussion. it may not be quite as contentious as the health care debates taking place. we don't expect there to be things thrown and by the way d.c. has very strict don laws, so you have to check -- that's right [inaudible] check ose guns at the door and turn cell phones off. but this is an important debate we areaving right now within the educational licy world about charter schools, vouchers and other forms of school choice. for those of you that don't know much about the thomas fordham institute, we are a think tank here in washingn, d.c. we cover education policy and also e onhe ground work in ohio specifically dayton ohio where we have a office and policy work in columbus. so we are rooted in a real place

with real kids where we serve those kids directly. we for a long time have been promoting various forms choice and education that includes school vouchers. indeed we helped fund a voucher program over a decade ago the state now has a publicly funded voucher program, state wide. we've also been active in the charter school movement in ohio and we sponsor and oversee six charter schools in dayton and columbus and the cincinnati area so we are very much involvein this movement. we are supporters of the voucher side and the charter schools site but we have also noticed as political winds have changed in recent months and years that there has been a lot of discussion about whether or not there is still a viable future for the private school choice movement, doubters, tax credits, the ability for parents, usually low-income parents are disadvantaged to take public dollars to the public-school

choice. you might call the ascension of charter schools. reform the obama administration has embraced and a fact using the race to the top fund some 5 billion-dollar incentive to tell states if they want to get a bter shot at getting the money they have got to adopt more charter school friendly policies. let me start by reading a quote from the president. he gave an interview about a month ago to the "washington post" when the race to the top application came out and here's what he said about forms of school choice. i've been opposed to vouchers because i worry about resources drained out of the system, creaming from the public school system until you have the public school system only dealing with toughest kids. on the other hand i think charters' within the public school system forced the kind of experimentation and innovation that helps drive excellence and a free of our aspect of life and that is a positive thing as long as we are continuing to s high

standards and apply them consistently to the stryker schools. so you could say charters are hot and vouchers are locked in today's washington and the question for today is does this matter, does this ascendancy of charter of schools have negative implications for the movement were do these movements go hand-in-hand? our vouchers and tax credits putting charter schools against vouchers has already been the matter of some debate. of course you have to love the blogphere already buzzing about the seat and in advance. manhattan institute scholar jake reed wrote dismissing policies because they are not on the agenda of the curnt majority as in school vouchers is like the argument in the 1988 film, heather's. growth, heather, believe me that is so 87. [laughter] we will talk about that, the

vouchers are the new bulimia. [laughter] it's an analogy. lots to talk about. we have a star-studded panel to address the questions. i'm going to introduce them briefly. they wl make brief five mute comments and then a moderated conversation and after that opened the conversation to the audience. we have refreshments, don't be bashful about getting a braudy to get you going but i don't think this will require too much caffeine. let's start here. starting on how were left we have john kirtley, hold on. where is my title. john, remind me of your organization. >> [indible] >> the florida school choice fund which is one of the largest tax credit -- scholarship granting organizations in the country and in florida. we have got kevin carey, education sector. what is your title? polici director.

gerard robinson -- thank you. president of black alignment and suzanne zelman for public broadcasting used to the state superintendent and ohio and again is the susan zeln of the decision backend now 2003 at the supreme court level that found school vouchers be constitutional including vouchers for schools religiously affiliated. we are going to start with john and kevin and go down this way and have a very interesting conversation. john let's start with this. you heard the quote from president obama we have a popular democratic president granted less popular by the day it looks like but popular president willing tond capital on charter schools but not vouchers or tax credits. there seems to be a political moment for charter schools so why shouldn't people that care about expanding choices for parents put all our energy into

growing the charter school movement? >> first thanks for having me. i am pleased and thank you all for being here and wherever you are on the topic things for caring about this issue because you are already ahead of most so i want to thank you for that. i am going to talk about a lot of details today but they all revolve around a few main points and the first is i think this is an exciting time to be in que 12 education because whether we wanted to or not it is changing rapidly and the delivery methods for public education are changing so rapidly ow we have traditional public schools, charter's, magnets, virtual and some kids are combining those, even in raleigh and community colleges and one of the main points is private schools particularly faith based schools are a essential elent of the public education delivery next and the first that i think is

morally wrong to exclude that option from low-income parents. it is one of the most prevalent options in urban and other low-income areas and the surprise is a lot of people and it is morally wrong to exclude that option from parents. i will give you a real-life example. in jacksonville florida it's a large urban district probably 350,000 kids in the school system faces all of the challenges in an urban district us andhere are six charter schools in jacksonville, six and not all of them serve low-income kids by the way. there are 90 private schools serving low-income children on the tax credit scholarship program in jacksonville. imagine you are a low-income single mother in jacksonville and have a son who is doing poorly in his public school. it's not the fault of the school, he just isn't fit for that school and you want to put

your kid -- this is a real-life example, private schoo that has 99% graduation rate and 90% of kids go to college and you want your kid in that school. how do you explain to her she shoun't have the right to do that? how do you go to her and say i am for school choice but just for charters and you need to wait until we bring a charter school, high-quality charter school to your neighborhood before you have an option? she will look at you and say my kid is going to be dead b the time a charter might get here so the point is it is morally wrong to exclude this option from loincome parents, and the second main point i want to talk about is the main opposition on a year being for broad parental choice for families is it is too politically difficult to get this done. the first response to that is what if the civil rights movement took that approach? it's too hard to have in power met for citizens.

let's take it incrementally. i don't think that would go over very well so certain things are so bright you have to fight for them but the second point and we have proven this in florida and i want to spend time talking about this and apply and asked about this we have taken a hostile environment to broad parental choice and have turned it around and you can make your political environment more friendly for all other options if you push for broad parental choice. in 2001 we passed the tax credit program for low-income kids and only one democrat voted for that in the entire legislature and we used the assets that private school choice gives from a political point of view, and i would love to talk about those assets me if we have time but i would like to include the parents and others, we use those assets to change the climate, and in most recent session in a

terrible budget session we aggressively expanded this for low-income kids have the democrats voted for the bill, a majority of the caucus voted for the bill. 100% hispanic caucus voted. one of the sponsors was the leader of the democratic party and state senate and we change the environment and florida such that there is now a growing consensus bipartisan consensus around broad parental choice, and charters basically exisp in that safe harbor of support. it can get a legislator to support a tax credit program for low-income kids which we can do they will support charters, merit pay, curriculum anges, they will support -- everything else is easy so one of the messages i want to leave with you today is i think charter advocates if the are charterer only are selling themselves

short on the kind of environment they can create for rorm buy not pushing for broad parental choice. >> thank you college on. next is going to be kevin carey and kevin i am going to ask you to give the other side of the story. why shouldn't progressive reformers like yourself embraced this broadbased parental choice? why does it have to be either or, charter system of private school choice and what you say to john that places like jacksonville you would wait a long time for charter schools as well as this question about the safe harbor that is predicted publicly for charter schools because the advocacy and successful advocacy for school choice? >> i would say i think vouchers are a simple version of a good idea which is an idea i personally support which is we ought to give all parents options where to send their children to school and

particularly parents who don't have that option by virtue of being wealthy enough to decide where to live witches' public school choice has worked and continues to work and we ought to do that in a way that creates market competition among schools and in a way that provides incentives for new actors and resources to enter the public school system. i think these are important goals and a vital element of school reform, and again i support them. but once you start to think about how to apply those broad goals to public education, i think you quickly come to what i think are straightforward conclusions and one is given the idea is to spend large amounts of public money in this enterprise and that there is a very high interest in making

sure children are not exposed to low quality schools there needs to be a strong element of public accountability. we cannot just rely on market response to provide the kind of schools children need. when you think about what to do based on those things i think essentially you're thinking evolves qukly to charter schools. i think charter schools are basicay vouchers with all the rough edges worn down. i think they a devolved public policy and more effecti public policy. they are clearly if you look at what is actually happened as we tried it vouchers and tax credits in some places and charter schools and other places, the charter school environment has created a new ecostem of effective resource intensive nonprofit organizations that are accountable to the public and also have the flexibility to try new educational models that have proven ability to bring new

resources both financial and human resoues to the service providing an education in large part to the most vulnerable students. district of columbia is a perfect example of that. the fact we now have a president who is not as liberal as many but certainly a democrat, no question about that who has decided, who has very clearly made the choice to be pro charter schools not a choice he had to make, not surprising to read it was consistent with what he said during the campaign but it's one thing to say something during the campaign and to be candid $5 million from congress and the blank slate to decide what to or three issues you are going to use that money to press states on and say onef those issues that i will take responsibility for its charter school, artificial my mind deimental barriers against extending good charter schools.

that didn't have to happen. a democrat could easily have run and be occupying the white house and be neutral on school choice, say enougho get by but not really support. that isn't what we have. we have a president who is unambiguously pro charter schools and in that sense it is a historic opportunity to break down what continues to be a lot of major rhetorical barriers to school choice. a lot of people -- there's still a lot of people out there more left than on the right who are hostile to the idea of school choice who don't believe in markets and public education. ihink this is an opportunity to bring them into the fold around the policy idea that again has the crucial element of public accountability for public resources. >> thank you, kevin. we are going to go to gerard and it is similar to john,gain you have this popular president willing to talk about this

issue. he is increasing as a civil rights issue, gave quite a speech in front of the naacp largely about education, talks about charter schools why not say that an opportunity, political opportunity let's focusn that. >> first let me thank the foundation for the invitation to participate in this discussion. this condition has been many years in fact my first symposium i attended in milwaukee years ago the person i sat next to -- it is good to be here. one of the deficits the american school reform sfers from is an ability to choose the right conjunction. the fact we are now in a position we have to make a decision of do you stay with the vouchers or go with charters goes away from the mission statement. our mission is to support parental choice and our families to create quality options for black children. when we say quality that

includes vouchers and charter schools and virtual schools and a host of schools because when we talked about this in 1999 and 2000 we were visionaries. many people talking about this today are vouchers and here's the difference. before there was a large push for charter schools in 1999 when the movement was i its infancy we were the ones saying charter schools can make a different and they work for kids and there's parental involvement before there was a voucher program in washington, d.c. or new orleans, only one and milwaukee at that time, won in cleveland going to its urth year we were the ones that saw low-income working class parents who paid taxes in the system and submit poor people don't take taxes should have the opportunity to choose where to send their children and if it means using the money for a private school that is great they can leap over jefferson's wall of separation which is more of a political decision and not so we don't see the need to have to choose one or the other.

we support the charter schools and we are notctually the recipient from the gates foundation to open upeven small schools and we have five and operations this fall so rather than become an opportunist we will focus on being a group of options to make sure we support them all. i alsoind interesting that people don't want to support vouchers because the only help 1% of children. when we talk about school integration and the whole push for brown schools in america educate less than 1% of the children and what do we say? we need to increase the school ograms while we fix public schools. when tsa came to the marketplace to bring quality teachers and historical piece they didn't reach more than 1% of the children at one time. what did we say? we need to increase quality teachers while we fix the school system. even with charter schools they are not educating more than 1%

of the student population and what we say is let's expand the 1% and at the same time increase the charter market but it becomes interesting when we only deal with 1% of kids and belcher schools and then say what about the other 99%. very interesti i think it is a line of reasoning going in the wrong direction we see ourselves supporting charters and vouchers along the way. >> thank you. susan ile you were state superintendent in ohio the legislature created the cleveland felker program and the movement grew dramatically and eventually the court case went to supreme court with iour ne but you have indicated to think perhaps the school choice movement isn't the centerpiece to education reform. tell us about that. >> why was responsible for administering to the voucher programs and charter schools or as it is called an ohio community schools. i am here today as a former

chief state school officers and now senior vice president of the corporation for public broadcasting in education where i have actually no oicial position on either of vouchers or charters but i have never let my personal beliefs and my responsibility is to ensure these programs were administered fairly and with integrity and authority given to me by the state legislature. when the felker case was settled i did say the court is back, the jury is out and the reason i said that is we have longitudinal data about the cleveland voucher case and the town really was the data was a wash. it wasn't clear whether the voucher students fare better in the program than the comparable students in the cleveland public schools. as a state superintendent i always ask the question what is good for our children and

actually i do believe community schools or charter schools are good for the children. it's hard for schools to address the needs of all children and public education needs experimentation and innovation particularly now in the era of individualization and customization. so i look at charter schools the same way out chancre looked at charter schools which was research and development opportunities for the public school sysm. you might remember he was the first person to proposed charter schools at that time my friend, checker was assistant secretary to then opposed charter schools so i always thought it was divine justice i wac the state superintendent that gave you guys the charter. but given that, you know, i really see that charter schls can in fact be part of a larger school strategy. however state superintendent i really focus very hard on raising the bar for all children

in closing the achievement gap and building a strong viable system of public education first by raising expectations, for being clear what w want our students to know and people to do so in a poor community was the same as an an a rich community. i worked hard of lining the standards to a new system of assessments and curriculum models and as i was leaving we were working on a new vision for the system which dealt with the whole iss of multiple measures. we worked hard to build the capacity of the system to meet these expectations. we've redesigned the resource system for the profession, redesigned the policies from recruitment to retirement. we advocated for a newision of the teaching profession around differentiated roles and responsibilities and differentiated compensation systems. we ted to help districts and schools that developing a set of diagnostic tools and technical

assistance tools and turnaround teams we engaged the community through a variety of different community engagement activities and we tried to support innovation and experimentation in many policy issues. we also worked hard to develop a fair and credible accountability system and were one of the first states to put in value added measures. but you now as state super intendant i didn't focus enough on the power of these new emerging technologies to make the public school system more effective and efficient. for example how new media can engage students and learning and how to convert nineteenth-century analog system of publicducation into a new digital learning environment and quite frankly that is one of the reasons why i came to the corporation for public broadcasting. at cpb we found produions for educational content online com on air and in the community.

public serce media through broadband should be in every school in t nation. our content is a trusted source of information for parents, teachers and communities and educational materials are motivating and engaging and of high quality. i believe if we integrate public service media which for example can provide multiple representation of difficult concepts into the curriculum we can do a better job of motivating, inspiring and helping poor children. my mission is to integrate public service media into standards, assessments, teachers professional development and linker content into state aid based systems where teachers can in fact use the content to customize instructions for students. we will be a valued and important partner in using these technologies and i welcome the opportunity to work with public schools, charter schools or

voucher schools in this endeavor. thank you for the opportunity to be on the panel. ..

>> there is no reason for me to think that that's going to change, nor that these two or ought to be an infusion of public funds in the service of religious instruction. >> i totally disagree. first of all, there are certain children, and i think those of us who work in this field, and many others do, there are certain children who are only going to be saved by faith based school. michael is not to put children and faith-based schools. my goal is to put children in school that work for them. i have had literally hundreds of

conversation with parents and children who have said to me if i had not attended that school, i would not have survived. i was going to join again, and i was going to drop out. i probably wouldn't be alive. and it was a faith-based aspect of that school that saved me. and academics but primarily the faith-based aspect of the school. again, the faith-based private schools have to be in the mix for how public education is going to be delivered in this country if we are going tsave low-income children. period. and you say the court has put some structure around us, but maybe public policy should allow faith-based school to access public funds. i guess i would ask, do you also object to the g.i. bill? students take posted a faith-based colleges. should that not be allowed as well? in florida we have a pre-k. program where 100,000 kids take

taxpayer funds, and more of a voucher i might add, and they attend a fth-based state programs. same case in new jersey. should they be unlawful and not allowed? i think we have to be consistent across the board. and these are schools that are very unique and eliminating them, you take one of the most vital tools to closing the achievement gap off the table. let's ep pushing on this. i want to ask you, steve. kevin said that tere's been support for these faith-based schools and reducing and the catholics sector particular and real crisis, 300,000 students, since the 1990s and because close innards city classic schools. to the minority member of the supreme court, clarence thomas, both went to catholic schools that young people. and yet we see catholic schools closing. the decision famously decided there wasn't a constitutional

problem with the vouchers going to religious schools. it was parent oice. what is your own personal view? what do you think is a matter of public policy, catholic schools, other religious schools should be in the next? >> as a matter of public policy i really believe in the separation of church and state. and the weight work in the cleveland voucher program, and still works, is that thmoney goes to the parents and the parent theoretically chooses to go to thearochial school. but the reality is to make sure that that choice is strong, we send a check to the parochial school and a parent comes in and signed it. but from a policy perspective, i really believe very strongly about the separation of church and state. however, do, i taught at a college aged catholic college for four years and worked very much in my younger life, and they have pled an important role in serving poor kids in

poor communities. and i think that we, i mean, if i were a district superintendent and a parochial schools were having financial difficulty, in my district, i would really try to work very hard with them to assure that we could form some type of partnership where religious instruction was not taking place during the day, that they can be absorbed into a public school system to keep the parish community school element going and do something. first of all, i think would be very cross to second for us to do so because when a parochial school closes, the students usually go into the public school system. sometimes there is overcrowding. sometimes you schools have to be built. so i am for a partnership for what works. >> i told susan at a time, i ago that i was trying to see if she would do a changeover here d renounce the zelman theory.

thatould be an interesting event or she hasn't quite done it yet. you haven't quite renounce tha you. you are the line. what you think? when you look out at this particular crisis in catholic education, we have good choices that are disappearing. how to spend one think about? what are some effective way to try to keep catholic schools alive? is that a reasonable goal of public policy? >> we can reduce this discussion to the events that a religion. because that is what the opponents of vouchers to all the time. they used the separation of church and stateften and in cities where we work, parents often say i thought i couldn't because the separation church and state doesn't exist in the constitution. and only get separation of church and state comes from a letter that thomas jefferson wrote to danbury baptists where he talked about separation and of church and state, and we somehow incorporated that into

our lexicon about school reform. this isn't a discussion about advancing catholic schools or religion to this is about advancing critical options. and if they choose to put the child and a religious school, amen. if they choose not to,nd in. so to make it nuclear, this isn't a catholic, protestant or religioudebate. because even in the wisconsin law there is an opt out clause for those who feel so put upon to have religion, taken action to opt out. very few have taken advantage of it. what baeo has done well is to go out the street, what i call th soul to soul moving. year to put on shoes and touch people. one example is last year, i believe in july, louisiana had signed a new law to create an opportunity scholarship for students and their. in a six-day period 18 zip code, able to get 108parents to sign up i you don't do that just by going on radio, although that help you have to get out there and it. guess what? this past week and we had to reach out to parents again in

new orleans. not one parent said you know what, i want to return my voucher to you because president obama has forced charters. no one said that. no one said if i support charters, i mean, vouchers, am i undercutting the financial resources of public school system. these are parents whose children will be undercut by the public school system. although there is public go schools that work in new orleans. so luch of what we debate about vouchers and charters really cocktail conversations. that's what we do. but when you tal to people who have to live have to live with the consequences of public policy decisions made b people who are not on capitol hill, it looks very different. so we spent time the soul to soul method, parents he been great, and these are parents who voted for the prese and yet none of them has said again, i'm not going to participate because the right thing is behind that they'll care about the right wing or pheeft wing, so long as they give their children links to flyweight i schools

that don't work in lan and schools that do. >> think. imagine a lot of opponents use the church state question, a ason to oppose vouchers. another reason thacomes up, was the issue of accountability. concerned that no private schools are accountable to their families, to people who pay tuition, people are choosing to send their children account an under, entered the testing, in terms of reporting, accountability and we have in mind when we think about the no child left behind act, things like that. had to address those kind of critics? is that there? do we need to do a better job for vouchers and tax credits? >> absolutely the answer is yet again yester the private school movement, and there is a healthy debate within that movement about this topic. mywn personal opinion, very strong opinion, is that if you are a private school and you want to take a certain number of children on a publicly financed

program, whether it is a directly to a voucher or indirectly, or tax credit, if you take a certain number of kids, then you are going to have to be accountable more than just the. you will have to be accountable to the taxpayers. you will have to be accountable to the legislators that created the program. you've got to be accountable to the public. about it either to errors of accountability or there is a physical and academic. i believe again that if you take a certain threshold of kids, and there is a lot of debate as were that special should be, you must show to the public that you are using the money properly. it's not hard to do. mean, you should do an audit of your books or a financial review of your boo and i think that i probably the teacher thing to tackle. the harder thing is academic accountability and transparency. i believe personally, and there is a lot of debate on this b i personally believe, if you take a minimum number of kids, then you eed to demonstrate, again not just to the parents but t

the public, that you are making a certain amount of progress academically with those parents. and how we estimate that, we have to be very careful about it because you don't want to overregulate or oppose things on the private school that will take away the uniqueness that made him so effective. but i think that is something we'll have to start doing, if we want private school choice to be on the table. >> so let me ask kevin and gerard about this. there is a paper by three or four months ago arguing that in the context of a voucher schools accountabl and we should have something of a sliding scale, that the more public dollars private school kids via vouchers or tax credits, mainly that means the more kids they are serving in those programs, the greater responsibility and transparency and accountability. so if your school in milwaukee, basically all of your kidron scholarship, publicly funded, you're in effect a public school and you should have to take the

public has to be very tense there. if you're taking two kids on scholarship here in d.c., then feral requirements should be much less. this kid should participate in evaluation but you shouldn't have to be transparent about how all the kids and sidwell are doing on standardized test. does that sauger concern around the accountability? is that something you're willing to look at? >> it seems arbitrary to have some number and say if a sdent is at school where that number isn't high enough that there is therefore no accountability about whether or not they are running. i think on some level this first to come semantic discussion about what the distinction between part private and public scho is. private schools quite properly are going to want to retain autonomy in terms of curricula, whether or not they want to have a religious element in their instruction, who they hire, e. etc. i think that again, there is a role for private schools and i think they are to hold on to their private nests, if you

will. but the quid pro quo is you don't get to take large amounts of taxpayer dollars. and all that remain private at the same time. and i don't think that we can rely on merely on parental choice as our marker that a school is of sufficient quaty. we know this from the charter school movement there are charter schools that are successful in convincing parents to send their children there, prumably parts are satisfied enough to have made that choice. and yet we know when we overlay eight tax basic and billy system that there fairly poorly performing schools. you need to show that you're spending it effectively. and there are plenty of charter schools that again, have not demonstrated that and that is why we have these public accounbility mechanisms where they don't perform they get shut down. d again, you can't just wait for them to go bankrupt for lack of money.

i think our obligations to children requires to intervene much more directly than that. that is impossible in the private school. again, it should be impossible. the government ought not to be able to shut down a low performing private school and less you'd essentially level o criminality. t it also means you can have enough accountability, as much accountability as you need. >> it shod be said that several of the voucher pgrams now do have public accountability requirements. milwaukee added a new regulation and some that were focused on testing and accountability him a sum in other areas. and in some ys now to be able to have the program in milwaukee, it's kind like going through a process that charter schools go through when they get offered. but l's talk about this question to this is a hard one. parentsad chosen a school. they've chosen to keep the kids in that school. that test scores are better this can be a charterchool or a voucher school. anotr government or the

authized to come down and say we're going to close that school withdraw the scholarships. we'rgoing to basically second-guess the decision parroted me because, how do you think that goes? >> as john mentioned there is definitely a healthy debate in the scholarship side of the camp on the accountability issue. even before the wisconsin legislature passed a new law cently, there's been accountability in the milukee program from day one. it is amazing that people speak as if accountability was lacki or was non-existent. surely the accountability standards as time and on we learn more and 2009 as we do in 1999, so we grew with epic but to act as if the only reason that the program in milwaukee or even d.c. and now new orleans are all of a sudden accountable is because the critics said if you become more accountable and if you take tests, then you are

legitimate. i'm not sure they are in a position to talk about accountability. every time a child drops out of school and an easy and can't get a jobthe public school lost moy. every single time that a kid graduates and really can't figure out where to go, where to vest more money, that is a problem. i support accountability. to be real clear, accountability for some people means overregulation and then a very smart way of getting lawyers inlved who then come back and say guess what, there is so much regulation now in this private school it really is a public school and therefore, you know, but then the first amendment and now we're gointo close it. don't think that people haven't worked out some of that logic. i think a count of build is important that i'm just not sure that test scores alone can't prove that. and it's interesting that we can close a private school for failure, but in traditional public schools we let them open up year after year. >> this is intesting. the point you're making aut excessive integument, that if the government became

excessively tangled with religious schools, would have a problem. >> so what he is saying is here is a row. a jumper. it would take sony regulations it becomes a new spirit by the time we are hanging, we realize it wasn't a jumper. but we did it. >> i'm going to keep pushing because it didn't quite hear you answer my question. is a charter school context, kids do have to take the test. letzig in milwaukee where we know the milwaukee test is ridiculously, we know that some studies within four. but there is a school with the kids are still not passing that test. parents want the school. they think it is safe and better than any of the other choices. does the government have a right still to cse down the school because it's not getting the result that we would like to see academically? >> guest. >> and how do we think through that? that seems to be taking choice away from the parent. >> well, just because you choose the school doesn't mean it is a quality school.

baeodded quality to it they didn't even know in the beginning we didn't have high quality schools. we realized just choosing a school didn't mean it was quality. so no, in a charter school at the close, that's part of it. the contract iue made withhe authorized. that doesn't botr you. >> i'm goi to gethe audience in here in just a minute. so start thinking about your question. you talked a lot about a broader vision for school reform. let me ask you and i'll ask the other panelists. what will charter schools and maybe private schools, what role do they play in the broader reform movement? is it r&d? how do they fit into the broader reform world? >> first of all, i think it is helpful competition because i think it is patiently at eight large urban district. they were really losing population to charr sools. surveys really told them that parents did not like the way they were treated.

and they wanted a safe pructive education environment for e children, and they want a choice. now i think our urban center realized for all schoolso be all kids, and in the air of individualizatioand customization, what is happening is that many of our bourbons are developing a lot more options within their urban systems. different types of schools, whh are ting thisecause they are desperately trying to keep kids in schools. and i think they are much more focused and have a greater sense of urban seed untrimmed urgency about education reform as a result of this. so i think competition does work and i think it has made our urban's less tactica and me strategic. and more willing to serve their customers. >> interesting. cabin, same question to you. is that how you see the role of charter schools putting healthy

pressure? is there something else? why couldn't vouchers play that same thing? >> well, i think, and, i would use bcs candidate pretty easy exame. where we have seen to the point you made earlier, a pretty rapid increase in the availability of shool choice. if you have the right set of opportunity, strong overght, so there can be, you can have good schools, you can in fact see a rapid expansion of school choice option for students that a relatively small. i think about 40% of students in charter schools this year. but it is not just about putting pressure on the public schools. i mean, you know, the thing that is put pressure on the public schools to improve your d.c. is we had a mayoral election. that was the signal event that really change the attitude toward public education. i do think that is part of t role of school choice to provide any pressure.

but to me in a lot of ways, the most exciting and imptant thing is creating space for essentially nongovernmental public school provaders. that's what these charters organizations are. the most successful ones. your checks and your achievement first. because of the charter school law, the are brand-new, we hope, school buildingsnd doesn't intend boot of dollars of new education resources here d.c., not taxpayer dollars in the service of very high quality schools. in the toughest neighborhoods in the city. that is all because of the charter sector, and it has all come through these nonprofit charter management organizations. which again had the ability to raise capital in the ways that i think is required for private schools to do. certainly would be hard for for-profit schools to do. and having mission to serve the students who i thinkveryone on the panel thinks ought to be served. so it is creating room for

education entrepreneurs to come in, skp sort of bureaucratic change, and will do what it takes to provide excellent public education. i think that is the most important thing that charter schools have done. >> everything kevin just said about charter schools is true about private schools in urban areas. everything. they hava mission to serve low-income kids. they are free from bureaucracy to be innovative and to be effective. they bring an incredible investment that is not taxpayer funds to dine urban environment. in milwaukee, where they've had a vibrant program for over a decade, there have been over $100 billion of private investment brought into the city of milwaukee to expand private schools, all private funded. everything kevin just described is possible with private school, it's possible withharter schools. my point is, why not do both? why exclude them? why take one of the options off the table when it is a unique

and different option that is the only option that is going to work for some kids. and i think i heard kevin say though, charters, don wry, mom, where there is only six charter schools in a huge urban district. i think what i heard him say was don't worry, mom, charters can expand fast enough such that one more will arrive in your neighborhood in time to save your kid that is a tough sell. and remember, there are 9 private schools, not all of them are excellent. some of them are. 90 private schools that exist right now in jacksonville and s@e wants access to. do not deny her that access. >> john, speakore abouthe. watusi pursued private schoo choice, what is that larger role with public education reform? dz competitive effects? >> in florida, fighting f full parental choice, and we fit for charters.

we fight f virtual schooling. we fight for magnets. but we fight for the whole spectrum and again, full parental choice for low-income families is the tip of the reform sphere. if you can get a legislator to back that, they are going to back everything that you want to do, everything that susan just descrid, all of which are wonderful. they will back all those reforms if they will back private school choice for low-income families. and you can get them to do it i mentioned earlier that we work in the wor environment for the support for, to try to create bipartisan support for this idea. in 2001, it was the most pulverized by the you can imagine. there was a lockout on the democratic party in our state against parental choice across the board. and we ve reversed that. i mean, i don't have timeo give you all the examples, but we have the most beloved black democrat in our state who used to be a very outoken opponent to school choice. she is now running the school

choice program. she is a participant in the tax credit program. her nonprofit gives out the scholarship. there has been a huge change there. so what this does, it starts to knock do the barriers and it stts to change the dialogue, and it creates what i call the safe harbor. and i will leave with one more example that will blow your mind. last week, we announced a joint venture between my organization, a private school organization, and everybody knows what i do, we're in a joint venture with hillsborough county public schools and a hillsboro teachers union, and that joint venture is going to be providing professional development for the teachers at the private schools that are serving the tax credit kids in poor areas. and the district serintendent and a teachers union president of hillsboro said these are all our kids. we've got to take care of them. that kind of stuff would not happen unless we are out there fighting for this idea and making people belie it.

>> this is no small bishopric this is the eighth largest district in the country. >> absolutely. >> kevin, are you willing to concede that it is helpful to have people in advocating for vouchers that helps the charter school movement? >> no, i am not willing to concede. here is why. we haven't talked much about politics. the polics is a major issue. like it or not, vouchers have become an extremely well-known and extremely politicized idea in education. it is essentially something that every conservative knows they're supposed to be in favor of and every liberal knows they're supposed to be against. we can lament the fact that that is the case and in fact, you know, there's a store for you go down to the 1970s, there were some very interesting aggressive pro-voucher ideas that were floated out and never went anywhere. but that is the reality that we have today. and i think you mentioned earlier, some people are against vouchers because they think that

they are a right wing plo to destroy education. there are in fact right wing people who want to destroy public education, who want to use vouchers to do it. nine of them are sitting here at this panel today. they don't work at the fordham institute. but they are certainly folks that say, if they are, you guys are ing a good job at keeping a secret -- but there are certain folks who say we need to privatize public education and break the teachers unions and save ourselves a lot of taxpayer money and vouchers is the way to do. so vouchers, no, vouchers are paced that. so i think that also, what that does is it makes it harder to pursue again a more moderate and well-designed set of school choice policies, which is charte school. a lot of people, speaking for some of his big progressive about the issues a lot, a lot of progressives is little difference between vouchers and charters. even though there is that essential difference of public

accountability. and so i tnk it hurts politically speaking, i think it hurt as much as it helps. >> can i counter that? i think that is a washington, d.c., mindset. i am not trying to be offensive here, but that's how i look at it. and again, i point to my home state. we were exactly where you described, john, where democrats hated dodgershated private school. there was a lot done. we have come 180 degrees from that. so don't give up. it's not thatard. if we can do it in florida, maybe you can't do in d.c. i think you can. but there is some stuff going on that a lot of peoe don't even know about. i mean, we are about to get some programs, tax credit pgrams in the state that will blow your mind. and the effort are all being led by democrats. and this is a kind of thi, i think you'll be like the berlin wall. after the berlin wall fell, everybody said i saw the. you did know that was going to

haen. there is stuff going on right w, we're going to come back here in three years and say holy moly. we should've seen it coming. and i can't wait to come back d see that. >> what you think about this political conversation? kevin says vouchers are just inted, they are forever tainted. by their association with the right wing. how do you see that? >> five years ago, doctor ford was a founder a chair of baeo, myself, kevin, and some other leaders, we got together and realized that one of the biggest impediment to the school choice movement in america were central city black democrats. whether it was charter school, because there ill some black democrats who don't sport charter so is there a still a piece that liberals should support it. we got together and created something called the annual seminar for parental choice in education policy. and basically we bring together black democrats and talk about a whole host of choice issues, charters and vouchers are two of

those issues. well, last year -- two years ago we were in new orleans for a meeting that we had. there were two black democrats who lead that meeting in conjunction wi some other work who authored the voucher program in new orleans. s a political? yes. was up a little because it was vouchers or was it the because of black democrats did it? i think we have to understand the voucher issue is being more politicizedecause people see it as anti-public school. but if you understood as being a role political option? what is political about that. vouche are just an extension of whatlack folks have fought for in the 20 cena, in the 40s, making sure the black teachers and principals participate in the system in the '50s it was desegregation. in the '60s it was community control. in the '70s it was the independent school movement in the 80s it was a broader accountabilityovement. vouchers is jt one medium for a bigger piece of participation. but again, or it wl see this

political, what they see as a politil to be told where they are. >> politics swing both ways. our military from some of my liberal friends that they felt like the bush admintration, which i was a part of way back when, did argue the charter school because we are in favor of the chart schools. and just having u know why conservatives having president bush and having in favor of the charter school wasn't bad for the charter school movement it was not a crazy argument dicey that barack obama being in favor of charter schools were to help on the left getting more people onboard. but these issues go each way. so you got to see how that will. let's get the audience into this conversation. rager had. we will get a microphone to. please tells who you are, and please get to your qstion right away. make it a question, not a eech. i see stephanie put her hand down after that. [laughter] >> not just a speech. we have hands up over here. okay. great.

>> hi. my name is chris. i'm from buffalo, new york, cofounder of a scholarship fund which is a private voucher program in buffalo. and we have en running the program for 15 years and we have about 1000 kids a year,hanks also to the partnership scholarship fund out of new york city, the children's scholarship fund. one reason -- the reason i wa so interested in coming today and what i think this is so timely, when we started the program 15 years ago, we had about 50 schools, mostly parochial, some of other denominations that our children could choose. and an abundae of schools that were around a hundredears, bill by immigrant populations, now serving minority by

providing a great education. in the last 10 years, almost 50% of those schools have closed. beyond the policy of how we work a voucher or tax credit, or whatever, i think there's a publ policy, you know, do we see a value in having the institutions here in o cities. and my bias is the city's. the inner cities, and do they help the overall environment choice as far as the district schools. and it is clear tme that the model,he financial model that supported those schools, heavy support from the parish and large are not paying the people that work there, that that is not there anymore. >> so you heardusan said it could be partnership in public schools. >> just the question is, the reason i feel so strongly on the discussion were having now, if we wait 10 more years to the

next adminisation comes in who has an interest, that infrastructure largely will be gone. and itill have private schoo remaining that will largely only be serving hiring people, not minority people. so that's the challenge think that is the timeliness and sense of urgency that i feel from aiken dirty. >> thanks, chris. great question. largely about parochial schools, catholic schools. what is the right response to this crisis? >> it's a od question. i don't mean to minimize the real potential loss of institutions that have both educationally and vital parts of their communities going back decades. i think we do need to recnize that this isn't just about education. there certainly has been larger and profound changes in the nature of american catholicism over the last 50 years. a lot of people work seminarians

and i don't think anyone is talking about the government stepping in to make sure that we are producing more priests a nuns, and who used to work for free, or f not as much money as we now have to pay people to work in schools. at the same time, i think we can't have it both way, our current leader think it's important to get pierced choices and they are choosing not to send the children to catholic schools, then that is kind of the way things are working out. we see here in d.c. work out some catholic schools have chosen to infect convert to charter status. it seems reasonable to me, to take an institution could provide an appropriately public education that does not breach that important separatio of church and state, and that the religious institution could from its own resources provide religious instruction to students in a different environment, as it has -- as they have notches in the catholic church, but in all kinds of faith over centuries

and always will i think that. >> appears that are choosing to catholic schools, those catholic schools have tuition that are rising. >> it's not the parents are choosing them. herz can't afford to send their children are. are desperate to send their children there, and the schools which are gradually many 100% other kids are dying off while we sit here and debate, you know, academics and theories. that is insanity. the answ is very simple. we've got programs such that we can access public dollars, whether it be directly with vouchers or indirect in the form of tax credits and give the. in buffalo, as they have in florida, as they have in pennsylvania, as they have for a little while longer in d.c., get in the apartment, give them the money to make the choice to go to that school, though schools so thedon't go away. is as simple as that. is black and white. >> that doesn't succeed in the short-te, what about this idea of convertg more catholic schools to charter schools,

during religious instruction before and after? >> the life of catholic education had me institute, the last month at notre dame for the subject d come a. right now the jury is out. on how that exactly have we know in d.c. that has taken place, and you mentioned as well. the ohio schools. i'm still thinking about that. >> during a. let's get another question. brazier hand. tell us who you are and make it a question, a short question. >> actually two quick questions. both to cavender kevin, my first question is a political one. i'm once heard him say looking to give up on vouchers, they are going to be after charters next. i mean, i want you to just respond to that political question and theny second -- >> i just don't do that is true. i think there are obvious and

fundamental differences between vouchers as they exist now. and as i think vouchers supporters would like them to exist, and the established and robust growing charter school sector. and the differences are in fact that the necessary differences in order to have broad bipartisan political support, which is why i am sitting here as they, you know, progressive pporter of public school choice. second question. >> jt in terms of supply high quality option. if you look at the figures of faith-based schools, not just cabot, that are dying in inner city, in the short-term, how do you replace them, especially if you look at the slow pace of growth of high-performing charter networks rex what is the good way to replace those schools for those kids know? >> i say again, i think it is not t@e governments role to step in and subsidize religious institutions that for a variety

of reasons are struggling. and i would assume that that is a rolled that is an attitude that people who are pro-faith woulemace. again, the separation of church and state, it's not as much about separating -- protecting the state from the church as it about protecting the church from the state. and i think we need to -- i need we need to -- naudible] >> so what do you right now for the kids whose catholic schools are closing? >> i have no problem with allowing charter schools to convert to -- catholic schools to convert t charter status. if they are willing to be subject to the same accountabili that everyone else is subject to. and again, i think it is very clear that given the right set of polics in terms of government and funding you can quickly create an environment where you have a large growth in charter schools. because that in fact has happened. >> first of all, youe not subsidizing religion. you are subsidizing parents to make a choice to send their kids

to a religious school. an incredible difference. and if you just do that, then the schools survive. and those options for those kids will be there. and i think it's just ludicrous to say it's too politically difficult to keep the catholic school and catholic school. so let's do the next expedient thing and strip it of its religion and make it a charter school so that it is easier politically. that makes no sense to me. if you talk to paren whoend their kids to a catholic school, and in the effort to convert to a charter, you may get some surprising opinions about the. theyave very strong opinions about the council they want to send it to you to pick up a charter school is not the same thing as a catholic school. period. >> when the conversion happen here in d.c., there were about six or seven catholic schools thatonvert to charter status. my understanding is they lost out half of the student population. some of those kids lived outside the district, so they couldn't

atte the public school in d.c. but then again a hold of the wave of kids, different group, who arnow very excited to get to go to these great schools for free pic but it was a very different mixture of kids. from the outside might look the same. of course the crosses are now off the wall. smack if i could make it fall upon. i think in this whole discussion around the interaction between public school choe and catholic schools points do i think a larger deficiency in the voucher idea, which is that it's very entertaining what the plausible scenario is where by some significantncrease in vouchers would cover in fact, engender a market response in terms of greater supply. i mean, we're just talking about propping up a system that is prably going to shrink one way or another. again, for not educational reasons, and you know, keep them going for a while or something along those lines. there has been little or no, i think, really positive success in terms from the private

for-profit sector which we haven't talke about. but presumably any kind of growth to scale would involve bringing in money from the private capitamarket and yet the one about big example of that, schools that went bankrupt. so again, with charter schools there actually is a model that is working. that is expanding. that retains all of the positive aspects of independent, nongernmental publi school providers in terms of innovation and capital and all t rest of it. but gets us away from his political and church and state issues. and it is in fact more effective. >> with a lot more money. >> absolutely. >> i have to respond to that. kevin is saying these catholic schools and prate schools are going to die no matter wheer we fund their spirit with enough mone to attend or not. >> i'm not saying that. >> what are you saying then? >> i just saying that, if public school choices is anything other than a program

that is just big enough for us and used as a topic of discussion is really going to matter to a substantial percentage of american schoolildren, then there has to be a plausible process by which they would expand substantially from where they are now. but yet the one aspect of the private market that we are talking about that we have been spending most of our time talking about, the catholic school market is contracting. >> w is it contracting? >> it certainly is not because of charter schools. >> why is it in urban areas? >> i think it is in sum is because of urban air. >> it is a urban area because parents who want to go there don't have enough money to pay the tuition. and i will just refute what you say with facts. okay. milwaukee, wisconsin, where they find each paired with roughly- what is it now, $7000 per kid? which is a huge discount by the way.

but they funded each paired with $60 to anthere are catholic schools there who have with private money greatly expanded their seats at and you don't even have to think about, or worry about directly funding schools through the government. you don't have to rry about the church and state separation. if you adequately fund for people, even at a discount to what we're spending in the public school, the private schools, as they have been in milwaukee, will be able to attract private capital, and as they have done in milwaukee, will expand the space is significantly. >> we did find it a report last year that in the overall market, milwaukee, the catholic schools did contract, not new as much. intesting in the lutheran schools in milwauk, a huge expanse -- >> interestingly if you would begin to the high quality schools are the ones who expanded. that's what you would hope to see happen to. >> gerard, you want to get into his? >>ent to amherst myself in

the good bandy of school choice. i can say firsthand that schools that had a waiting list we looking for more money to come in. it's true that the was a contractor population of the catholic schools, last year of 125 schools, only 33 were catholic. there is a whole number of those schools that aren't catholic. jewish, muslim, protestant or forget about those folks. and these are the ones you see a growing population because like some of the catholic schools, maybe 10% of their kids have scholarship and other protestant schools is 100%. so you open up arand-new market for people who are waiting to grow. and if you look at many urban school districts, their population is going down with applications for vouchers in those cities are going up eve ye. >> let's get another question. we have one right here. tell us your name, where you're from and ask a quick question. >> is in this discussion and elsewhere when accountability comes up, the presumption is the

private school has to do the same thing as a public school to be accountable. and my question is, will differentiated measures that respect the independence, the difference in curriculum and standards in a private school, ever be a viable option? >> so to translate, let's say in the blic schools, the state has, would allow the private schools they depict their own test, the national standardized test different than the state test? >> and not just as. >> other kinds of measures. is that -- >> as i said earlier, i think in order forrivate school choice to be a viable element in the reform and mix, it is going to have to adopt a certain level of fiscal and academic accountability and transparency. now, what is going to have to be done in order to be viable will very i stated state bassist vicki might have one state where

they don't have to te the state test with a can just take a nationally known test and only report the scores for the kids just in thecholarship program. you may have another state where if you want access to public funds, would it be correctly or interested, you mitigate the state test. and schools are just going to have to, private schools will just have to decide whether that leap is worth access to the funding. and some schools will make a decision tt it is not. >> let me ask you a question to earlier john did something very interesting. this'll be like the berlin wall three years from now people will be amazed at how many states have passed tax credit progr, it cuts against the traditional wisdom. there's been written a l layabout vouchers might be ailing. what do you think? put on your political analyst pat in the age of obama, are we going to see any progrs on the voher of tax credit fund? >> 's you know, i think when

vouchers and charters and tax center for sort of, i look at this as sort of utopia and i thought it was going through some kind of fade away. hour, i think any era of individualization, customization, which is now becoming not only in education but part of a culture here i really think that cer schools are really going to become incredibly strong because of charter sools are public schools and they are part of the public system. i think voucher schools really serve a few kids sort of, and i don't -- i think the issue of public accouability are so complex that it is not going to grow. and i still think liberals, still have this notion of tax credits in the days of segregation when, in fact, tax credits help to support segregated schools in the south.

so i seagrove in charter schools, but not necessarily the other two policy. >> in its annual report card of schools, 42008, 2004 showed there were 171,000 chiren at eliminating programs across states, including d.c., that are benefiting from private school chce. if you look at theumber of those children who are benefiting from tax program, it has grown over the past seven years. i mean, that is where the groh area is. much swer in the voucher side for a whole set of reasons, but any tax credit side, that is a huge growth from even 2000, i think it was 1999, 2000, where there may have been about 18000 to 171,000 state. so there is growth there because there is a demand that even though there is a political debate, there is a demand for it. second, it's not semantics but i want to be very clear. people often argue against vouchers for the same reason the

superintendent making because at one time in american history around a brother but there was massive resistance and people created tuition tax credits to create wide-open academies which were used to segregate. in the book chapter that i vote called brown vouchers and the philosophy allegra, there was an analysis showing the voucher program fall of 1994 is a liberty-based model which doesn't remotely touch the segregated race-based intention of the tuition grant program of the 1960s. from an accounting standpoint, the voucher would be handled different county by candidates of the study relevancy in the conversation. >> areou optimistic in the next few years there will be more state passing vouchers? >> gets. and george were iris i got up we have do cobwebby special-needs bow to program. we have a tax credit individual and corporate. that will continue to go. some peopleronically say i don't believe public money should go to private schools but that's why i hate vouchers. but then my tax credit because

they get individual benefits at the end of year. >> can i comment on this? >> and by the way, the talk about tax credit, most of these programs now, it's not that the families that are sending their kids to schools are getting a refundable tax credit, it is that individuals oort corporations can donate and get a tax credit for doing so and at has created a large pot of money that can be used for the scholarships. >> i just heard that liberals tentimes don't like this idea because of the history of segregation. i just wanted to you one quick story. two years ago, we put a call out to parents who have kids on the tax creditcholarship program in florida. we told them to come to our capital to show their support. for this idea and for this program. and 4500 people showed up. and our capital is literally four hours from the nearest city. legislators like it that way of course that we had a thousand people from miami sleep on buses overnight to come and marchone

of the biggest march on our capil since the civil rights era. and i will tell you that there were probably 5% of those people that were not african-american and hispanic. that's probably 80 to 90% african-american spirit you can judge for yourself. go to youtube and enter the word florida school choice. and i think probably the third annual, is a 10 minute video of this day. and one of the things that you will see is a man speaking at this rally. and he is a minister who marched with dtor king about the fellman bridge. and he is the most reverend figure in the florida reisman. he was jailed many times, and he got up in front of our rally and said parental choice is an extension of the old movement. now i can't get up and say something like that. but he can. so when i hear thatiberals don't like parental choice

because it is lind to set gradation, maybe liberals are unlinked from people i can. into into your question, i would just give you some more facts. five years ago, there were just a couple of state legislators who attacked programs. and i should say houses of legislators. and this year, 25 houses of the state legislators passed either about your tax credit. there's a trend there. but i'm going to keep quiet because i think they should be a quiet move and you will get less attention, but we'll come back in a few years. and like i say it will surprise you. >> kevin? >> i'm glad we're talking about tax credits. i think the fact that we're now having to play these financial shell games through tax credits actly an indication of the widespread and i think reasonable public discomfort with the idea of direct taxpayer subsies of private institutions. i mean, you can say look, corporation decide to give it a

money to the nprofit and the nonprofit gives it to the school and the parasites up in the government gives the credit to the corporations are coming, that is again just obscuring the reality of taxpayer money bng given to private institutions to provide an education. the fact that this strategy of potentially try to pretend that direct subsidies or something else by making them less direct, shows that there is a reason for that. it shows that the public is i think rhtfully not comfortable with direct subsidies. the second kind of getting back on little bit to the question that came up before about would it be okay to have accountability measures that are individual to schools dependn their mission and curricula. no, i think his answer because if you have that, then you don't have comparability. and if youon't have comparability come you don't have accountability at all. i mean, i will ask this question. how many schools are there better produced than in the d.c. voucher program right now?

50 or 60? ai i right next which ones are doing the best job serving its students and which one is doing the worst job? does anybody know? nobody knows, because that data is completely hidden from the public in terms of how student individqal students are doing in those schools. we can answer that question precisely for every public school in d.c. and every charter school in d.c. for the private schools that are receiving federal taxpayer dollars to the voucher program, we have no idea. that is a bad idea. from a accountability standpoint. and two from a parental standpoint. parents did that kind of probable data if they're going to make smart choices on behalf of their students, and if the market is going to function crackly. in cities like new orleans, you will be able to answer that question for the voucher program. snack befe milwaukee amended its law in 2006 which said that children who see the voucher have to take the state exam,

wisconsin institutedhow that over 90/10 of the voucher programs were taking test and those tests and data were made available to parents. they knew that. now they say they will make it available to the public. i am sure the parents at the voucher schools and other scholarship states, and in washington, d.c. are not just ignorant that i have no idea what my kids in. there are also some privacy issues that they have to work out. 's not true that parents have no idea how their kids are doing. >> singer sang parents to. but it is fair to say that policy wants to know and go in an dig into the data and we can get access. >> i'm sure to lock it will evolve. >> we have time for one very quick question to give anyone has a burning one before . last call. jack? >> jack nk. tell us who you are. and ask a very quick question. jack is back out of retirement to recently reted but he is out of retirement for this question. >> i'm a recovering bureaucrat. from the department of

education. i would like to address something that you are dancing around it and that is that people who are affected by these issues are inner-city minoriti minorities, whose parents want to make certain choices but they can't afford to do it. and the people opposing that are suburban, whiteeople who are ch more affluent and send her children to whatever schools they want to themselves. so my question to you is, do you feel any discomfort about the fact that affluent suburbanites are making these decisions for inner-city mority parents? >> the answer is yes, i do. you know, i personally, and i'm on the record saying this, when democrats in congress decided hey, we need to shut down the d.c. voucher program, i said i thought it was a bad idea. think it is immoral to take

those kids who have now been given that opportunity to put in schools, to pull them back. and there is this they cannot offer, may be advised to by people who respectfully disagree with on the voucher side of things. there is a very powerful rhetorical message wn you boil this down to desperately poor parents, whose children have historically been stuck in terrible public schools. and say look, yes or no. are you in favor of giving them an opportunity to go to a better school. that is a fair question to ask. but what i would say is, if that's all vouchers are about, then vouchers are in the end, not going to go very far. basically, i feel like in a lot of ways we don't really have a voucher-based school program in d.c. traffic which is that th government subsidize public to private transfer program.

again, it is limited. were not taking any money away from the public school system. so we are not creating any kind of pressure there. it's not so big that any other schools, the private schools are really going to have to make any tough choices about makeup of their school by, whether or not they want to adjust their carita, their teaching practices to really focus on the needs of disadvantaged figure they can absorb five or 10 or whatever the average amou it is. and i'm not opposed to that. if somebody came on tomorrow and saidyou know, we're going to double the siz of the d.c. voucher progr, i certainly wouldn't stand up and say that is a bad idea. that however is a long way from eight really robust a widespread system of parental choice. not just for the studes who are worse off, but really for stents evewhere. i think the students in the suburbs nee school choice also. i think throughout american public education, i think a lot of the student ie