wait-and-see to the they don't have any estimates on what the damage could potentially be at this point. spearman ron nix with the new york times. you can read his reporting that nytimes.com. thanks for joining us. >> thanks so much for having me. ..

>> we hope this is a come -- compelling conversation on reform, and we are excited to have a distinguished group of panel is to kick start the conversation, but we hope you join in as we move along this morning. over the past five years, states have lunched unprecedented efforts to reform their education system. 46 states adopted the common core standards. twenty-five include measures of student learning and teacher evaluations according to the most recent data from the national council on teacher quality. states lifted caps on charter schools, put time and money on school turn around and changed the capital policies. now 33 states have waivers from the no child left behind act to

alter the systems as well as designing teacher and principal evaluation systems and career readiness standard. states, themselves, initiated many of the changes. others were spurred by federal program like race to the top. the waiver process itself does not appear to have stimulated new innovations, but asked to articulate a vision of education reform and engage in meaningful changes. at least that's what a new cap report found. today we're releasing no child left behind waivers from round two applications. we examined every state plan for nuggets of 0 and identified -- innovation and identified questions of concern. we believe it provides useful information to understand what states are up to and where they

are headed. that is why we're gathered here, of course, to take stock of where states are and where they are headed. some say momentum for reform has stalled; while others push state and the federal government to do more to drive change. this morning, we'd like to take a deep breath in order to ask important questions like what exactly have we achieved? what did it take to get here? what have we failed to do or what challenges have we overcome? then, what's next? to set the stage, we want to share findings from our report. waiver plans don't capture everything states are doing, but they are excellent snapshots of the current state of play. jeremy ayers, associate directer for the american progress is the co-author of the report, and he's going to share a bit about

that now. >> we do know that some of you or all of you should have had a handout if we had enough. there's extra information. if you want to go home tonight and look at that and memorize it, you can, but we only put the social information here on the screen. for those of you watching remotely or watching us later, we'll ensure the information is on the website. what did we seek to accomplish with the report? last winter, we participated in a debate with the waivers with the folks at the institute, a debate i think we won in my humble opinion, but someone should dig into the applications and identify what's new or innovative, and so we took imhup on the challenge. the method used is simple and straightforward. we looked at every second round application. new plans approved, and we looked at that information. we were looking for changes, new changes compared to current law

and current state practice. once we found that, there was a lot of things, and we chunked that into common themes across the states, and from our perspective, what were the promising ideas or questions or concerns. we looked at the principles in the waiver package, including the fourth one like reducing duplication and burden. few states mentioned or talked about this explicitly. to be fair, the department did not ask for information on this. it was a lost opportunity. we pointed this out in first round also. states look for flexibility, districts and schools as well, but there's some states that stick out, and we mentioned that in the report. if we dig into each principle now, in your handout, you'll see, to be clear, what did the department ask in terms of career readiness? a couple things. first of all, asked for states to adopt new career ready standards and assessments, asked to adopt new english language proefficiency standards, and

also asked, which is great, a report on college going and credit accumulation rates. when we looked across the state plans, there's a couple things that stood out that were interesting. i won't mention all of them, but there's a handful of states or couple of states to train teachers with english learners and not just bilingual. given the demographic changes in the country, we thought that a promising move. repurposing of the state agency itself, integrated standards into that, and there's a couple states creating new early warning systems, data systems that identify students at risk of dropping out, and if they are really sophisticated, then give states, districts, and schools an idea what to do to help the students, and lastly, a couple states moving to competency based or other report cards that's clear, and detailed about what students master and how well they master. i don't know about you, but when you look at the list, we didn't

find anything that would alter of orbit of the planets. there's nothing necessarily really ground breaking; although, there's plenty of things that are promising or interesting, and what we found, at least, and we welcome your thoughts on this or other folks on the panel to push back, but it didn't seem the waivers, themselves, established ground breaking changes, but it was an opportunity to articulate a vision and for a number of states to push forward harder on reforms they started already or new reforms they would like to engage in. this is true for the other areas like accountability, although, here, there's a lot more new things. it's in your handouts. what did states ask in terms of accountability? a couple things. one is, to be clear, we all maybe remember that nclb asked states to be at 100% proefficiency by 2014. states can back from that and create their own goals, but they

are continuing to have yearly goals for schools to meet. they were to create a new accountability frame work or could create one on which to rate schools. sometimes that's related to the goals, and other times it was not. to use the system to identify schools making progress, the bottom 5% of schools that are the lowest performing called priority schools, and then those states working with districts, how to implement interventions that follow parameters, and we should be clear, and as you read, parameters are loser and different than in current law. an extra 10% of schools as focus schools, schools with large achievement gaps, and states can do what they think best in those schools. states are not off the hook for the rest of the schools. folks say, well, the department gave up accountability on the rest of the schools. technically, that's not true. all states have to demonstrate how to promote continuous improvement with title i schools

and how to improve single student learning in every single school. from your perspective, it's not the same hook as current law or a smaller or less sharp hook, but there is a hook there, and we hope folks dig into those aspects. what did we find with accountability? a couple things we wanted to mention here today, and that is we did want to give note that some states continue to set ambitious goals every year. for example, friends at the education trust said this cut the gap in half goal is an ambitious one. basically, eight states say where are the stunts today in terms of reading and math? where's 100%? can we get halfway there in six years? it was notable that a number of states picked that option. one state, arizona, will continue to get 100% of kids to proficiency by 2020. the rest of the states picked own options. some are hard to tell how rigorous. a couple states were not clear on what their goal was, but we welcome your feedback and up put on that.

an interesting dynamic at work here that folks do not realize is so, okay, states set goals; right? every year for schools to continue to improve; however, states, a number of states other than three or four, would hold schools accountable or rate schools on a different set of indicators. three statings, arkansas, delaware, and new york, they make their goals or did you not? north carolina had an explicit section where they said this is how our goals and school rating system align. there's a number of other states seeming little or no linkage, and we know those states here. the issue here, the question is how accountable will schools be for reaching those goals? how clear is it to those states what they are held accountable for? for those states that have a separate accountability index or, you know, rating system, there's lots of factors that can be included with that, and we have a question on how clear it will be for schools to know what

that is. lastly, i would mention that a lot of states this go-round would increase accountability for districts. that was very uncommon under nclb and not required, necessarily, and states didn't move forward there. most states would continue to set goals for districts and an action or improvement plan for those low performing districts, a couple of states took additional steps. connecticut created an achievement zone districts were a part of similar to the recovery district in louisiana. new york created a focus district. those districts with a number of schools with large achievement gaps, they asked the entire district to engage in comprehensive and systemic reform to support the schools, and we thought notably had a backstop outside the districts, but still had large achievement gaps. there we go. very briefly, the other parts of the accountability. another -- a number of folks look at the subgroup issue. that is, a lot of states continue to lump together the

student subgroups into a low performing group and then compare that performance to high performing groups or the state average. we just note that continues in this round of waiver applications. we may want to talk more about that. we also noted, however, a number of states would lower goals significantly. they would only use the super subgroup if the groups fell under that. in terms of low performing schools, this is what i want to mention and i'll move on. that is, a couple states stood out for detailed comprehensive plans, not just for what they do in low performing schools, but there's a clear middle game. i mean, they were clear about the progress expected the schools to make, the data they used to measure the progress, what steps they take in support own accountability if schools didn't make the progress, and what ultimately happens three to five years outs if progress still did not get made?

unfortunately, we found a lot of states did not have detailed or comprehensive plans for the middle game and end game. lastly, we drew attention, this was in the "the new york times" article this morning, on how they identified the low performing schools. actually, most states did not specify how often they would, so we assume it means for the life of the waiver or two years, and some stated pushed it to every three years or in the case of wisconsin, out to four years. in terms of teacher and principal evaluations. this is in the handout, but to be clear, the department asked states to create or adopt teacher and principal evaluation systems. that principal system is new. to use that information, to have multiple measures, student growth a significant factor. when we look across the plans, states, very widely and what measures they would use, what weight they give to the individual measures including what they would use as the student growth measure and how much they weigh that.

louisiana was straight guard. 50/50. 50% student learning, 50% other measures. delsz -- delaware didn't use numbers, they have components. the fifth component has bench marks so teachers have to make satisfactory student growth, and if they can't, they are not rated effective. in terms of technology, we thought it was interesting. states are not diffusing technology to capture information, but provide 24/7 professional development to teachers, help teachers track what part of the evaluation happens and what the results were. lastly, a couple states took the bull by the lorns on teacher equity ensures that students, all students, have equal access to effective teachers. they did not waive this part of the law, but two states really dug into the effectiveness measures for teachers allege would use that to -- and would use that to ensure students had equal access.

rhode island, god bless them, said no student would go more than two years being taught by an ineffective teacher. we can sort of discuss and debate if that's the right wording or right amount of time, but they stuck their neck out putting a number on it. in terms of findings across applications briefly, big changes even without the waivers, but certainly with the waivers. the waivers, themselves, did not stimulate changes, but helped states push forward an extra bit. there's obviously promising ideas. i talked about some ideas that need more detail or flushing out like learning time, and new york got a thumb's up in the report for describing what dude with learning time, and last, but not least, a variety sources of funding to do this, including not having necessarily brand new funding to do this. in terms of recommendations, obviously, states are laboratories of reform, a new game to figure out what this

means. the department should continue to ask for more information, particularly in the areas we talked about, and states should offer that. we think, obviously, states can learn from each other. they don't have to reinvent the wheel. new york, massachusetts, and another state share information on teacher evaluation. that's interesting. last, but not least, this is a new way for the department to relate to states. we're asking states to move from rope compliances and performance management. the department needs to do that too, and we need significant staffing and capacity to ensure these things, these plans turn into reality. that's probably enough for now. i'm not sure how well we met checker's challenge, but thank you for being here. we look forward to a great discussion. i turn it back over to cindy now.

>> thank you, jeremy. i should think the cap education team that read all the waiver requests, and they were hundreds of pages, and i'd be lying if i said i read them all. i assure you they all read them, poured over them, and i think it's really paid off. we hope it's useful information for folks like you to work with. we have a really great panel of state and national leaders who are going to talk with us this morning about, as we said, the state of state education reform. first is dr. john king, the new york commissioner of education. if i did it right, i'd go down the row, but john first came to the state as deputy commissioner and before that, he was a leader

in the charter school movement. michael yudin who is immediately to the right, is the principal deputy assistant secondary for elementary and middle school education. before that, he worked on capitol hill. alex johnson is an adviser to bloomberg philanthropies and board chair of the policy innovators network. we might talk about that in a minute, and i think he's also on the new haven school board; right? he's very familiar with what's going on at the state and local level. so i want to start by saying what is it that really drives states to make changes on their own? i'll start with john and alex, and from where you sit, what's the right balance?

what happens when race to the top money goes away or the waivers reforms? >> [inaudible] so i think money drives states for sure. flexibility drives states. fear of consequences drives states. for us, race to the top was a huge up sentive because -- incentive because it was a significant amount of money, and it allowed us to accelerate a series of reforms at our state board of regions was already committed to. we wanted to move forward with an option and implementation of the common core, teacher effectiveness initiatives, but we needed that extra push of the money, and it was helpful, particularly with the letture, and the governor allowed us to raise the cap on charter schools, allowed us to get the state to commit significant resources to data sources, a

hard thing to do in a difficult fiscal environment, allowed us to persuade labor management, the legislature, the governor to come together around teacher evaluation. the waiver, and the opportunity for flexibility in a way, allowed us to double-down on those reforms r and i think that's what you see in the waiver application, an extense of what began with race to the top. the challenge when race to the top money runs out is what are the implications for the state's capacity to actually execute, and when i look at the waiver applications and read the report, i worry for the colleagues who don't have the benefit of the race to the top resources. how will they excute on promises and waiver at a high level? >> so i think it is worth taking a moment just to reflect on race to the top, and say what you will about it, one way it was clearly a success is that it motivated dramatic policy change at the state level, an

unprecedented compressed period of time. why did it do that? well, i think that part of it is that it inspired executive leadership. i think it's very important to remember it was structured in such a way that it was the executive branch that had to sign off on the application, and so initially, there was accountability on the part of governors, commissioners, and state boards of education, and then, particularly important, that accountability shifted to the legislative branch in that the legislature needed to meet governors, at least halfway in many cases, and then enact significant legislation. both of those instances, there was an opportunity for those outside the governmental process, advocacy groups in particular and the members of pie network, the network of the states advocacy organizations. that created the opportunity for them to frame this around public accountability for decision makers, that there was both tremendous hop nor and distinction to be gained for

exercising leadership, but there was also real accountability if folks fell short, and i think that combination, combined, of course, with the money, but i actually think the money was less significant. you know, when you looked at the odds of winning, everybody, or most folks went after this knowing, in some cases, that they might not well skeed in getting the -- succeed in getting the resources. >> of course, before, you were head of concan, an advocacy group in connecticut. connecticut didn't get race to the top, but the momentum kept going. was it started -- did race to the top boost that along? >> absolutely. i think trying twice and failing, and in fairly dramatic fashion, created a narrative that just so happened this was a gubernatorial election year, and that failure, the state's failure and the state with the

largest achievement gap in the country, failing twice and really that motivated both the democratic and republican gubernatorial candidates to make that an issue in the campaign and really contend with each other on who was going to right that wrong, and it turned out to be a very closely fought election, and the democratic candidates who prevailed by about 6,000 votes, now governor malloy, made this is signature issue, and i think that -- it's hard to know whether that would have happenedded, but clearly, that was a big motivator. >> michael? >> i defer to the colleagues in the states, but, you know, what i heard from folks and through the department is that, you know, applying for race to the top allowed stakeholders to come together and figure out what is best for our kids? how are we best going to improve outcomes, and whether they won or not, they came up with plans that are going to actually or should drive instruction and

improvement. plans were in place. hey, those were good ideas. let's move forward and continue with them. >> i think it was very much that, you know, people felt attached. there was a process of working to the. sometimes contentious, but it would sort of -- how could you step back from that? after all stakeholders came together to hash it out, you know, it was natural, i think, for many states to continue. >> was that a similar dynamic in new york? of course, you got the money, but some argue you have a more contentious environment in which to operate. were you born in new york? >> i was. >> you are probably used to that. >> yes, i know new york is known for our lack of controversy and conflict. [laughter] you know, there's an ongoing challenge of maintaining momentum around reform efforts, but i think what's helpful is i think there's actually state level consensus and national

consensus around a few key ideas. i think the notion we ought to have students graduate from high school, college and be career ready, and high school garaguation needs to be more than for kids today than 20 years ago. that has strong national consensus and that's reflective in 45 states, and dc adopting the common core standards, a strong national consensus around teacher effectiveness. there's debate on how to measure it exactly as well as we would like, but i think there's strong consensus that teacher quality, the effectiveness of the teacher, the effectiveness of the support that that teacher gets from the prince pal drive -- principal drives student achievement. there's bumps along the way, but i think race to the top, the waiver, continued opportunities to house the administration standing with state leaders, standing with advocacy groups saying we have consensus on the issues, and now we have to roll up our sleeves to keep the work moving forward. >> another observation about that consensus is i think race

to the top has been criticized by some for sort of promoting gimmickery with the idea to have a percentage in growth and teacher evaluation when, you know, many educators who engage in the evaluative process feel that that's really a complicated and requires intensive professional judgment, that it can't be reduced in that way. i think the reason, you know, one reason that we've got this emerging consensus is, you know, for years, folks who were pushing for change on issues like teacher evaluation didn't feel like the door was opened at all, and they kept bumping up against it. once the door was opened, i think those folks who had been pushing for so long wanted to rush through as fast as they possibly could. there's literature that policy windows open for narrow times. this door is open now. i think we now have the opportunity to be more

deliberative in policymaking and implementation. the extented there was accesses in state law, -- the extent there was excess in state laws, and encoded in legislation, and i'm sure, john, you have perspective, you know, on what you want in the purview of the department and what you want districts to have control over. we need to get the balance right, but the point is, to your point, the door is now open in a way it was not before, and you have, i mean, i just think we remember in the process in connecticut, at one point, one. one of the representatives of the teacher union said the word "effective" and "teachers" should not appear together in statute. i think we are past that point now. >> if i could add to both points, you know, states are moving; right? they wanted to do bigger and better things, move towards college standards, move to a

effective teachers and leaders, and they were required to extend energy and resources on complying with current law, and you ask about sticks and the amount of energy that was sucked up by trying to comply with this one-size-fits-all mandate of no child left behind was getting in the way, and, you know, again, i defer to my colleagues in the states, but what we kept hearing, man, we want to do more, move forward with college and career and different accountability systems. we want to focus on this, focus on teacher effectiveness, but we have to comply with the law. we need a reauthorization, a comprehensive bipartisan reauthorization. it didn't happen. we can't wait, the states can't wait, local students can't wait. i'll tell you, i heard from local chiefs saying let us do more, go down this road and give us the space to do it.

>> that brings me to the interesting topic of accountability. there's no question on what prompted the waiver process is that deadline of 2014, and recognition that the very heavy process around school improvement wasn't really getting us to where the kind of jut comes we need -- outcomes we need, and so accountability, the major accountability requirement was waived, and states were allowed to come up with their own proposals, but this has caused considerable unease by advocates and representatives of those groups of students who historically have not been well served by our public schools, and there's, i think there's

recognition we had to move forward in some way, but there's a real sense of concern about what's going to happen down the road, and i'm interested, michael, so you've approved -- the department's approved a variety of the accountability systems, and my staff read most of the waiver proposals, but what bright spots do you see in the approach to accountability? are there some you have kind of a hunch that might work out better than others? >> sure. you know, it really is fascinating. providing some space; right? that's how we look at it is providing breathing room for states to come up with means of improving outcomes and holding their own schools accountable. ..

all of their title one schools to use those to a target interventions and support in a way that is actually meaningful. a couple -- so, providing this space, right, taking some of this pressure, this pressure from their child left behind, the one size fits all mandate, we know in many states, 8590 percent of the states and not wait -- making ayp. there is no way you can prioritize our efforts and resources when all of your

schools are labeled as failures. so did just that space to create, you know, innovation in the eye of the beholder. kentucky, for example, has put forward a really comprehensive and thoughtful accountability framework in addition to looking at achievement in growth and graduation. you're actually going to also be looking at -- setting up this inspector model for k-3. they will be looking at k-3 and looking at parts and languages. they are building teacher effectiveness and their accountability framework. new jersey has just, you know, has focused on using performance data to drive their interventions and supports and to drive continuous improvement. not only out there looking at growth and achievement and grad rates, but there are looking at remediation rates in college and college going rates. and time as back to their schools.

south carolina, you know, is actually adding a category. not without controversy in south carolina. they are adding male and female. they will be looking at additional subgroups of kids. one of the things about the combined subgroup that is really fascinating is in each of these cases the added combined some groups and in many cases they also lowered them. they showed us data. if there were going to capture more kids and their accountability system than they otherwise were under no job of behind. we found that unbelievably, and i'm going to lick my notes so i can get the numbers right, rhode island, for example, by adding a combined subgroup is actually now all but 13 out of its 232 schools will be held accountable under its system. so english lerner's under no child left behind, 64 schools in the state were accountable for and listeners under the current law.

degusted 227 will be accountable. >> interesting. so, you kept a lot of the white be approached. what was some of your thinking as he developed the accountability approach in new york? >> one of the reasons we decided to keep that approach, particularly was because of the suburbs. not wanting to move away from casting attention and light that were under serving english language liner's worst is with disabilities are students of color. for us it was important to keep that focus on some groups. we also did not want to lose the right of attention on absolute performance and whether or not schools are really making gangs. i think the other part of our strategy to say the accountability was not just to let the accountability system in the schools but about the accountability for the adults in sight of the schools.

our bet in this sense that our waivered in the race to the top. if you point people toward the right set of standards and you call people individually accountable and give them support when they are not supporting, that would get as to the target. not just chatting right on people, but actually getting inside of schools and the area how we change distraction. >> interesting. i do have concern about going forward in terms of non attorneys, what the states do. they're going to make annual reports. they're going to report that desegregated data by subgroups and performance of students in schools. if fidel reported to you they have to report it in a publicly available wait. the website.

it is easy to say we are going to move from a compliance approach to the performance management approach. performance management approach is much more sophisticated, really higher orders kill. have to be used in investigating and making judgments about progress. i worry about capacity at the state's federal level. that's kind of another issue. probably the most important issue. it just seems to me, john, new york may be the largest date education agency. i'm not sure if that is still true. i don't know if the department, secondary education staff is going to fight. how can we get this job done. i'll let each of you respond.

are we going to have to rely on advocacy groups and research groups at the state level to really keep track of what is going on, report on it, a bright light. now we have, instead of one approach, we have 33 different approaches. by the time we're done to maybe 50. how are we going to up make judgments about all of those? >> that the fed level, high order thinking skills are not part of the bureaucracy. >> i did not say that. >> it's hard. there is no question about it. this has required estimate is just required for us to think differently about how we go about our work. we get to you know, as noted, some of these requests were three, 400 pages. how are we going ted deal with this? how are we going to do this? how are we going to manage to this? one is because this was not a

competition for money we could provide an unprecedented level of technical assistance on support. so because new york was not competing against connecticut we could provide new york with a level of technical assistance as necessary or as appropriate as they wanted. it did not matter that we had to provide that same kind of technical assistance to connecticut because connecticut needs were very different. so they were not competing. we had to think about the way we get our work very differently. what we did is create teams to address each of this. two big, the request was too complex and comprehensive. we did not just handle it in the office for elementary and secondary education. you know, we brought in folks from our policy shop. week conferred with our folks that are doing race to the top. we conferred with our lawyers. we had our budget folks. we have our title three folks. we have our title to, teacher

equality folks. we have all of these different program offices that are traditionally silo to. we have no choice but to come together and look at these comprehensive approaches and provide this level of technical assistance and support. we held office hours for states. working until eight, nine, ten, 11:00 tonight because some of them were on the west coast. walking through these requests, we could get into a place where the secretary felt confident that we were holding states to a high bar but states felt, you know what, this is our plan. this is what we want to do to improve outcomes for kids. it just made us look at our work differently. we establish these relationships . we have to continue this moving forward. so that is my point. we have kind of already started down that road of doing business differently. we have no choice but to continue to do it that way.

>> critical we talk of accountability to say accountability to whom and for what purpose. and, you know, i think it would be -- it would be sort of natural and very easy to think about accountability as the states are accountable to the federal government, accountability between, you know, maybe john's department is accountable to the u.s. departments. the whole theory of change, as i understand it behind to edge out left behind in the first place was to have much greater transparency so that you could be accountable to parents and the public as a whole for what purpose? to create a dynamic where there would be sufficient political will to actually change the school when, in fact, it showed up as leaving many, many kids behind. and i think one of the reasons we have gone to where we are today is that that promise did not play out and tell -- as fully as people hoped it would. i do think that to your point earlier, there is a very

important role for entities outside that closed loop of accountability between different levels of federal state and local government, one of the most beneficial things that came from a job left behind was this tremendous trove of data that all kinds of people could use, whether it is, you know, great schools dot net. whether it was take advocacy groups, colorado succeeds, you know, putting report cards upon the web. you know, the traffic on independent advocacy group with sites was a school performance data and school report cards. in most states far exceeding the traffic to the state department of education website. so -- why? because the advocacy groups are trying to present the data in a way that is really useful and actionable for parents and the public. and so i do think in this waiver process we are going to really need to be mindful about making sure that the data that is

relied on by an outside group does not go away. and likewise, for states that may hold out, there may be one or two states to decide not to apply for waivers. my guess is, the federal government is not going to be terribly effective in driving change within the states. to the extent that the states are really going to be held to account, it is going to be because a state based groups and others in those states say this is unacceptable. it is just not okay for us to just step away and kind of put our heads in the sand. >> that is probably true who. i mean, the two largest states have not applied, but they do have strong reform advocates within. so, how have you changed the way your agency is approaching reform and accountability?

>> a couple of things. >> i think we know that we have the capacity. even though the department is fairly large, it is because we have response for k-12, but higher education, adult education, job placement for disabled adults. so we have that range of responsibilities. the portion of the apartments is actually fairly small, so we have to be smart about how we leverage our limited resources. one thing we are doing is trying to work with other states and implementation because we think schools that are implementing the common court effectively our schools were in chiba is going to improve. and so we work with massachusetts and rhode island. the comment. the materials against the common core. we are working obviously, developing machinations that will, in fact, become the core. we are also, how we used

technology better at the apartment. we lost a website just to provide professional environment materials for schools on the common court and did given instruction. and that website has gotten a lot of traffic because it is immediately useful material for teachers and principals. and we are thinking about, as schools see that the performance is not where they wanted to be, how did they get better, where did they go to get better? we are thinking about how to use technology, regional. we have a network of regional teams that we created through our funding whose jobs to do profession development for teachers, for principles. you know, i think our challenge in this environment is how do we match the accountability with high in support. the other piece that i want to raise about state and federal capacity in addition to people power, there is also courage capacity questions. will they on the and told a

line? and doug give an example. the school improvement. so we had school improvement grants as part of many of all of the district's chose to use the transformation model. which meant they committed to do teacher and principal evaluations and their schools. now, our law relies on districts to bargain the details with their bargaining unit. so by december of last year our district still had not completed bargaining around evaluation. and the question was, were we going to let them keep the money . we decided know. we suspended all ten of our school improvement grants. it created a lot of controversy in the state. the people were made a set of promises. one of the superintendent's, on the phone.

you mean just because we did not do what was in the grander going to take the money away? actually, yes. i do mean that. i'm sorry that is surprising. and so the subsequent months, nine out of the ten district negotiated evaluation agreements with the bargaining unit and took it seriously. as one district, one large district, new york city, still struggling to work it out, i think they will eventually get there. the governor has now said that its districts don't have their evaluation agreements in place by january they will lose their state aid increase for the year. and so that kind of courage, that kind of line drawing that we need to be willing to do if we are serious about accountability, i think the race to the top. were going to take your money if you don't do these things. they had a tough conversation with you. >> indeed, they did.

that was helpful. the teacher evaluation issues. that is the key. advocacy groups, u.s. doe and state leaders have to lock arms and say, not only are we committed to these reforms the sound really good, but we are committed to execution and they're willing to make hard choices to get there. >> the hard choices peace, one of the challenges has been that, you know, the pro-government has never really wanted to take title one money away from states and districts and schools precisely because it is targeted at the students who we all agree are most in need. and so that enforcement mechanism has been, i think, in many ways, an empty threat. it is different when you say, well, applied for a grant and are going to take it back, but there are lots of states that never won a race to the top money who are still accountable for waiver plans. you know, i wonder if the federal government is going to

be able to add to what john just described with the core federal funding. that really hasn't happened. >> i think you are asking. >> there is no doubt. in my personal opinion that the teacher and leader evaluation pieces is probably the most difficult aspect of the waiver plans. i have to tell you, it has been very, very difficult for many states to a kind of meet our requirements. but, you know what, this is about flexibility. as long as they are moving forward to develop guidelines that use multiple measures and student growth as a significant factor and work with their districts to develop those teacher and leader evaluations and time those evaluations so that they are ready to be implemented by 2014-15, you know

what, there is some much flexibility within those -- within that framework that states have come in and said we can't do this. we not going to be able to do this. yes, they can. it takes some courage and some kind of flexibility within. as long as you kind of a tear to your principal there is this space. it is going to be hard. but where we ended up and, you know, this gets to the point that i think both of your making it is definitely going to be a shared responsibility. the way that we will slowly be able to ensure 100% compliance with what the states have said they're going to do. they're going to do their best. to our best to provide technical assistance and support ongoing so that we don't come to a place in two years or three years where states are just woefully out of compliance, but we can cut that off at the pass so that gets to your original question

we can monitor and what tools do we have? we have tools. we can change the way we do business. we can at least mitigate that end of that and came where, you know, we have to make some decisions that are very difficult. >> you know, i think most of us are very concerned about sequestration and the possibility of forced cuts to the department's budget. but the fact that that issue has now been raised and the fact that school districts and states are taking it quite seriously might actually create an opportunity in that that research stream which people use to count on and sort of inviolate for completely different reasons is now one that people really look at. we might not be able to count on that. it might be get that degree of uncertainty right now, and opportunity for the federal government to think about how to engage states and districts around the issue of accountability for what they have said they will do.

>> i want to turn to one more topic. what is the state law in individual school improvement? >> we have seen some states set up special school districts, achievements ounce, michigan, tennessee. and i think connecticut is going to be establishing one. you have not set one up. what do you see as the state's law in school achievement? i mean, in school turnaround? all of you can talk about that. >> two things that we have a tradition of in new york. we are committed. the department ought to be provided professional developments. resources and tools as well as diagnostic resources and tools to help districts figure out how

to improve. to is that we ought to be the place where you come. shines a light on underperformer spirit of thing that raced to the top as a loudness, the teacher and principal accountability. the evaluation can be used by district to make changes in personnel when they need to win personnel are in affected. the piece that is missing, and we actually have a bill in the legislature to achieve this. we don't have a very good level of accountability at the district level. particularly with respect to district governance. in some of our districts it is clear that the boards are really struggling to manage the district effectively and in some cases their mindset about their job as board members is not focused on student achievement. it's focused on other things. so we have a bill and the legislature that we hope will get taken up next year that would allow us to remove of

board and a district that is crackly underperforming because our view, and some of our districts it is -- the government's level the superintendent and school leaders are not able to move the system forward. and so we do -- we are missing our tool kit. i actually hope that over time the u.s. doe will create incentives, either financially or flexibility to push states to hold districts more accountable because i think district governance, district leaders, a place where there aren't a lot. >> we definitely saw some innovation, you know, through flexibility about holding districts accountable. you know, massachusetts, for example, and i hope to get this right. you know, is holding its districts accountable for the performance of its lowest performing school in the district. so they will all actually be held accountable for that.

i mean, that is a pretty big deal. and, you know, john in new york right there. they are, you know, creating their effort on closing the achievement gaps at the district level. so there are a number that are being innovative. a lot of the states and local control. a lot of the energy and ownership is invested in the district. other states are looking at regional service agencies or regional centers to really provide those supports and resources. >> i think when it comes to school turnaround we need to engage this not as a programmatic challenge, but as a structural and system a challenge. one thing that i think is concerned, but understandable if it that the push which traced to stop for to engage, we have seen

a lot of providers, but who will, as consultants to districts and implement almost a turnaround program and school. i think we know a lot about what works in high performing high poverty schools. i think, you know, it is not the case that there is a magic programmatic formula. what i think you really need to attend to is getting the lessons that we could learn particularly from the high performing charter schools, but there are examples of traditional public schools that have done this. incredibly motivated, hard-working people. working inside a structure that reinforces the behavior's and the interaction to students and teachers in a way that is transforming its. until we create those conditions turnaround is going to be something that we wish would happen, but it's not actually going to happen. and so i think they're is a balance between new school creation and turn around. politically it is a lot easier

to wish the turnaround would come true that it is to say we actually need to create 10,000 schools in this country or whether we think the number might be. and so, you know, again, i think an important way for the federal government and states to engage his tricks is to encourage districts to think of themselves in a portfolio fashion that they are open to, that they have responsibility for every student but are hoping to have been a variety of school providers running schools in different ways. to me i think that will allow for a turnaround, but it will also allow and some cases to start over which is often what is needed. >> that's a great point. the thing that we have seen, the waivers the states are doing across the board but increasingly so, low performing districts appeared with high performing districts, sharing best practices. the partnerships across districts so that they can learn

from each other and try to facilitate at the state level, through the school improvement grants. that is a really exciting, new opportunity for folks to really their improvement and partnership and caring abreast practices. absolutely a new opportunity. >> raced to the top grant, we had a commissioner score of effort for our reward schools under the waiver. we will be able to compete for grants that would allow them to capture of best practice and partner with a low performing school to share that this practice. we are excited about that. just one. , an irony, it's actually pretty hollow accountability. the kids are accountable because the kids bear the burden of not having education that they are entitled to. in fact, the schools that were low performing before notes of

left behind, after no job left behind was implemented. still, low performing today. the adults in that building continued. the local superintendent, the local board goes about its work in the same way. so in a funny way, although we talk of the nets of love behind, stronger accountability. all transparency. actually not a lot of accountability for the adults. the evaluation component. districts and so forth. it really changed the responsibility. those are really important. that is real accountability. okay. >> i have a last question, last thing i would like each of you to comment on and then we will open it to the audience. so, looking back over the past few years, what do you think of

the biggest challenges to going forward with reform? hold that in mind. and then, if we were to hold this event in five years, what topics would we be talking about either that we cover today or have not covered today? challenges and where we are going to be in five years. >> well, i think challenges to know what i just talked about around school turnaround i think in school closure and school creation is the challenge. politically it is so hard, and yet i would argue the evidence really is strong that we need to be much bolder. so i do think we will be talking about that. i think we won't be talking about teacher evaluations anything like the same way five years from now that we are now. i hope we're going to be talking a lot more about teacher preparation and teacher professional development and teacher recruitment because, you

know, evaluation is really a management tool. we have gotten obsessively focused on it as a policy-making matter. in high performing organizations that is almost inverted. >> abcaeight. >> hopefully we will be reflecting of this success that they have had in closing and permit craps -- gaps. we try to work towards. i think one of our biggest challenges is continually meeting to confront the message schools don't matter. i am shocked by the extent to which people are still prepared to argue that kids are low and come. the kid's parents. whatever is the rationale. i know sometimes reform circles. i actually think that is a continual conversation. remind people that schools

actually can make a huge difference. we, the adults, manage the schools, responsible for contributing. to me that a culture shift and that expectation shift remains essential challenge. more practically i think executing well on these initiatives is both the challenge we have had and the challenge we will have going forward and will determine whether or not we are reflecting fund the or sadly when we get to five years from now. are we able to do a good job, not just adopting but actually ensuring the implementation. are we able to turn evaluations from and added to vacation system to a tool for professional development and management? that, to me, is the central challenge. >> i am with them. i think, you know, the capacity to implement these, you know, i do think these plans are

innovative. it may not be, you know, or be shattering, no offense, but, you know what, the fact that new york has focused college and career ready standards at the core of their entire reform strategy in a comprehensive way is actually really meaningful. the capacity to employments these plans i think is a great challenge. i think today the political will is difficult. whether it be around school turnaround or a teacher it all. i actually agree. you know, in five years, you know, i am absolutely hopeful that particularly in the teacher and leader evaluation space that that evaluations are simply a tool. we just put out our teacher incentive competition for 2012. that is exactly what it's about.

it's about using evaluations to informed decision making at the local level that is going to drive improvements in teaching and learning. how is it a line with your vision of instructional improvement? how are you going to use these evaluation tools to make the kinds of decisions so you can get the best teachers are we needed the most? if we need more math teachers are more professional development or how you recruit. that is really where we are trying to go. i think we are going to be there. >> well, thank you. how let's turn it over. if there are any members of the media who have questions, i'll start with you. please tell us who you are an your affiliation. >> david rest. commissioner to continue the conversation that you just spoke about in your last comments. a decade ago i studied all 140

elementary schools in the 29 school districts of eyrie county, new york, which for the rest of our audience as the buffalo area. and i found that amongst at the district level mocks the 29 districts the expenditures per pupil range from 7,635 in akron central to 11,416. about a 50% differential. the correlation between expenditures per pupil and outcomes in the state administered fourth grade reading, science, and math scores was zero. at the school level where the data was available school by school the people teacher ratio in terms of class size ranged

from ten and a half in baltimore -- and buffalo public schools 72 to 21. in other words, 100 percent differential. it was the correlation between class size and outcomes. zero. by contrast, the percentage of low-income children school by school accounted for 75 percent of the variation in fourth grade milk -- coor's, 77 percent of the variations in fourth grade and 87 percent of the variation in fourth grade english course. as a matter of fact, if he told me the percentage of low-income children in the school i would have predicted this date english scores plus or minus six points as less than 1 percent of your scale. these are not revolutionary

findings by me. we have known the relationship of socioeconomic status to outcomes since james collins report in 1966. there are 45 years of educational research that is constantly reaffirmed not only the relationship between a child socioeconomic status and that's sociopath extent of the child's classmates in outcomes but shows consistently that low income children learn best and it dramatically better when they are surrounded by economically integrated classrooms. you had that very report presented in this very room a year ago by heather schwartz in terms of her very definitive analysis. my question is, why do you serve in your fellow educators continue to ignore the fundamental economics segregation and potentially

economic integration with played in the issue. >> the premise of your question i would challenge. to me there are two possibilities. the reason that kids who are poor particular schools are doing poorly is about the kids or about how the adults organize themselves? i would submit it is not about the kids. if that is true it is about how we, the adults, organize ourselves. decisions we make as the adults, not decisions that the kids and making. i will say that i am intrigued by the notion of trying to organize school systems and

attendance zones in ways that have enhanced socio-economic integration, spoken about that frequently even though just today in the paper i quoted many papers talking about new york city and my concerns about enrollment practices. often very high concentrations in particular buildings without adequate support. i'm concerned about that, but we also know that all around the country including in schools that i ran, very schools that had 100 percent african-american and latino kids, 70, 80, 90 percent kids in poverty. outstanding academic results. i do not accept the contention that that concentration insurance that the outcomes will be poured. another route comes that will prove that is false and indeed there are schools that can have high concentrations with kids in poverty and excel if they have to undo some of the right things.

incredibly talented teachers, dedicated talented principals. they have extended learning time. they have dated given instruction, use forms of assessment to inform their teaching. they worked with families effectively. of rigorous. there are things that we can do to make schools work. in the open to the conversation of a socio-economic immigration. related to the government's question. if you contrast new york to illinois, some of the states with lots and lots of school districts with some of the states that have counties systems like maryland and virginia, there are ways in which county systems that achieve higher degrees of socio-economic cannot diversification can get cystic benefits from that. really am open to that and having courage that conversation at the state level, but i fundamentally believe that every kid shows up with the potential to achieve college and career

readiness. the question is whether we the adults ought to organize ourselves to ensure they get to that destination. >> schools are powerful and the assertion that poverty is a real factor that impact students are not mutually exclusive. it's unfortunate that we have gone to a place for that seems to be the debate because in reality i think educators and high performing high poverty schools have a much more nuanced sense of what is going on in the lives of their children outside of the school. the critical dierence is that they are not sort of waiting for everything outside the school to be fixed before they engage to do everything it possibly can as an educator. when that happens easy tremendous results. this really is a question of being able to hold these two

ideas and task of educators to feel comfortable as the country asking of educators that they work in schools that truly are powerful. that gets back to the systemic issues. we don't organize many, many schools to allow for the very intervention that gen describing how performing have preschools. we absolutely have to change the way we're doing business in our schools because we cannot expect educators to change their behavior if we don't change the system and the structure in which they are embedded. [inaudible] >> wait. i want to get other people. >> race to the top provided no positive for any proposal from the state in advancing economic emigration. >> actually, i was going to make a comment related to that. i think socio-economic

integration of schools is up positive value. more schools would do it. the better we would be as a society, not just because of education outcomes, but because of a whole lot of other outcomes about how we relate to each other in our communities. and the federal government and state governments that provide incentives for schools to do that, but it is naive to think that it is one strategy to improve a variety of outcomes. it cannot affect because of the segregation in this country. done worse in many ways and will take -- and may never get corrected in certain communities i myself started my career working on school desegregation. i could not wait to fill of schools to be desegregated. i was much more interested in working on improving the quality of education in every school.

i think we have to keep it as something we strive for and provide incentives, and it would be helpful, perhaps not have an incentive like you just said. it cannot be only mission for choosing improvement. other questions. >> thank you. i'm sorry. i have a sinus infection. not usually. roberta stanley with the national school board association. my question is directed to the chancellor. the new york state has a wonderful system of regional education service agencies which a lot of other states tried to emulate. kind of jealous of. had you not utilized them? what are your plans to do so? >> one of the -- thank you for

the question. one of the key elements was to rely on the abilities are professional development teams that are supporting implementation of the common chord teacher and principal of valuation data and instructions. the way we organize our race to the publication, there would be teams of professional development expert tips of experts, curriculum experts the would support each set of schools and those teams are based in those regional service providers. and very powerful because i think historically they have been great providers of back office services to schools, special education services and career in technical education opportunities for kids. race to the top greedy and opportunity for those who are much more regionally and rolled in common approaches to professional development. so that is very powerful. you know, we hope that we, over

time, as a response to economic state challenges can regionalize more services. >> ninety. >> hi. i am a policy century foundation i was a teacher in new york city for six years. i think they're is a lot of talk about accountability, and that is the big buzz word in all of this. accountability for teachers, principals, which is heartening because i have been left out of the discussion. schools and districts. anybody he spent time in a classroom has heard the kid asked as discount or are you getting this? to the waivers have any proposals for substantive or tangible accountability for the students themselves or are they still of law where the teachers are being measured by something they -- in that they have no control over how i could perform sunday on an exam.

is there real accountability for students or is it still passing it up the line? >> i would argue that, you know, accountability framework that are looking at how the student gross, al schools are closing achievement gaps in particular, how students access and perform on ap or ibm exams or have access to industry certification that are built into some of these accountability systems, college going rates, college remediation rates. i think those all do absolutely count. i think that is what matters. >> the one thing i would add, we have a long tradition of high-school entrance exams that are part of our graduation requirements as well as a part of students transcripts that they will use when they apply for a post secondary opportunity and for our high-school measures

those region exams are playing a central role, including a shift that remains in the waiver toward focusing on a college and career ready level of performance on those assessments rather than just a passing threshold for accountabilities and focus on the level of performance in the regions exams that is correlating to enrollment in and success in first-year college credit very courses which is a shift for the state because our threshold for accountability, past which is significantly lower than the level of performance. >> the intersection between accountability for students and educators. i think there are a number of states like new york that have graduation requirements that all students accountable. likewise, we are now seeing a early literacy intervention and the policies that black social -- block social promotion from third to fourth grade weather in florida, colorado, the step in that direction.

all premise behind those policies is not that the student is simply left high and dry but that by holding students to that performance standard educators are, in fact, accountable for helping them get there. in fact, i think the state commissioner at the time, dave bristol, in massachusetts, when they implemented their high-school graduation requirements he said something to the effect of we decided that politically it was easier to all students accountable than all adults accountable. once we all since accountable, then the adults had to step forward and do what they need to do to make sure that the students were successful. >> you know, 30, 40 years of research shows when kids help -- kids are altair expectations they do better. the adults in the building absolutely have to set those expectations their kids with disabilities, and the signers, kids that are held to higher expectations do better. >> a couple of people in the

back. then we will come up front. >> i was struck by the enthusiasm for rhode island's plan to keep children from having teachers rated ineffective two years in a row. here in d.c., for example, there are so many neighborhoods where the scores are so low and they are tied to the teacher effectiveness ratings. it seems to me that kids would just did new teachers every two years. i am wondering how this plan can possibly keep schools like that from having a greater instability in neighborhoods where the kids already face instabilities in their homes and neighborhoods. this is just going to add to this situation. teachers one even have a chance to get acclimated to the school because of this course if they are rated ineffective. >> remember, you are moving through a system of student growth.

if they are starting at low levels, you're looking at whether the teacher is able to show growth in the students outcome. maybe not up to the grade level, but making progress that way. so i don't think that it necessarily cure is turnover. >> and rhode island, if i'm not mistaken, also identifies and a plan for schools to develop student learning objectives. they actually are using multiple measures, using growth in a meaningful way. that is the decision that the state made. they are also actually looking at a variety of multiple measures, classroom observations as to learning objectives and a whole set of means that are really going to provide written permission to the teachers and the leaders in the schools to really make the necessary improvement that are appropriate.

>> okay. >> hi. thanks for taking the question. from state line. yesterday the florida institute, former secretary margaret spelling said her assessment of the labor applications led her to conclude that they would lead to -- that they would halt the growth of charter schools and other "and "toys options. >> charter across new york. >> i can't speak for the rest of the state. that is not the case. we maintained a choice component . really what is driven in excess to additional charter opportunities has been there raising that was up part of how we one race to the top. the biggest challenge that was

growth and high performing is a capacity challenge. we actually are being very selective about which charter would give to organizations that can demonstrate the capacity to perform a very high level and some other larger providers in schools where i was to my kids to much even first, many of them are stretched, but the number of schools that they have attracted figure out how they build capacity for growth. the challenge, at least any more, statutory challenged and more regulatory challenge. it's more a capacity challenge. is there a talent to continue to grow these organizations? >> i don't know if it's related to the waivers. it's not what it should be. they get back to the idea around a structural change distress and

have a portfolio approach. the district level strategy around managing performance and insuring that all kids learn. i am not aware of specific things that states have done in graver applications that stepped away from that, but i think unless we have a real continue pushed in that direction politically it is challenging. pitbull i think to the contrary, we have seen in a couple of instances where states can, whether they are high performing charters, they have the opportunity for greater flexibility is. we know that, you know, in many states charters right in their policies and procedures and we are recognizing that and supporting. high performing charters as long as they meet our requirements they don't have to do what the state said they have to do. in fact, in some states that is

prohibited by law. utah, for example. utah has a waiver. there is great opportunity. the high standard. still give him the flexibility. >> i would adjust the choice provision. it is a mess -- amidst that it accomplished everything. in seal beach. highpoint, maybe 2 percent of the kids were eligible to choose the lead, love performing school and go to another actually made the transfer. why? not -- there was an interest in the family. there were not other high performing schools. there were not high performing schools available for them to transfer into. and mainly sometimes because of

states, sometimes because they were surrounded by large numbers of low performing schools. and there was no requirement for interdistrict choice. that -- if you don't have interdistrict choice you are not going to have much opportunity. this country has in many places, not all, divided their school district lines around affluent communities in poor communities. probably the case, example of that is new jersey. countywide school systems. more opportunity, perhaps, the choice to work. where you have not the small districts but i sledding people by the wealth of those communities, if you cannot choose to get to those schools we don't have much opportunity.

so this provision accomplished. it's as i said. we will take one last question. >> thank you. thank you. the question is -- the question is -- and the department. secretary duncan in the secretaries before him identified as one of the most major unintended consequences of notes of look beyond being in the narrowing of the curriculum. because the proficiency targets have shifted from the federal a white the mechanism to now a state based or waiver states have that responsibility, do you think that the unintended consequence for narrowing of the curriculum because of its connection to the testing to you think that is improving the solution for addressing those

consequences? do you think that the state based advocacy groups can address it more clearly as well now in their states? >> that's a great question. you know, and that is without doubt a priority for secretary duncan. what we believe, and we hope we have achieved but ultimately it is up to advocates back in the field. by taking some of the pressure of the punitive nature of no child left behind of of the system that it creates opportunity. we have seen in some of the state's, the arts into the accountability framework as an part of the inspector model. states are looking at different subjects. they're looking at, you know, college readiness factors, different sets of factors that we do absolutely believe and hope will change the focus on

narrowing the curriculum to broaden the curriculum. ultimately it is absolutely up to y'all. and advocacy communities should make sure that it does, in fact, happen. >> i think that parents and students warrant state diverse curriculum. in a system where there is choice and flexibility and transparency schools that provide that have an opportunity to attract students while still being accountable for student achievement. i think that is really what we are all asking here. >> part of what we need to do is i think correct a pedagogical mistake that people make which is thinking that by narrowing the curriculum you will improve your e. i. m. bass performance and whether it is something that e.b. herschel has written about, the control of cultural literacy instant reading achievement that is, you know information about the world, the evidence and the

influence of art and music and performance only. mathematics as well. what we know is actually social studies, the yard where we can get better outcomes. if you look at the high performing urban schools to my performing schools serving low-income kids, the high performing charters, many of them have dedicated ties. a strong and rich program. dedicated time for science. those are the things that i think that got lost broadly because of accountability. accountability system more loans we are always going to focus more on math. colleges always going to ask, does this even have the writing and math skills, reading or writing, and math skills to because of the work? the doctor that's going to go away, but the question of how we get to a college ready season, i think it is something where we have to change people's hearts and minds about what construction looks like. ..

holding their platform hearings in advance of their summer convention. democrats holding public

hearings and minnesota this weekend followed few weeks later with their final platform recommendations in detroit. in an august republicans start their platform process at the convention site in tampa florida. c-span coverage of the party convention continues with the reform party in philadelphia followed by the republican national convention with live gavel-to-gavel coverage beginning monday august 27th from tampa and the democratic national convention live from charlotte north carolina starting monday september 3rd. mali conference on obesity in the african-american community. panelists discuss cultural and environmental factors that contribute to the problem. and a second panel looks at policies that schools can about to address the problem. the conference was hosted in washington by the online magazine "the root."

>> thanks you for participating in our black it and held the series and this panel. we will discuss solutions for eliminating some of the health issues caused by obesity that have a disproportionate effect on our community, and our experts are sheree crute come and award winning writer and editor who covers a broad range of health topics and special lead consumer multi-cultural health. a veteran journalist and contributor to "the root," she was the founding health editor of the heart and soul magazine, the nation's first publication focused solely on the health and needs of african american women and she had literally written a book on how to cover health disparities in the media. next we have eleanor hinton hoytt. she had been president and ceo of the black women's health imperative in 2007. as president, she had been advancing the core values of social justice in reducing

health and equities, engaging advocates in the fight against hiv and breast cancer and advancing black women's well-being in the reproductive. contraceptive access and encouraging healthy sexual behavior. finally, we of dr. michele gourdine and thomas ceo at michele gordian and assess the it's a firm that creates policy solutions and improves the health of underserved communities. she is the author of reclaiming your health the guide to african-american women. a graduate of the johns hopkins school of medicine, dr. gourdine is a professor of the university of maryland school of medicine and senior associate at the johns hopkins school of public health and is also the former deputy secretary of health and the state of maryland. [applause] the first and foremost all three of you cover a wide range of health issues in the work that

you do. can you explain a bit on how you are addressing this in your work? allin lardy you want to start? this is certainly an issue that we have dealt with in our almost 30 years that have been in existence making sure that we be the voice for black women's health and dealing with the world experiences that black women have. being overweight and obesity is part of our cultural heritage and so what we try to do is hear the stories, we sort of be the voice at the kitchen table. every devotees kitchen table from congress and the administration policy makers and other organizations so that we

can move this issue beyond the individual women were. to take into consideration, the social health determinants but also the environmental industry so we are the voice, and number two we here and share the stories. you'd be surprised of the many stories that we have that we get from black women who can't get care who are refused care and can't get quality care, and third we have worked very hard on the affirmative care act making sure that there were provisions that took into account some of the preventive measures that you outlined in the affordable care act was in the aca will provide either a low-cost or no cost to begin in 2014, but no cost now and certainly no pay for many of the

essentials that prevent services in the benefit through our system and i will pause there because i know whether people do much more. but one of the things we understand is that weight is not wait in itself you have to deal with some of the psychological barriers that exist as it works in the enemy to get the doctors to be more sensitive and we talk about that in the briefing so we have the circle so women can share their pain and shame and trauma of being reduced care by

some physicians and also the shame of being black and female as well as big. just to add on to that underlying all the things i've done in my career i doctor and so initially my job is to diagnose and treat some of these outcomes if you will of carrying extra weight behind the pressure of the etds etc. i am a pediatrician. it's treating those conditions and my patience. in fact, more and more we begin to see children with adults and medical problems. a disease we used to call when i was in medical school the onset diabetes. we no longer call it that because we are seeing it in children. so i got to the point i was frankly tired of trying to patch up what was happening in the after effect of obesity and

related conditions and wanted to do something to be able to help people live healthier lives and not get sick in the first place and come to the doctor in the first place to be treated. and so, michael and writing and reclaiming our health and african-american wellness and in the policy work that i do is threefold. one, to provide education we talk a lot about it this morning about the need for all of us to understand what it means to a little figure. but it goes beyond just the education because you also have to call what i call the resources that you need to be healthy. you have to have access coming to have to have the devotee for your children to be able to go outside and get adequate exercise. you have to be able to have health insurance so that you can see the doctor and the unfortunate even duty to see the doctor. life happens and sometimes we need to do that but we also need to understand some of the

underlying issues like what eleanor touched on briefly. it is a huge, huge issue in our society and we don't talk enough about that and i'm sure we will get into more of that as we go through the panel. but understanding those issues and then translating what is happening on the ground in our communities and to language and policy options and the solutions that our policy makers and elected officials can understand and develop into policies that transform our communities and transform our societies and to the environs that he'll rather than environments that the can. so that is what i try to do everyday. >> i would see my approach is a little bit different. as a communicator and someone who works through the media, i guess my personal mission in recent years has become to try to find a way to communicate about all of the health care disparities that effect african-americans but in particular african-american women who live written about most of my career in a way that

is fair and balanced, respectful, and isn't stigmatized or perpetuate stereotypes that are on helpful in the struggle to try to address the health problems we face. i have attempted through both. i've attended it through my own work but also through talks with much larger groups of reporters, through organizations like the association of health care journalists to try to help them understand ways to cover some of the unique issues that both dr. gourdine and eleanor touched on just now which is many of the people that write about the health issues in the national magazines and on the news don't know us, don't know those issues, don't know our community, don't know our culture. so they often create things that are not constructive, positive, inspiring, and may even add to the stress that you just

mentioned. add to the self-esteem issues that have also been mentioned and also limited access to resources. so, i make an effort to try to make sure the work that i do and that may be younger people like come into contact with doesn't make those mistakes. >> thank you. so, you touched on it a little bit. but you were as a pediatrician treating children for adult diseases. are the health providers adequately trained to help their black patients fight these diseases, and then as a result fight obesity? >> nope. i was trying to think of a nicer way to put it, but no. i can say that because i am a doctor and i know how we are trained. doctors are easily trained to diagnose and treat disease, which basically means that for most people when you encounter a

doctor come you are already sick. we are not necessarily trained on how to keep people well. that's something i had to learn and go along the way of my career. and it's something that i think that our medical schools have sort of evolved in attempting to teach that. but we have a long way to go. so that's one issue. teaching people how to be well. dealing with the individual issues that impact and individual behavior. because when it baliles down to it, we are talking about eating in a particular way or getting a particular amount of exercise. it requires a level of motivation and desire on the part of the individual to do that and that isn't something the you can get somebody. but that's certainly something you can facilitate and that isn't something we have learned how to coach people through this so if it were something i would say is lacking and needs to be nurtured in terms of training of our health care professionals, it is decent people, coaching people. you know, the root of the word

doctor in latin is a teacher. we are supposed to teach and we haven't been doing a very good job of doing that. and so i think that that is a really important aspect of what we do is to begin to teach and to coach, not to be paternalistic. sometimes we tend to be a bit too paternalistic where we are also looking directly down at the patient saying you should do this and you should do that. then i heard colleagues of mine say these patients or those patients come sort of very stereotypical way they will do what i tell them to do. who are you to tell me to do anything? and so, you know, that's one issue. the other important issue, and i talk about this a lot in my book is that we don't have a good understanding of the cultural and the environmental factors that play into the individuals making decisions about their health. as sherri was saying, individuals who don't know was

and know our culture may not be able to relate in such a way that would encourage people to want to eat better or to understand, you know, how people eat. i will give you an example and then i will be quiet. i miss other girl from mississippi. when i was practicing one of the nutritionists who was not a black was giving a simple diet plan to one of the patients and i took a look at it and i chuckled because the mother took it and just kind of threw it in a bag that i knew she wasn't going to pay attention to it again. i said i wouldn't follow this either. when i grew up in mississippi, right, wrong or in different. they were cooked in meat. they were were. we used the wrong kind of meat, which now we know are not healthy, but an understanding of that culture from which i came and perhaps on which the patient came might have allowed the

nutritionist to provide a more culturally appropriate health your option for the individual. we need to be given to understand the culture within which people live, which influences how people live and then we can be more effective as health care providers and helping people live better. [applause] >> michelle is coming at this from the doctors perspective and i would assume you sort of knew about this from the patient perspective. >> from the consumer's perspective which is very important. and i do appreciate doctors. i love doctor's yet also recognize their limitations. that's what we have to do because doctors are not doing so well themselves. particularly black women doctors. so we shouldn't depend on them always to guide us. but we should enter i believe into a partnership that has to

be a partnership and the other thing in addition to doctors not being good health care givers come and i have friends who are not good health care givers and who are overweight and obese, they also need to be good learners because they many of them have forgotten, you know, where they came from, and many of them and internalized some of the stereotypical images and are very judgmental. and this is not anecdotal. i'm telling you what the black women see. 160,000 people in our database of the black women's health imperative. we have those stories. and if we don't have them written, they tell us whenever we have gatherings. but in addition to that, i think the one thing i am hoping that the affordable care act coming and you can see i'm a big

proponent of it because i think this is our one chance if we can never figure out what it does, what it has and what would mean for our community and for our population this is the one opportunity that we will be able to shift the dialogue from disparities to equity because it has obesity. obesity counseling, diabetes screenings, even for kids and that is the good news. it has mental health counseling, it has all of the preventive health service screenings were gestational diabetes. so that catches it soon and that is one of the things we try to do is to relate to obesity to the disease of weight if you know what i mean. diabetes and heart disease and

cancer related directly and indirectly related to obesity. doctors don't do a good job at relating and making it sure that we understand that interrelationship. so that's why i am pleased to work with a lot of the medical professionals so that we can help them understand some of the cultural dynamics as well as some of the gender specific issues going with the black women that struggle daily in maintaining a certain lifestyle including healthy weight management. >> i'm glad you mentioned the affordable care act. it's a good story and it is actually mentioned earlier today on the panel the big story of kind of the battle around it and not so much we can use it.

but you mentioned a few of them. what are some of the things in the affordable care act that could help to combat obesity? >> well, there is a significant prevention and obesity, and which i probably couldn't find the numbers. i believe in the range of $74 million that targeted specifically to obesity and fitness and includes i believe michelle obama's the initiative. there was also the significant prevention fund that is larger than that that has an obesity component. obviously coming at it from the media perspective and looking at the coverage that i have seen, most of the coverage is very political right now. what it doesn't talk about is how the grassroots organizations, and i know there are many grass-roots organization people here in the room. i talked to some of them today. the media coverage hasn't really talked about how you can get to that money, how that money can be brought to low-income african

american women and other communities so they can be put to good use. but it's there. so, any of you who have say legislative departments or connections and local government i would say get on the phone because it is a big part of money and it's a very complex part of money. but it's there and so it's there to be had. >> let me just speak to that. this is so very important. in many ways, the organizations will not be able to get to the money. it's 16 million for obesity and hypertension. we decided as a natural organization not to go for it because guess what the american heart association and all of the other big plays are going for it and i know it in fact i was talking to one organization whose husband is one of the chair of the forms and said no, i can't agree. i may not be able to agree to

bargain with you because my husband's organizations are going for that. so we are competing with the big boys. so that is 16 million for obesity and hypertension specifically. then there is a 70 million prevention fund which includes obesity as it relates to heart disease and diabetes. we are going for those. we have a good chance for the diabetes because we've had it before and it's limited to nonprofit organizations. we have less of a chance getting cdt, cardiovascular because it is open to everybody and that is 20 million. $3 million per pell grant up to ten grand. so to answer your question of how does a get, we are writing

their proposal. it is right as we speak. so we are partnering with the range requirement from ten to 15 organizations. we are trying to partner with 15 community-based organizations and about five media organizations so we will be given sub grants from 100,000 to 200,000 depending on their reach , so that is the only way that the community based organizations can get that money. the good news, however, is that if we get the grant as a national organization and national base for profit and academic institutions and research institutions qualified, so we compete every grand with

johns hopkins. they get it. we don't. even though the black women of baltimore ask us to come in and partner with them so that is the politics of it and i will be calling you and cheryl and all of you because if only the organizations get these grants they can't focus on black women or on the black community we need to raise hell and i know i'm on tv. [laughter] >> being on tv and raising hell, we talked a little earlier about how maybe cultural differences have the coverage of black obesity and health in the media. you are obviously very well equipped to talk about this. what do you think of how black of the city is covered?

>> i have to say i'm here to because i'm not at all happy with how it's covered. i think there are many people with us from that i've spoken to already that are familiar with a very famous piece now that was in "the new york times" in may by an academic professor named alex randall who wrote an article about how black women like to be or were happy to be fat leaves our men and to be larger for the sake to honor our large grandmother's. in "the new york times" has quite a little bit. i realize i'm saying that in american journalism but it's pretty significant and was an interesting choice to choose to put that piece of their. another piece followed in three weeks from the university in england which dr. gourdine mentioned. it was a study that said adolescent black girls couldn't benefit from exercise in the

fight against a bct. the analysis of the research it was accurate and important but there were critical questions that none of the coverage asked. they didn't mention that the data on by yet and exercise was reported by the teenage girls. they didn't discuss the fact that they were basing their analysis on race for which there is no genetic basis and they didn't talk about the other benefits these young ladies may have gotten from exercise. but these two articles along with one on child abuse much childhood sexual abuse being higher black women and linked to obesity they forgot to mention that is the relationship of white women of other races. receive coverage and abc news, nbc news, the huffingtonpost.com, the "los angeles times," that line incoming "u.s. news and world report." but let me tell you what came

out during the same week that didn't make any of the publications. i have the title on my lap. the educated american women success last week lost maintenance through lifestyle changes. this study was done at baylor college of medicine, and was also released in june. it was mentioned in the last paragraph in a single sentence of the huffington post article on the carter study. they got no independent coverage and was covered mostly on small blogs have to ask why and how we can change this conversation. there are obviously people here in this room and the route is holding this wonderful conference because they want to have this conversation. but in my opinion this is the way that our story should be told. it isn't a helpful and respectful way for the story to be told. >> you've raised a very critical issues i don't even know where

to start. the article about not benefiting from exercise is one that really raises my blood pressure tremendously. i had major problems with it and let me give you the punch line first. we have to learn how to be critical thinkers. we need to learn to think for ourselves. be careful where you get your information from. question the motives behind the people providing that the information. so having said that, this particular article was brought to attention by my husband. he stepped out of a newspaper and threw it in front of me. i hadn't seen it at the head line stood out black girls don't benefit as much from exercise as white girls. unlike what? the article was very general in what is said. it didn't provide a lot of details so i went to the computer and pulled the research river because i wanted to see what was going on in this article. there are so many issues with

this article that were inaccurate that i don't even know where to begin. but they tend to point to a number of stereotypes and probably contribute three either covert or overt bias and that we experience as african-americans when we encounter the health care system. the first has to do with the fact that the information, the data that was reviewed and evaluated in the study is what we call secondary data which means it wasn't even collected for the purpose of the study it was for one other reason and they pulled up and they analyzed it and came to certain conclusions. second, as stated, it was self reported data about physical the activity. the bottom-line conclusion of the study which i don't agree with is that they looked at black girls and of all white and girls who got the same level of activity over years found time

and found at the end of the year they were more likely to be obese than white girls. most of the data except for three days out of the year plus self reported data. how accurate what your data be of use of reported every day? i don't remember what i had for breakfast this morning. so self report in and of itself lends to the possibility for inaccuracies. the issue of benefitting from exercise was limited in the study to weight loss. we know that exercise helps lower blood pressure. it helps lower blood sugar. it helps the mental health issues and the worst about cholesterol and raises good cholesterol. the list goes on and on. there is more than one benefit. as a doctor what am i supposed to do with that conclusion? and i still look at the patience and pick out the ones who i think are black and race is not genetic. that is another issue that tends to play into people's thoughts about race and i will go back to

that the demise of was to pick up the people i think are black and if they are black female say don't worry that exercise because it doesn't plan to do you any good any way? what am i supposed to do with that? ..

>> we need to be very careful about the coverage that we pay attention to as journalists. i would hope that everyone would be as conscientious as a journalist in this room and providing coverage that is accurate and information that is accurate. because people will walk away with that information and it can cause a great deal of harm, and that is the last thing we need when we are trying to fight this major health crisis called obesity in our community. [applause] >> the point of this whole day is to be solution oriented and figure out how to move forward. we have identified some of the problems with the panel, or can

any of you share any examples of organizations of health care providers who are winning and who have found a way, an innovative way to break through some of these barriers? >> the first thing i would like to say is yes, there is a national movement of smart, young black women who are fighting obesity among black women in america. i just want to acknowledge one of the ladies is sitting in the second row. she is from an organization called growth track. her organization is 10,000 strong? >> yes. >> okay. this is a national organization that brings black women together to walk or they have to make an initial commitment to walk five days a week for 30 minutes. they also ask women to talk to

their communities about healthy living. they also have a discover division, which is my favorite part, which sends young people in the world to to discover vacations. they now have a young girl hiking in africa. and she's going to come back and tell others intercommunity what that is like. [applause] there is another trainer called crystal adel, black women workout has its own website. she has been thousand members of women who share their workout tips and their success stories and pictures and their dietary stories on her website. her facebook page has 268,000 lights. she has been in business for three years. and you ask yourself, how come

she did not get the page in the times? omission of her organization is for black women to commit to not being part of the obesity epidemic. another is a black girls walk, centered in washington dc, 44,000 members around the country who do walkathon's in different cities. black girls walk founder said to me, i believe, choose a size 22 in high school. she is now at 12. and she says that she goes into communities and meets black women who have very low self-esteem and are very uncomfortable about being out with their bodies. and their motivation is to get black women together, publicly, to support each other in this effortto be fit and strong and move towards a positive goal. those are just three of the

solutions oriented organizations. you can find them on the web. i hope that people will start to tell and share it. >> we have had a program for, i guess, about 20 some years. one of the things that we got was a great nonprofit award about a month ago. and we asked people, we send out your databases and asked people to tell us what you think about our organization. one woman wrote to me and said working for wellness saved my life 20 years ago. i was 300 pounds. i am now 160 and proud of it.

we have one program with the boston women's health institute. slimmed-down sister. just in boston, over 1000 women meet and give support to each other, and it is not just about weight. it is about supporting each other in a healthy lifestyle. we are talking about life style changes. i encourage those of you -- we have a website. an incredible website. we would like to feature you on our website so that our members can no you are out there doing that. i would like to take a moment to switch from individuals and center this discussion where i think it ought to be.

making sure that we have more farmers markets in the communities. making sure that we can walk to grocery stores, which means that you have to come to the table and demand a grocery store. making sure that our policymakers can put streetlights and walking paths and bike paths in your communities so that people so people can feel safe in order to be good to have a healthy lifestyle. to reduce secondary smoking, which kills and has a direct impact on cardiovascular disease

we have to move it from the individual. so that you can figure out how to transform your community into a thriving, healthy and safe community. and then take on the food industry. we are not fat because we want to be fat. the corporations have supersized themselves. >> if i had one wish, it would be for us to slow down if it could happen. here is why i say that. the obesity epidemic in our community is not limited, although it is concentrated, it is not limited to any particular

economic plan. it transcends all that. we are running 24/7 all of the time, constantly. that creates within us an environment where we are under a comic level of stress. i cannot begin to emphasize to you how damaging having that level of stress and stress hormones in our body is to us. it does contribute to obesity. you know, either you respond every time it goes off or you

are in a community where you have to drive one or two hours and you're stuck in traffic jams against the build up. or you have multiple obligations all this contributes to chronic stress. when i was growing up, i told my kids come around midnight when you're watching tv, you would hear the national anthem played and you see that flag waving back and forth. and the tv would go off. they would say, really? [laughter] [laughter] it is on 24/7 and it is almost like a metaphor for our lives and it really is creating problems business. we are talking about

african-american women were the most impacted group when it comes to obesity. african-american women are impacted more than any other group in this country. when we look at how in general, and i know that not all people fit into this category, we tend to take on this persona where we have this big red at let her s on her chest. creating an environment, however we do that, be it in the workplace or at home with the community, where we allow and say it is okay for us to take some time out for ourselves to refill our tanks, because you can't give what you don't have. and to allow us to begin to realize that we deserve to be healthier than we are. i really think that that has a significant role to play,

especially as it pertains to black women. the policy issues are extremely important. we have to do that. we also need to look at what we need to do to be able to support and nurture ourselves and create a space in which we can slow down and we can begin to think about how we can take care of ourselves and actually believe that it's okay for us to think about it. self-care is not selfish. yet many of us have grown up in atmospheres where you are implicitly or explicitly involved. if we could lower down a notch and allow each other to do so, you know, allow an opportunity for your employees. don't tax them at three clock in the morning. [laughter] [laughter] >> don't expect an answer. that would be my wish if i were

able to have one wish. >> well, thank you so much. we can open it up to questions from the audience now if anyone has any questions. can you speak to us more about the role of an insurance reimbursement and treatment of obesity issues. the providers incentivize properly. what can we do to prevent this issue? >> no, they are not. as a matter fact, reimbursement is a huge issue that at some point we need to begin to address in this whole dialogue

you either get paid for a procedure if you are a doctor or something along those lines from or you get paid per volume. which is when you go to see her primary care doctor. you have 15 minutes to get in and get out. that is how doctors are reimbursed. it is a fundamental flaw within the system they don't necessarily get reimbursed for providing the ongoing counseling that is needed in order to help people through whatever lifestyle changes they need to make. we need to engage and counseling that walks them through the process. not where doctors tell you the last six months and i will wait

you. checking in on you, providing that counseling. figuring out where you are at the moment. you have to meet people where they are. of course they need to eat better and exercise, but what they know that they are capable of doing right now, perhaps, is getting 10 minutes in the walking day. start there. the walking through that. it does not support or reward our ability to do that with the current system for that is something from a policy standpoint that we need to work on. >> i just want to take the opportunity and just chit my cat -- take my hat off to you women.

thank you, ms. eleanor, for talking about the conspiracy that black people and black women period, creating those sacred circles, to address the issues. because obesity, a lot of times has a lot to do with what you are holding and what is your feeling that you don't have. thank you for being very vigilant. doctor gordon, i would like to ask you many questions, but i know this is not the format. thank you for being a revolutionary in the medical field. because we need more physicians like you that are helping us transition into teaching. you know, because that's what doctors -- that's what it means.

thank you very much. thank you very much, and thank you very much. [laughter] >> we work with child victims of physical and sexual abuse. i would like to hear little bit about the relationship between obesity and unresolved sexual abuse in the black community. we know that people self medicate and lots of different ways, particularly in terms of food and black women and i am wondering if there is research that you have seen anecdotal, we think that there is a relationship. >> i just want to give you the reference for the black women's health study, they are the people behind the curve research on childhood sexual abuse and black women. i think it's on their website.

>> in very general terms related to that, you are absolutely correct. you do know about the link with obesity. honestly, it is not surprising. given the fact that it sounds diminutive. it causes people to deal with the pain that results from not in ways that might not be healthy red we know that there are many different causes. one of them being pain and paying an individual's lives, that they choose to self medicate through what we call emotional eating. emotional eating is a major issue in our community. basically people are eating food to stuff the feelings down again as opposed to bringing them up and dealing with them. another issue that might be related to that is cultural.

we have to be able to bring this up and bring it out. in short, absolutely. that is a major issue. especially among black women that we have just barely scratched the surface on. i'm interested in looking at how we can fuel businesses behind health. a lot of black women have a lot of self-medicating like buying clothes and shoes and etc. the issue i am curious about is how can we infuse the business world, for instance, but if you go to beauty supply stores and chicken wing shacks, how can we ship the way that people think about money.

i think we are just beginning to do that. i am not sure that it's going to be easy to change their behavior. in terms of how we spend our money. i think that is deeply rooted that our hair or lack thereof -- [laughter] [laughter] that it means something to us. because the media also plays into how we think of ourselves. the control, the notion of beauty and color. so i think that is one thing. and we talk about it a lot. i would suggest that you go on our website black women's health.org, and go into some of our podcasts.

we have topics like mental health and women's health and beauty, and many other subjects over the past three years. if we are going to achieve equity, i really believe, because i'm so tired of talking about disparity, which means differences between between blacks and whites. when i am talking to women's groups, i always encourage us to help women understand that they should not be the gold standard by which we are compared. because they are not doing that good either. so if we ship that dialogue and talk about building healthy families and healthy communities and healthy cities, then we can

play a different and better parts in solving some of these problems. in my neighborhood you don't have the chicken shack or, you know, you don't have the liquor stores. i moved and washington dc during my mature years, and i wanted to be part of the solution of getting the billboards and getting the liquor stores out of georgia avenue. so that people can feel safe. i believe that the standard ought to be healthy cities, healthy communities, healthy families and healthy women who have healthy babies.

>> my question, a lot of the work that i do at the national wildlife federation focuses on getting people outside. you are talking about healthy cities and communities. i want to ask all of you, in terms -- we tell people to exercise and tell them to take the stairs. there are a lot of different ways that we tell people to get that. but we never really talked about the outdoors is a free solution to get that. i wanted to know your thoughts as a doctor and a health writer, and being a part of the black women's health institute. what you think about utilizing the outdoors and how to get more african-american women and people outside an active.

>> and the outdoors presents a wonderful opportunity to get there. we need to make sure everybody is outdoors and equally safe. that is really one of the major problems. you know, we need to pay much more attention to community design than we do so that people don't have to get into a car to be able to drive somewhere. they can get to a safe part of the outdoors or drive somewhere, adequate street lighting, all of those amenities that make it more attractive for people to come outside. i think we have a bit of a waste to go in terms of equalizing that. especially when you are talking about the lower income communities, trying to get them outside, we really do have to work on making sure that the safety issue is addressed. right now we have some issues. but my parents were reluctant to

let us go outside and play, i can't say that i blame them at all. once we were on the issues, it's important for us to we should not have to pay to be physically active. what we resort to do, where it is not feasible or sick to safe to go outside, is offer indoor options. wouldn't it be great if we were able to offer those other options anywhere. >> with nature, letting people know more -- [talking over each [laughter] people know more about organizations like that.

>> we can take one more question to over there? >> i do not recall earlier got a response to the earlier panel because i got a little emotional. on the ground now. i live in anacostia and my goal is to become a dietitian. what motivated me to become an rd if you need to have culturally competent nutritionists out there who were serving their communities. i'm curious, do you incorporate nutrition and the work you do is a partnership because the reality is i have good friends bariatric surgeons and they are not doing self-care, and i am

providing services because they can't get it right. we all need work in partnership. i know that they are as nobody within the academy that is a group of black nutritionists but i just recently joined. another haven't been a part of the conversation. i question leadership, why are you not on capitol hill, etc. how can we create these partnerships beyond the nba and all those other groups out there or should we create another group that targets nutritionists and get them involved. >> i must say that we do partner with nutritionists and all of our chronic disease programs. and we have health experts. in fact, our previous diabetes program, most of our experts were nutritionists and

dietitians. who can be experts. building that team, community organizations, in order to bring about change. they are there and we do work with them. >> having said that, there is room for improvement, definitely. there is a great need for it nutritionists. as a medical profession, we have not relied on human knot. honestly. that goes back to the attention being paid to helping people change their behaviors. one of the things that hit home with me, is when he was talking about we have lost three generations to crack and we have kids who are parentless and have not learned from their parents. one of the things they have not learned is how to cook. that is absolutely true.

i was speaking to an audience of several months ago. one of the persons in the audience was saying it is so expensive to eat healthy. i said you could buy eight bottle of booze, you can see the look on the persons face like, how do you cook that? >> and you know, it's true. we've got a generation of individuals who are now parents who have lost their cooking skills that we learn from our parents back in the day. in mississippi are used to hate it when my mother would bring home a bushel of peas because we would have to sit on the floor and shell them and snap peas and that drove me crazy. but i learned from watching her how to prepare those meals, and that is almost sort of a lost art now. being able to cook for yourself

is so essential to eating healthy. you control what you're eating. you are not at the mercy of others who are preparing your food. we need to definitely talk more about that. >> we have time for more questions. >> i write for jack and jill politics and we featured afro on our blog. that is how i found out about glamorous camping. one of the things that i would like to address the entire panel, there was some discussion about being a culturally sensitive person, one of the things that i did in san

francisco with the department of health, we had to develop cultural competency program for health care provider contractors. one of the things that we really had to emphasize is how to culturally deal with, you know, diverse communities that we serve. is there any type of initiative that is being done here in dc, with regard to how medical professionals should talk to black women and make them feel comfortable because a lot of them don't like going to the doctors unless they have to. one of the things that we had to do, we had a large arab community in san francisco. it was right on the heels of 9/11 and a lot of people did not want to go to the doctor and we had to tell doctors that you can't just tell a muslim woman to take her clothes off so that she can be examined because in their culture, is shaming them in a sense. we had to do that kind of

education. i just wanted to note, i want to know if that type of initiative is being done here. >> you know, i can tell you that in general or have been initiatives of that type that have attempted to teach medical professionals about different cultures. i think that there is some value to that. i think it is limited because it causes people to identify people that are monolithic, all the same, and that's not true. what i try to emphasize what i'm talking to people about this, couple of things. number one is mutual respect. it is the foundation of relating to anyone of any cultural. and that, being able to communicate with them and listen more than talk. to hear what is important. the other thing i try to point

out, and all of us are guilty of this in some way or another, is that we tend to have underlying thoughts in a assumptions about particular cultures. if there is something we don't agree with, we tend to be judgmental about that. the case in point, this might be a year and a half or two years ago, the gets back to that black women's hair and exercise thing. the surgeon general found that the atlanta hair convention, -- [inaudible] and she spoke about the importance of not letting your hair style get in the way of your health, essentially. one individual was a white male, basically said that there are much more it important issues

that the surgeon general should not punish the status of her position by commenting on something as unimportant as this. that is what happens when you tend to make judgments and value statements about an individual believe. rather than accepting individual values, understanding how that might create a berrier and helping them to get beyond that. we have to learn, i think this is important, we have to accept the cultural values of other people without judgment. beyond learning all the important things about how to treat people of certain cultures, being able to accept the cultural values without judgment and help them to get

beyond whatever barriers might be blocking them from obtaining of national health, that is what is important in my view. >> one of the things that we do as it relates to reproductive justice issues, primarily contraceptives and working with diverse populations, particularly non-english speaking populations and those with cultural values of disrobing openly with people that you don't know. what we tried to do is to integrate the standards that hhs, this was the office of minority health, or the cdc, is an acronym, they instituted this, trying to make sure that we acknowledged without judgment the cultural and linguistic differences. we are part of the women of

color reproductive justice network. once again, we integrated into the affordable care act those measures that would help with the language. also, when we do focus groups and roundtables and we want to know about issues and noncompliance, we translated into spanish. but we also had latino and black young girls from 18 to 29 years old. you'll find packets of it all over, but particularly, i will believe that where you find your best practice space, as it relates to reproductive health. >> well, thank you so much to everyone, sheree crute, cynthia

gordy, eleanor, everyone, there will be a short break before the solutions panel. there are refreshments in the corner. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we will reconvene in about five minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] we are talking about the nutrition and mental exercise and other strategies. we have assembled an expert panel to walk us through some of the challenges that we are dealing with and also the practices that can serve as

potential illusions. to my left we have susan neely who is the president of the american beverage association. leading policy and public advocate and notably, the industry has voluntarily reduced calories and beverages by 80%. according to the national school beverage guidelines. next we have a chef, wilhelmina bell, she is the head of children's village. they eliminated all processed food from their menu and they served fresh and seasonal foods wherever possible. she was honored by the american culinary association.

we also have wilhelmina bell, director of education at the national wildlife federation. in her business, she emphasizes the important of well-being and structured play. we have maxine jones -- she serves students with disabilities and has a curriculum focused on health and wellness. from school nutrition to physical education curriculum, community support, that is the focus of the school. the experience in the education field is also included. special education, coordinators and dean of students. we are also joined by fran meyer. she was an educator with great

experience as a teacher, administrator, researcher, also in professional development. the american alliance for health and physical education. recreation and events. she works on policy and programs development that are coordinated and comprehensive art education. welcome to our panel. [applause] [applause] those in the school system are getting the bulk of their meals in the school system. we talked about all of the problems with school lunches and we talked about pizza being counted as a vegetable and french fries and ketchup being counted as nutritious items. it is important to talk about the context under which a lot of

school kitchens are working in. you know, the average school has about 1 dollar and some change for each meal. i know that shaq bell at the children's village, you are a nonprofit and you are dealing with students who are part of the school subsidies. yet you have managed to overcome some of those challenges on how this amazing offering works. i just want to know what can school administrators do to stretch their dollars in the face of such tight budget constraints and what are some of the other challenge is that they have? what are some of the strategies that you have been able to utilize to overcome some of those things?

>> i have a unique program. i deal with fresh fruits and vegetables and cook. i don't buy processed foods, chicken nuggets and fingers i use orbital mushrooms, fresh spinach, play with natural herbs, everyday try to bring fresh fruits and vegetables. the usually call my provider every other day because you get kind of tired of me. whatever is in season, i have had to tell me if the food looks good where the food is really

right or right. so i don't have to keep the matter and vegetables on hand. the end run the risk of them spoiling him a which would cost more money for not being able to utilize them. >> i make fresh soup. if i buy cases of soup with chemicals and sodium, it is just as easy for me to make a product with fresh tomatoes. the thing is to make the kids want to read it. i will purée carrots for hide and they are getting all their vegetables and they are getting nutrition that they need, but it also has to taste good.

>> i know you're not in the kitchen preparing meals, mack jones, but you have the challenges of how to get these meals to the students. >> i am sort of envious of the kitchen that they have. we actually, once upon a time, at school. and it became a key test it was very difficult to keep up with the guidelines. we are part of the school lch program. there are so many limitations for small schools with limited funds and limited budgets and limited resources. the ability to move food to and from. so we have hired vendors in order to bring our food in. and it just takes away all of the great things that i hear the chef talk about that we have lost. this is the biggest problem that

i have with our kids eating unhealthy, is that they have to endure the food. it has to be something that really is tantalizing to the taste buds. the kids choose not to enjoy the food because it doesn't have the taste. they all love pizza. but we can do pizza, only so often. that is the challenges that we have. how to create a lunch program in which kids truly enjoy it. what anything, but it's good to their mouth, they will take it and they will enjoy it and ask for seconds. that might be their meal for the day. >> following up on getting the kids to be excited about the food, i know that that part of

the program at your school is just sort of finding ways to make people feel more connected to their health beyond the school cafeteria every day. are there other ways that you are able to make the students -- introducing them to the food? >> part of the challenge is to actually create an atmosphere in which kids want to eat vegetables, fruits and vegetables. it is a part of a challenge that kids have teams that they work together on those teams and they get points for eating fruits and vegetables. through our health and wellness challenge, we invite parents and families to participate so families also can provide points and do their eating of fruits and vegetables. it is an honor program. for the most part, the kids actually have taken the challenge. one of the things we do have, we

do have pretty decent fruits and vegetables. kids would is good food, good for you, along with the exercise component that we have is having a great impact on not only the students, but the staff as well. >> okay. poor susan, i know that the ada made a lot of changes to the drinks that were available in schools such as taking way to lauric sodas. i'm curious what kind of reactions and were they able to just okay? >> just to make sure everybody knows what exactly be dead. as part of the alliance for a healthier generation, which was

the program that preceded mrs. obama is very dynamic "let's move" effort. after talking to the girls k-12, they wanted two things. one for little kids, limited choices, for the high school kids, parents said they would like to have more choices but let's make sure that we are pushing them towards moderated calories. we took out caloric soft drinks and everything else that had calories, we lowered the portion size. you're getting something with calories with smaller size or you are picking a water or a diet beverage or low-calorie one. that is what we get. the feedback as a beverage

company, we will listen to the mothers first. that is the gateway to the future. this is what the moms mom. and we are very glad to be aligned with them. in terms of the students, as the companies have been able to innovate and provide more choices, it is not just a diet soda or water or 100% juice. it is all the other things that are out there. powell aide like well, lots of different choices that taste good and have low calories. that is what is worth it to students. i want to talk about physical education and go back to that. what we have seen is that schools are dropping physical education from the curriculum. it is usually due to budget

cuts. when we are thinking about higher priorities for schools, sometimes it's going to be math or science programs. technology. jim is seen as an easy cut. you work with schools on programming around physical education and how you explain how it should be a priority for student. >> students can't learn if they don't have a good physical activity program. that is the basis to learning. it is the basic brain development for building synapses and critical education is critical. a book by charles bosch was written on health. i read it.

healthier students are better learners. the missing link in health and education reform. the second quote is about the cdc, which is the association between physical activity and school-based physical activity and academic performance. two books belong in every professional development library. these have taken hundreds of studies and analyzes analyzed them according to what benefit they have two academic programs for the. the more time, intensity that they have towards activity, the higher the test scores. that makes a better student in general. there is lower discipline in the schools, they demonstrate less

stress levels. there are so many benefits to physical education activity that if people drop it, they are doing a total disservice to the field of education. i am just curious what kinds of conversations you are having with schools, what challenges there are, what challenges they are discussing. how have you been able to work around some of those? >> one of the major challenges that schools are facing is the fact that, i mean, you cut down on physical education. they also don't have recess either. a lot of people don't realize that. over 40% of schools no longer have recess. i don't know about you, but i don't know if i could survive in school today because without

that recess was the thing i look forward to and needed my moment to decompress. kids don't have that anymore. games like tag and red rover, remember those? if you ask a kid today what they do at recess, they look at you like you have two heads. it is something that is really important. it is important for kids to be able to have that time to decompress. it is not just about structured physical activity and having is that in school which is another opportunity for them to be told what to do they need to figure out and negotiate with each other, developing social skills that we are missing because we are a mess. a lot of kids are like this.

like it was said, kids are spending 10 hours a day -- and that doesn't include school time, by the way for the 10 hours a day on the a device does not include time in school. there is a lot that can be done. organizations like [inaudible name] that teach kids how to play. they have play coaches. they go to schools and teach kids how to organize groups and organized the game and play. there are lots of schools that don't even have playgrounds anymore. green space areas to run around. that is a tremendous problem.

>> going back to the more vigorous curriculums that doctor meyer was discussing the benefits of earlier, i think that another reason i would imagine that schools are really taking gym classes seriously is because so often it is seen as a free period. especially listening to your friends, talking on the bleachers, you're not doing a lot there. i just want to know, what is an effective physical education program, what does it look like? what aspects of that require? >> he has reorganized and there will still be a school health program. they have developed a physical education criminal to an analysis tool.

this is excellent. every school needs this and it is all mine. it is in the online manual that explains exactly what a quality physical education program is read how do you assess it and how do you know what children need to have a level. preschool through 12th grade. it explains -- it is everything. they have done a nice job and i can't say enough. there is training available on how people can use it. i think administrators need is not just for teachers in the classroom where the program supervisors. but administrators say this because so many times, administrators when they are observing the teachers, they aren't sure of what they should be observing. you know, they don't know what is educational in the physical education program.

there are people, and i hate to say it, but let the program slide because they know that the administrator doesn't know what is a quality program. >> i will let mr. jones respond to that. we are talking about here is what you have to do. can you give a specific example of what we should look for? what is the education component? is it to be hypercompetitive? what is a? >> it should be like any great fun. they should have learning outcomes, they should be accessible, they should have planned lessons, sequential that are developmentally appropriate. the lessons should be tied to the outcome. it should have all those components within it. that is one thing to look for. the second is how is it delivered? what type of delivery is the

instructor using, are the interactive or are they just going over what the rules are things. this should be lifelong learning that students are getting in their physical education krypton. it should not be a lot of competitive sports. it should be skilled base. it should be how are we developing that child mentally and socially and intellectually. it should be a combination of those components. >> mr. jones, can you describe some of the applications that you are doing at your school in regards to physical education? >> can you hear him? >> hello. [laughter] >> just beating back on some of the comments here. one thing that we had in public school was academically we were

pushing and pushing. we are constantly pushing our kids to go for the gold standard. always increasing. it seems to me it's a great idea that we know where our country is ranking amongst other countries around the world. we are in a panic zone to compete on all levels. with that, we have taken so much out of the other aspects of learning that i once had. ..