booktv.org. and join our online book club as we feature current bestseller each month. get the latest updates throughout the week. follow was on facebook and twitter. >> tonight on c-span we will discuss the u.s. budget and the future of science research. our guest is juan enriquez, founder of the harvard business school's life sciences project. at 8 p.m. eastern we will begin with a look at his remarks from a recent fiscal summit where he spoke about the urgency of addressing the nation's growing debt and how it's impacting investments in science. here's a preview. >> let's pull ourselves out of the business of discussing the fiscal deficit and start talking of things which are really important which are the long-term trends. because right now the fiscal debate is taking all the options out of the picture either on the side or you're on this site. you have all kinds of fights about stuff, which is reasonable compromises that have not

happened. and when you do that, what ends up happening is you don't understand the truly important transitions that are taking place because you're focused all day all the time just on the dust. and you might be missing the big picture. here's what the big picture looks like. humans are the only species on earth, that transmit data consistently to the kids across time. so maybe a dog learned commands. may be a parent learns words. maybe wales have songs but there isn't an animal on earth that rights on cave walls except a human being. and why it is so important to write on cave walls? look, this is how you have a baby. dishes how we dress. this is how many of us there are. these are our musical instruments and you just learned a whole pot about what was happening in argentina 2000 years ago. as you think about how we transmit knowledge, not for a try, it's not enough for an empire.

why? because he had to go to the cave to learn what's going on. an empire on the other hand looks like this. two things have happened. you have standardized on what you put on paper or clay which widget can transmit data across time and you can also learn the lessons of white egypt fell. all of you clearly know, if you can read that, right. it basically says that the deficit. right? in which it is you standardize language and jamaica extracting and 26 letters and it looks like this. and you can have huge libraries and transmit data across time and, of course, in this you can write little sentences that say that the deficit. and then what's happened over the last 30 years is you collapse all language into ones and zeros. that's the single greatest creator of wealth humans addressing. it's of the countries that understood this transition because they were t focused all

the time on current problems but was looking at the future. that generated an enormous amount of will to you want to understand the rise of silicon valley, of taiwan, a boston come of korea of singapore or bengal dort india if the transition right there -- >> watch his entire remarks at eight eastern tonight followed at 8:30 p.m. was alive call in with juan enriquez will take your questions and comments. it's all tonight beginning at 8:00 over on our companion network c-span. >> a new book detailing the work of mitt romney's 2012 presidential transition team was discussed wednesday at an event hosted by the partnership for public service in washington, d.c. transition chairman mike leavitt and executive director chris slidell talked about the lessons learned and the work behind the scenes their team was doing to prepare for a potential victory i mitt romney in the 20 to presidential campaign. this is 90 minutes.

>> good morning, everybody. good morning, and it's much bigger. i'm the president of the partnership for public service. for the co not only with a partnership we are a nonpartisan nonprofit organization tried to make our federal government better. and there is to my mind a more important topic than the one we have to discuss this morning, presidential transitions. and i am deeply honored to have the opportunity to host the book release the retrospective and lessons learned from the romney readiness project which was truly an amazing project and we are going to be hearing a lot more about it very soon. the topic is of critical importance, kind of my mind an amazing. we live in the most powerful and important country in the world, the government is of our country is the most complicated powerful import organization in the world. one of the things we learned as

children is that one of the things that distinguishes us as a country is that democratic and peaceful transfer of power. and what that means is you have among other things 4000 new political leaders at every four to eight just have to come in, the right people have to be selected, they have to prepare the agenda for running that very large and public air or decision has to be sent. and, frankly, by and large the historical record has not been very good about the prepping work that has been done to do that. at a formal transition. has always assumed to be from election day to the inauguration. that's two and a half months. we all know how you begin to set the stage for everything that comes later. and, frankly, two and half months is not enough to take over the very complicated powerful organization. so the work that we're going to learn more about today that all of you are many of you have participated in putting together i think it's fundamental to our billy as a country to meet the new challenges that we faced have a government that is ready to go on day one, and any world in which we have more and more

complicated faster pace of things occur and which require again a government that is ready and that is able to deal with a lot of unexpected things immediately. we know from history that the point of transition is also a point of maximum vulnerability and there are individual and groups that try to take advantage of it. so really getting this right is essential. the romney readiness project was i think a remarkable effort. remarkable in two ways, both with that debt -- death and after winning to being prepared but equally important was the effort that was made to actually document the work that was being done. again within an environment which transition that by and large has been one of oral history. without any real systematize effort to capture how to do this right. as of this is i think a real important contribution for the future and to consummate hope we can talk a little more about. it's an exceptional audience we have here.

i want to dodge a few of the folks that are here. beginning with governor mike leavitt and chris labelle who let this ever. we also have clark campbell, daniel cruz who are not only engaged in the readiness project itself but were instrumental putting together the book that all of you hope to have a copy of from the partnership's board i will also want to acknowledge doug conant who is a master of leadership among many other things and really terrific to have him here and on the board of the partnership. another board member who is just one of my public service euros. from government we have don fox was the director of the office of government ethics. will be hearing from chris lue who is over here shortly here but he both was head of cabinet affairs for the obama to shake and was executor of the obama 2008 presidential election and

is working for closely with us on the partnership efforts to prepare our route planning and also new political appointees. we also have josh sitting here, who ran the very best ever transition out for an administration among many, many other remarkable achievement, it is tricked out in there and not very far, clay johnson, who is not only when the bush transition coming in but is a true expert in asia of transition -- yes, that's a good agenda i would say, too. we have and you mcbride and steve, who somehow got to work with very closely when he was in the bush administration and was one of the i think two stars among the management both in the bush administration. john is here. he ran the department of homeland secured his first transition ever and very important helped us as well to

understand how to do that there. martha who is a scholar and great expert on the issue of transitions, and much more, the white house more generally, terrific to have you. dan bleier sitting next to her is the head of -- fabless or decision also a great ally. the work has been supported by boston consulting group, and peter is here, or there will be, there are folks here. they have helped us in a number of ways that i'll come back to very quickly, sure that we also have tom who is a legend and a constant voice of reason in a capacity in all things related to presidential work. so it's great to have him here. and then finally i also wanted to recognize christina simmons who is my colleague at the partnership for public service right over here. she has let all this work. i get to see these words, she

does all the work. not a very fair about the code all the work we've done has been driven by your. and also shannon carroll to put together this event itself which we are amongst friends here. we all know she has done a great job. so it's really terrific. so before we get to the main attraction and we'll hear from governor leavitt and then have a conversation with the governor leavitt, chris, and bring in some folks, other voices that are knowledgeable on this issue including chris lu, i want to very, very quickly give you some context on the partnerships work itself. we start in 2007 focusing on the issue of presidential transition. may 2008 we brought together at that point democratic primary have not been resolved but clinton, the obama campaigns representatives from the mccain campaign and the bush administration and off the record small forum to talk about how you prepare well for transition. and critically at this stage of the game, the public was you don't do this.

you do it in the dead of night. and is a very interesting conversation that was had, that really understood how the process was done with. we shared information that connected folks. from that we develop a set of recommendations that became the basis of legislation in 2010 that senator ted kaufman, a champion and was able to pass. probably the most important element of that legislation was moving at the time treated from election day to the culmination of the convention at which point the government would actually provide official transition support for the party's nominee. and part of the purpose there is we believe that it was important to flip the switch, to move the presumption to being one that did it in the dead of the night to you did a public would because as part of your responsibility. and the romney campaign, romney transition project was the first to operate under that new legislative environment. and in 2012, in may, we have a

great pleasure of meeting governor leavitt, chris, if you other folks from the romney campaign to try to help them connect them to people who understood how best to run transition and help in any way that we could. in full disclosure, you've already signed up for may 2016, and it really is important to quickly that the work that's been done here is foundational but it's going to provide an opportunity for all future campaigns to do this better. it's going to be the foundation for our country so the governments that are ready to govern when we need him to be ready. and part of our process here is not only t told that forum but e are also trying to come up with what we have a set of ideas that we want to discuss here a little bit about judicial legislative regulations as well as we are putting together a transition guide that will build off the work that has been done here and hopefully lay out a more, a completely kind of thing that campaigns need to be thinking about to be prepared. so that's just as fast as i can

speak because this is really important to get to the main attraction here, and i'm really looking forward to this conversation. so first, governor leavitt, all yours. thank you. >> thank you very much and thanks to the center, max, and your colleagues are organizing this. there's a bit of a reunion atmosphere among many of us who haven't seen each other for a time. this was a very positive interpersonal expense for all of us and i'm pleased that so many are here. i would like to just re-emphasize a couple of things that max made reference to. first, i'd like to begin with an acknowledgment of the office. we did not transition, and hence this was a plan to transition. i think the true test of any plan is actual execution and, therefore, we ought to acknowledge the fact that many of the challenges that face and administration, this does not

recount. but it does recount i think some extraordinarily good preparation, and it does also acknowledge the fact this was the first time, as max suggested, that the 2010 presidential transition act had been operated under andover we felt it was important that we document to the degree possible our experience. i also would like to acknowledge that this is not about what might've been. this is about what we learned. and so our conversation ought to be focused on that. when we determined to put together this book or report, our charge was our self-imposed charge was to make it practical. this is not a historical problem. it's designed to be a practical recounting of her own expenses in an effort to be able to be useful for others. it's i think important to remember that we are three years away now from two transitions

being formed. when our government will, in fact, begin to transition to a new administration. i'll just acknowledge that with that in mind that we chose the name, the romney readiness project. we would've changed to the romney transition had the election result been different, but from the very beginning we acknowledge and recognize that we're in the process of a planning effort. i do like to just review briefly, if i can, the major contents of the report, and then at the same time, then make a couple of comments on my own personal reflections. the first month, this would have been a, a year ago, it was aisha a group of eight, 10 of us who took out a temporary office over on new jersey avenue to quietly begin this process. while we were operating under the presidential transition act of 2010, and the work had in

fact been legitimized by law, there still was a concern that we not be seen as a distraction as of the campaign and the was a real were anything to do with any, that if information and the curiosity is naturally there could begin to surface of it could be a distraction. so we did begin very quietly. but that was an extraordinarily important period because it was during that time when we do i suspect, i suspect any transition effort has been in the past and we started by reviewing all the literature we could find about this. max characterized previous transition records as primarily being boxes that been passed from one person's basement to the next person's desk, and sorting through trying to bring order to. there have been a number of extraordinarily good pieces of literature written. max mentioned martha kumar. she didn't a shelf of about 20 books and unhappy, martha, to

tell you that every one of them were read. and we review them, obviously some consistent themes but they were very important foundation. most of what's written and tends to get focused not so much on the structure but on the cover that surrounds them. and to our effort has been as much to focus more on the structure and less on the color. some important decisions were made, are covered really in chapter two of the book. we laid out a series of basic deliverables, essentially into four buckets, if you will. the first was a deliverable to develop a 200 day plan. now, we chose 200 days as a horizon because 100 days was just traditionally spoken of, it's just too short. at 200 days tends to coincide with the august recess of congress, and it's been the observation that were made on

looking at other transitions that administrations really have between inauguration day and the august recess to create the big push to get their initiatives on the ground. included in our 200 day plan of course with the framework of a budget, which is the means by which most administrations are able to actually get their initiatives through. the second big deliverable was putting a continuum on the ground. this, of course, represents a cabinet, the white house staff, national security team, the national economic team. and then the top 100 or 150 most important senate confirmed positions, or key places. i want as i will at some points today, acknowledge clay johnson who early on pointed at this as a very important priority at and i came to believe that he is absolutely right.

it's a deficiency frankly and the way our government response to transitions, and it's so hard to get a team on the ground that we knew we had to put a substantial amount of emphasis there. the third would've been a congressional relationships. obviously, if you're going to put a president into a new administration and have an agenda, congress has to be prepared. and so the third was preparing our relationships with congress. the fourth was the office of the president elect, you can't and to the white house. so there's -- those are the four basic buckets were organized in chapter three you will see that we created a master planning schedule. we broke our effort into essentially for faces. the first was the planning phase. until the convention. the second was we refer to it as the readiness face. the presidential transition act of 2010 essentially engages the

federal government and a formal way three days after the nominating convention of the party. and so while we were not able to take government space until that point in time, ma we were actively engaged in the early phase with gsa and other planning so that when the three days following the convention arrived, we would be ready. the third was what we call the transition phase. that would have been from election day until the inauguration, and the last was a handoff. so those four different time divisions framed our work. in chapter three you also begin to see some basic decisions that were reflected in all of our work and i would like to talk about some key principles that we follow that you see reflected as you review the book. the first, and i think the distinction part of our effort, was the principle of going narrow and deep as opposed to

expensive and shallow. and let me describe what i mean by that. there's a tendency when you have an opportunity to plan a new administration to allow it to become a tournament of priorities. and anyone who is involved would have the ability to define what they thought out to be done to make the world a better place. we conclude to focus exclusively on the commitments that mitt romney was making in the campaign. and we actually formed a document that you will see reflected in the book, we refer to as the general instructions. these are charges that were made by the candidate, mitt romney, to me as the chairman to prepare. and our effort was focused and disciplined on delivering those, on those items.

i believe one of the components of our work that will have value for others to view our series of interlocking charters that were drafted following the general instructions. we took the general instructions and sent here are the narrow things we have to accomplish in a deep way. we then wrote charters that essentially laid out a work plan for east -- for each of the departments of government. now, if you're to look at our work from a high level what i think you'd see is we aspire to great a federal government in miniature. if you walk down the hall at the swisher building you would see the state department, the defense department, the treasury department, hhs, et cetera. and in each of those can each of those areas we populated them

with a group of highly experienced policy people who have actually served in those departments. so as we took a peek of the general instructions, and to use it as an illustration, the authorization of the keystone pipeline, which was a commitment that governor romney had made that it would happen on the first day. well, one thing to say were going to do it, it's another thing to be ready. that would require action by the state department it would require by the energy department, the commerce department, the interior department, the epa, and a number of other agencies at the federal government. it would require actual words being drafted it would require that we are the thoughts ar of a whole series of contingencies. so in essence we created the federal government in miniature. we gave each department a charter that tie back to the general instructions and then organize a series of interagency processes again using the keystone pipeline as an example, we brought all of them together to a task force to resolve the

issues so that on day one we had a deliverable that could, in fact, be executed. another important component i think of our process was the discipline around what we refer to as the one page project manager, which was a system that was actually brought to us, clarke campbell was the originator of it, and it's something i used at hhs, have to get a gun on one page. so we had on page 25 and 26 you will see the federal government in its entirety on one page. i'm happy to acknowledge that on that day, which was election day when that was done, you will see that all the boxes were green. that was not without substantial effort and there was times it was not all green, but on election day it was all green. i want to also recognize that there were 104, one page project

managers below that one page that you can see the entire federal government on. but that was an important discipline, and a decision to do that and to maintain a systematic approach i think will prove to be an important and valuable lesson. another principle was that policy was made in boston, and that washington and our readiness project was about execution. it was clear that our general instructions was the general instructions with our charge. and that it was not our decision as to whether or not a commitment should be made or what should be made a priority. those with the decisions of the candidate, who would make commitments to the american people. as a result of that we had a very close working relationship with, with the policy shop in

boston. the man who ran that shop was a close ally as was consulted every step of the way because when he came to making a decision about whether they keystone pipeline would be offering the first of that was a discussion going on between governor romney and drank and his team. the reality was we were focused on, policy was done in boston. next principle was a unified voice with congress. there was an instant, instinct on the part of congress who wanted to become involved in the preparation for transition. that was understandable. but we had a principle that when we dealt with members of congress that it was one voice between the campaign and the the transition. dosages without a belief we worked hard to maintain. and lastly i will just say,

well, our preparation was no secret. confidentiality was a key principle and honor phrase was, the readiness project had no voice. we did not speak for governor romney. it was not our role to talk about policy. our job was to prepare to execute the commitment that he had made. moving on into chapter five, you'll see as we move into the planning phase, a lot happened. i mentioned we took over 129,000 square feet. i'd like to acknowledge that gsa did an excellent job in preparing for us. on a third day after the air-conditioned we moved into a business ready in time it. the organization -- on the third day after the convention we moved into a business ready. at that point we can to stand up for agency review process. again, according to our general

instructions, jim quickly did a great job with it. we began to develop names. we developed what i shall be referred to later as the betting poker. it was a highly confidential place. no information left that room. you had to be cleared into it. we were obvious i wanted to protect the privacy of those that were begin -- were being considered. were not able by making contact and having it is of course at that point, but we did as much as we could to be prepared. i mentioned in just a moment the level of our preparation. we began to develop white house various white house organizational scheme, structures. we talked about, we began to organize landing teams. we began to create presidential readiness for the office of the president elect. i'll just cause there and make this comment. i think we completely

underestimated the size of that job. and i want to just mention steve prescott. steve preston, excuse me. steve and i were friends in the bush cabinet, and, just a great stroke of luck that he was, had a business, sale and has an time and he just did a great job in being able to do that. we began to develop a presidential schedule. we had 10 days friend and and a process to go, they'r thereforet you get a chance to see that. ..

>> those that don't, that do it poorly often never recover. this is a very important discipline. i'd like to emphasize what max suggested earlier, that failure to prepare or a proper transition of power truly does put the nation at risk. and it is not possible in 77 days to prepare a nation for a transition of that magnitude. starting early is important. i think the presidential, the presidential transition act of 2010 made a meaningful contribution to this effort. i'm sure there are continued refinements, but we must not step back from that. it only needs to become more

disciplined. senator conklin's leadership, i want to note he was very useful in not just what he did, but in his insights. i also want to mention the center for best practices and the franchise that they've developed in informally looking after this process. also the aspen institute. identify mentioned clay johnson -- i've mentioned clay johnson and his work as a self-declared zealot. the world needs that. josh bolton's been acknowledged as well and many others that we were able to interview who shared their wisdom freely. i also want to acknowledge that the obama administration was responsive and very useful. and they were good to work with. people would have been proud of the sense of bipartisanship that existed in these interactions. i also believe that abundant credit is due to george w. bush for setting what i believe to be a very high standard.

repeatedly, officials of the obama administration acknowledged the tone that was set in the 2008 transition. and they were committed, obviously, to hold themselves to that same standard in dealing with us. obviously, our product was -- our preparation was never tested, and their grace was never tested. [laughter] but the reality is it's clear to me that everyone was intending to make this a professional and statesmanlike proposition and, in fact, i am confident it would have been. i've acknowledged the gsa and their good work. they were resolved to make this a professional effort. and finally, i want to recognize that the book mentions the names of even who was involved. of everyone who was involved. and it's impossible really to

adequately talk about or acknowledge the extraordinary group of people that, that were involved. i do want to acknowledge that at the very beginning a couple of people who were there at the foundation of this work -- chris liddell, obviously, jim quigley, doug wooden and jamie burke. there were others. jamie, i think when you accept a responsibility like this, the first thing i think you want to do is to find the person who knows, has a better rolodex in washington than everyone else, and i'm convinced that was jamie. we had worked together at hhs, and she had been in a number of different roles. and most of the team that you can see in this book reflects in some way, directly or indirectly, people's willingness to respond to her. i've acknowledged that on many occasions how many times you have a chance to surround yourself with people like the

former cfo of microsoft and general motors and the former worldwide chairman of deloiotte like jim quigley and chris liddell. doug wooden, steve preston, tevi and drew maloney, brian hook. i also want to mention with special appreciation clark campbell and daniel cruz. not just for their work in putting this report together, which i think you'll agree is exceptional, but also the key role they played in the one-page management process. and daniel and many others who he symbolizes. daniel would be my nominee for the unknown soldier award. [laughter] he and many of his colleagues were there day and night through thick and thin, in good weather and bad. so there was some bad weather, by the way. and i, so i think that's important. and finally, i think important to acknowledge mitt romney who

deployed all of us in the nation's service. and i've come to appreciate the fact as a person who's done public service myself and run for office a few times myself. i've come to appreciate the fact that those who run for office and those who work with them when they don't win, they have done some of the hardest public service there is. but it is, in fact, a public service. and so in summary, i would just say we built a great ship, but it did not sail. but others are going to benefit from our design, and we're grateful to have done it. max? >> thank you very much, governor. [applause] governor, there's like a thousand questions that i have, so i'm going to start with, obviously, leadership does matter -- >> we going to hear from chris?

>> we will hear from chris, too, so i'm looking for a conversation more generally as well. but if i can start with you, you've had a remarkable career. as a governor you saw transitions, as a cabinet secretary you saw transitions, and i think, again, it starts with the leader. what are the qualities that you believe are important for future transition chairmen or chairpeople? >> well, i think that's a very important question, and i will acknowledge that that's dealt with here. and while i'm thinking about it, i will say we have arranged that this book and report could be available on amazon.com, and i think here through the center for those who in future years will want to, will want to find, to be able to use it. and i talked a bit about it in a forward i wrote about what i thought were important characteristics of the relationship between the candidate and the person that they call on ask what those might be. and what those might be.

the first one, i think, is a relationship of -- that's been preestablished. having a relationship with the candidate where you can speak candidly with them and at a level that isn't the, still being worked out is important. and i have that kind of relationship with mitt romney, and it was obvious to me that that would be important. i think a trusted relationship with the campaign organization cannot and should not be underestimated. there's a natural tension always between the campaign and the transition. the campaign is worried about what those people are doing. [laughter] it's, there's not a lot being said about it, but they're worried that they might get in the way of the campaign or do something that could be, that could distract from the message. toward the end they're worried

about are they dividing up things we might want to have a hand in, are they doing things that'll not be easy to undo. so having a relationship with the senior members of the campaign, i think, was a very important part of that process. i think a person who shares basically the ideology and understands the policy instincts of the candidate was important. i think that having an extensive personal knowledge of washington was, is really important. i think if i had the benefit of working here as part of the cabinet and sitting in a couple of roles in the cabinet, being governor, i just think that was a value -- that doesn't mean everyone needs to. but in some way they need to have some have had some washington experience. it's, i think having an extensive network of people, that's where -- or having access

to one. i mentioned jamie who had worked in that area in previous administrations and had relationships that were valuable. having some executive leadership responsibilities in the past. and, i think, being able to devote full time to it. this is a very demanding role, and i became convinced that it needed to happen here in washington. because that's where the government's going to ultimately stand up, that's where the resources of the gsa are going to be under the presidential transition act. i recognize that there are those who view it as being important otherwise. and then lastly, i'd just say not a job seeker. i think it's important that that person also be able to come at this and walk away from it and leave the administration, turn over the keys on inauguration day. >> terrific. to your point, chris, you have a -- as the governor said -- a stellar record in the private sector. and i'm quite interested in learning what you think about

the federal government. what do you think about the transition process? [laughter] >> before he does that, could i just say that there is no one person who deserves more acknowledgment in the way this unfolded than chris liddell. chris was the, as i mentioned, cfo of microsoft and general motors. this is a highly sophisticated business person, as max alludes. our relationship was one where i was able to focus on many of the things i alluded to. chris made this work. and i just want to acknowledge there were many people who played roles that were important, but it's important that we acknowledge publicly chris' very important function as the executive director of the transition. you're free to speak now. [laughter] >> a round of applause. [applause] >> will well, i think there's a

set of principles that apply to any large public project whether it be private or public, and really we applied those principles to the project which is why it was so successful. if i break it down into simple terms, start with a very, very clear objective of what you're trying to achieve. have a vision of a very clear one that you can communicate to everyone about what you're trying to achieve. secondly, then break that down into a set of very manageable and discreet and in some cases parallel, in some cases sequential tasks, but a coordinated set of tasks that collectively add up to the vision you're trying to achieve. and third, hire some great people. and all that sounds simple, but it actually is. and if you apply the, apply the principles, it's amazing how much you can achieve and how well you can organize things. the parallel i would say is actually the previous role that i had is very similar to the role that i had here.

the previous role was as cfo and vice chairman of general motors, and i came in post-bankruptcy to help that company get back on its feet again. and the role that i principally had was to organize the resources associated with the company's ipo, initial public offering. and that was, coincidentally, about a six to nine month project with a very defined target, in this case, you know, taking the company back public. as it turned out, we raised $23 billion and helped pay back the federal government, some of the money that had been invested. but very similar sort of principles. similar time frame, about the same number of people. and really it was the same basic set of principles. we had a very clear objective, in that case take the company back public. in this case, obviously, prepare mitt romney and everyone associated with him for transitioning to the federal government. we then broke it down into a series of tasks, and the governor covered some of deliverables that we had. we had five clear deliverables

against which we were planning, and we break those five deliverables down into a very clear series of steps and allocations and responsibilities through the work that clark campbell did and the opm work. and then we hired some great people. and the governor referred to jamie and the team that she built. we started with three or four people, and we ended up with close to 500. but i have to say and, you know, anecdotally to one of your things, i was incredibly impressed by the quality of people we were able to attract. and if you said the surprise coming from private sector to public sector, a pleasant surprise to me was just how good people were, the quality of people who came in and the dedication. and it says in the book 85% of the people who came in were volunteers. you know, people weren't coming in so they could make a lot of money out of this. exactly the opposite, most contributed their time and expenses for free. so we were able to get first

class people who were passionate about it who were coming in because they believed in what they were trying to do and were just an outstanding -- so, in fact, the general principles that i applied in the private sector applied here in the public sector, and they're exactly the same. and to me, the only thing that you have to toggle around is the balance between how much you make definitive, how much is just literally sit out and how much you leave flexible for either individual initiative or for course correction along the way. and we did course correct a bit. we certainly set out with a very clear objective, but inevitably things came up, and as the campaign changed and as vince came along, we course corrected. but that's really the only difference in any individual project. if you stick to a certain set of principles and you're absolutely rigorous about them and you continuously reinforce them, communicate them, any large

scale project, any endeavor can be successfully achieved. >> were there any other surprises for you or thing that is you wish you had known at the front end that you learned through, you know, hard labor? >> i wish i'd had this book at the start. [laughter] it would be a lot easier second time round. we were learning on the fly. and we had the governor's leadership and his knowledge base, and we had, you know, you alluded to the confidence that we had, and that was incredibly useful. and we had the ability to tap into resources, people like clay and josh, which was fantastic. but, and this is, i think, one of the key learnings, you shouldn't have to relearn. you shouldn't have to grab a bit of information and a bit of information there and a bit of information there. that's just not a good way of approaching this. and so one of the key objectives the governor alluded to for us doing this, documenting it, is, you know, people aren't going to do it exactly the same way as we did. but hopefully, they can pick up a body of knowledge and not have

to drag pieces from over it. and when you think about how important the u.s. government is and how important the transition is, it is manager that should be -- it is something that should be as well researched and as systematic as it possibly can. >> right. that's excellent. and i think one of the way you deserve kudos is the fact that you did this work in realtime, that you actually collected the information now rather than waiting three and a half years when memories are foggy, when the boxes are strewn in multiple locations, and you don't really know what they mean. so really it's a great contribution that you actually did this while you were doing everything else which is, again, amazingly commendable. >> well, in all fairness, we did have a couple of months we hadn't expected. [laughter] >> for clarity's sake, you did start this process, and my understanding is in september, is that right? in terms of collecting information. so you knew at the front at that you wanted to document the work

that you were doing which, again, is i think a great contribution. >> we would have documented whether we'd been successful or not. >> right. can we take one minute to focus on the legislative structure that we have here? obviously, we talked a little wit about the 2010 transition -- a little bit about the 2010 transition act and the opportunities it provided you. are there other things beyond the direct support for, at the point of the convention, beyond that that you found useful from the 2010 act, and then i could add on to that, are there things that you think going forward when we talk about, again, moving it forward, not rolling it back? are there additional tweaks that you think would actually benefit future transition efforts? >> i believe there are areas where time will refine processes. there was, for example, written into the law a requirement that we negotiate with gsa a memorandum of understanding. i suspect it took longer the first time than it will in subsequent years.

to do that. one of the big contributions of, i think, the presidential transition act of 2010 was providing access to federal agencies to do security clearances at a certain level early. there are, there is a need literally from the election forward to have people who are cleared and have, rather, the clearance is required to receive sensitive and classified information. having the ability to do that weeks in advance in certain situations was a critical and important response. and, again, i would acknowledge that the justice department and others who were involved in that process did their job in a professional way. i think we can streamline that process still. and it's important. because when you're dealing with the days ticking away, an election is -- it's like a fuse

burning. it's going to happen. and if you're -- a day that is lost is a day that's wasted. and in terms of readiness. so i think being in a position to improve those processes not that they were done poorly, but just they hadn't been done before. and now they have, and i think some discussion in advance will continue. there may be legislative tweaks. they're not things that i'm prepared to at this point speak about, but i think that process ought to be, we ought to refine it, we ought to go back to congress and say here's what we learn, and part of that what we hope that will achieve is represented here. chris, you may have some -- >> yeah. i think we do need to formalize some things, and as the governor said, it worked very well. we had great cooperation from the white house. but there's things like the governor mentioned, the bush transition and the great work josh did. there were some things that we learned from that that i think could become more formalized and

documented so that future transitions don't have to start from scratch. the thing i don't think we need is a department of transitions. [laughter] so i would not be adding a lot of people or creating new professions or adding a layer of, dare i say, bureaucracy to the process. having said that, in particular when you know there's going to be a transition as there will be in the next one, there are certain things that happen, if you like, on an informal, ad hoc basis that i think are more systematic that would allow either party to transition more efficiently. >> one thing i have thought about hypothetically is in 2016 there'll be two of these going on at the same time. >> right. >> and i hope that gsa is planning to have them in separate locations. [laughter] there's a lot of sensitivity about that. for understandable reasons.

and while that represents more cost, can i say this is a very small amount of money by comparison as an insurance premium on continuity of government and the stability of the united states. and i don't think that's an under-- is overstated in any way. so i think as we move in to the period between now and 2016, some thought needs to be given to this unique situation where you'll have two teams transitioning simultaneously and making preparations for that. >> yeah. and i think it's a terrific point. darren blue from gsa who ran that effort is not here today but, i think, did an exceptional job. >> did an outstanding job. >> and i could put my own commercial plug in here, it does seem to me that, again, we need to have more effort to highlight the good things that some of the agencies are doing. i think that was a vital, vital effort, and it received little attention whereas when something

goes wrong, there was a huge amount of attention, and we need both. in prior presidential years, there have been, you know, allegations of candidates measuring the drapes, you know, or celebrating early. why didn't that happen in 2012? >> well, i do think the presidential transition act of 2010 provided the necessary authorization for us to be doing this in a forward-thinking and proper way. i think that's part of the contribution of the act, was simply the legitimizing of that process. that's an important contribution. i think it's also a challenge for any transition to maintain the degree of, to maintain the proper profile. it is very -- one of the -- it

wasn't a surprise, but i think it is notable how willing people are to be involved in this process, and it is a function of how important it is. and people like to talk about that. and they, there were just a handful of situations where our discipline broke down. grately, not in a way that caused or -- gratefully, not in a way that caused or created problems. but i think it's a combination of the 2010 act, and then i think we worked hard at maintaining the proper profile, and i think that's something future transition could learn about and not allow to become part of the conversation. there's going to be a certain amount of political banter, and i think it'll be one of those traditional things that happen in every campaign. people will probably still talk about it and try to figure out what's happening and try to make a political issue out of it. but the combination of the act and a proper profile, i think, created an atmosphere where it

could happen. >> yeah. and i think you set the right precedent, as you say, we'll move forward. i could ask one more question and invite chris to join the conversation. as you alluded to earlier, much of the challenge in setting up a new administration involves bringing in the right people and the right talent. how did you prioritize the positions? because you can't, you know, 4,000 political appointees, you can't do them all in one bite. and what kinds of qualities were you looking for? >> we started by assuming that we had to stand up a white house staff as our first priority. we had to have a national security team, we had to have a national economic team. it was, in many cases -- or in many ways driven by our general instructions. what did we have to have in place in order to deliver and execute on the things that mitt romney add committed to do as a candidate? we were prepared on the thursday following the election with, to

begin the process of choosing a cabinet and a white house staff. we had chosen, as i indicated before, five to eight, depending on the slot, prevetted candidates for each of those positions. now, that would not have forestalled other names from surfacing, other input, but it was a place to start, and we were prepared to start on the day after the election. but we prioritized according to our general instructions and the issues that we needed to deliver during the first 200 days. >> so if it works for you, maybe we can invite chris to come up and join the conversation here. you know, you alluded earlier to the cooperation that you felt around this issue and i think, again, from a nonprofit, nonpartisan perspective it's one of the things that i most admire, that you have a set of dedicated people who are committed to making government work right.

and, you know, leave aside the political differences, recognizing that at the end of the day, we all want our country to succeed. and i think this is an area where i think there's been remarkable cooperation. so it really is a great pleasure to have the three of you up here. you know, chris, this must be an interesting experience for you having done the 2008 transition, seeing the 2012. and i wanted just to start with you have many initial observations about your sense about, you know, this process and what happened this time versus when you were responsible. >> well, thank you for having me, and i want to acknowledge josh bolton and president bush's administration. i know president obama has been very appreciative, publicly appreciative about the important cooperation and really the extraordinary efforts that the bush administration provided to us. and to the extent that we had a successful transition, it was because of the cooperation and help and planning that the bush administration had done. i also just want to compliment governor left visit and chris -- leavitt and chris for putting

this document together. as one of those people who inherited boxes of documents -- [laughter] i went, when i was tapped to be the executive director, i went to meet with jim johnson who had planned john kerry's transition, and it was literally -- he goes into the closet and pulls out boxes of documents which included some gordon transition documents as well and handed them off to me, and i was shifting through them. one of the things jim told me was after senator kerry lost, he had kept a research assistant on for about a week afterwards just catalog. so after our transition, i did the same process. i tried to update it for the 21st century, and i put it on flash drive instead. [laughter] i don't think we ever would have thought to do a book, butly say they -- i will say i will recommend this to future transitions, because this is really a remarkable englishment that you all have -- accomplishment that you all have done here. i think from my perspective having read the work that you all did, i think the three major differences for us was our operation was significantly

smaller. i think by election day we probably only had around 15 people on payroll. and when you include the unpaid volunteers, we were probably maybe 75. and in part that was the confidentiality concerns that the governor talked about, and part of it was the space concerns. i mean, if any of you are at heritage, we had the office above the subway on massachusetts avenue over on the senate side, and i don't know what your offices were on new jersey avenue, but these were not great offices you had. you could literally smell the subway sub shop all day long, and it was not a place you wanted to hang out. so we had a much smaller operation. and we had to operate in secret in a way the romney folks, fortunately, did not. i think the third big difference we had was we were putting together a transition at a time of remarkable change in the world. if you remember, the economic conditions in the fall of 2008. and so the plans, the policy plans we put together in the her

of 2008 -- in the summer of 2008 quickly became inoperative by the fall of transition. so you were trying to plan a transition as the world was changing around you. but it's a privilege to be here and be here with you on this project. >> so since we have really truly just the state of the art here represented, are there in addition to what you described so far any other key lessons? so thinking forward to 2016, you know, what would be the, you know, sort of short form, key points that you would make to future folks beginning the process of thinking about what they need to do? >> we have a number of people who led key parts of this sitting on the front row, and i think we've got a microphone be, and if you don't mind -- >> absolutely. >> -- i'd like to just hold that question open to them and their individual situations. i mentioned earlier that i completely upside estimated -- underestimated the rigor that had to go into actually planning

the office of the president-elect. the need of a scheduling process sufficient that the president-elect could, in fact, be served well. transportation, housing, media. when there is no white house, but you've got all the duties that are coming, that's a big, a big deal. and i think if there's one learning i'll pass along, it is start early on that. it's not a casual undertaking. and i mentioned steve preston and his good efforts in providing that. tevi, i'd be interested to hear your response or the things that you would have, that you would see as lessons on what you learned. this is tevi troy who handled all of the domestic policy, managed the domestic policy teams. >> yeah. i also found it a remarkably well organized effort, and one thing that popped into my head

when you were talking about the pre-white house prep sayings, you -- preparation, you came up with the number of hours we would have available to brief a president-elect. romney was 120 hours, some really small number. and the idea was you had to use every one of those hours very carefully and wisely, because otherwise they run out quickly. there was one thing that i always found a little odd about the transition and what you said up on the stage contradicts a little bit of what's in the book which is how to handle the press. i thought that it would -- i thought the effort would have been, would have benefited from having one single press spokesman which, you know, at the very end we started to talk about maybe having someone do that. but throughout there was no spokesperson, and there was a lot of confusion about who should handle it, and we talked to the campaign, and they said we don't want to deal with it because we're flying to win an election -- we're trying to win an election. you said just don't talk about it from your remarks, but in here you recommended the future

having one single spokesperson. what's your best wisdom on that? >> i think our reference was to have a single person after the election took place. i felt strongly then and i feel strongly still today that transitions shouldn't have a voice. that the campaign needs to remain as the principal voice of the candidate, the face of the effort that on the day the election occurs -- and there ths a transition -- then you do move out of campaign mode into the mode of a transition. and it was at that point that i felt and i continue to feel that -- now, there were times when there would be a leak about somebody that is certainly going to be secretary of x. or so and so's vying to become this in the white house. we felt it best to have, again, the least amount said about that

and to reference it in the campaign. we had a set of disciplined messages about when that occurred. because as i -- to my knowledge, the only conversation that was ever held about who would do what in the administration between the candidate and another person was when paul ryan was appointed the nominee as vice president. so we wanted to minimize the speculation. we wanted to be in a position to say none of those decisions had been made and wouldn't be made. there was inevitable speculation, and so we just treated it as such. and so we kept the spokesperson role. and i still think that was the right decision. >> if i can add to that, one of the important principles, as the governor said, this was the readiness project, not the transition project. and we had no role or no voice or no substance until after november the 6th. and when you take that general view that we're in charge of policy, we're not in charge of

commenting on anything, we're not in charge of announcing any positions because no positions were decided on, it takes a lot of heat out of the equation. and i think that as we get to the stage which we quickly are which is something like this is just presumed to be done from both parties, and i think now that we've had three or four or five elections where people have taken five or six months and done something similar, slightly different approaches but essentially the same concept, people just go, well, okay, i guess it's natural that you have a transition. okay, it's natural that they're going to start organizing for something that happens the day after the election. and there's nothing that they are doing that is relevant to the campaign itself. and if you take those principles, you take away a lot of the heat associated with the leaks and who's doing what. because we were quite clear we were making no decisions that were relevant to either the campaign or the running of the government until november the 7th onwards. and that makes the media approach a lot easier.

okay, yes, of course, it's happening. yes, of course, there's a lot of these people doing things. yes, of course, they're organizing themselves to look at who's associated with implementing policy and so forth. but to me, to your specific question, the thing that i would add over and above what we talked about is the selection of the initial people on the project is absolutely fundamental. because from them propagates all the other decisions. and we obviously talked about the role of the governor and the chairman, obviously, critical. executive director. but the senior team and how they are selected is absolutely critical. and to be honest, six months before the election most people aren't worrying too much about that. so i think campaigns really need to invest some time thinking early if i get the right dozen people involved a at a senior level in the transition, i can pretty much forget about it for six months. >> right. >> and worry about it when it's relevant. >> can i follow up with that?

the governor talked about the qualities that were important for someone leading the effort, and you've expanded the circle in talking about a larger group of people. you've talked about jamie and the connections, relationships she had. what other skills or qualities do you think are essential to that core grouping? chris, i don't know if you have a view on that as well. >> happy to start with mine, and then the others can comment. i think it's got to be a mixture. the best team and, fortunately, we had that quality on our team, is a mixture of political knowledge, knowledge of washington. you've got to have that certain -- you've got to have people with, if you like, sort of project management-type skills. and you've got to have a mixture of knowledgeable about the campaign and the candidate. now, it's unusual that you will ever get all of those three things in one person, so if you say your senior team collectively has to have those

three things, then that's nirvana. getting all of those three things together on a team gives you the best balance overall. >> i will echo the comments here, too, as well. we were blessed with a remarkable transition chairman in john podesta, and you could not have asked for someone who better understands how the government works. and in addition to that, we had a group of senior folks working on the transition, as chris said, folks -- some folks from the private sector, some folks who had worked in government before. and we really benefited from people who had served in the clinton administration. i remember carol browner, who was epa administrator, was helping us with energy and environmental policy on transition. and carol recounted her experiences getting binders and binders full of materials as an incoming cabinet nominee and saying, you know what? i don't need all this stuff. and that really helped us refine what we were asking the agency review teams to go out and find and report back. >> i'll just add we learned from

that. i thought that was a very impressive improvement on previous administrations, and we resod to do -- resolved to do the same thing, to keep ourselves narrow. >> so, governor, to follow up on your notion, if there are other folks here who have something to comment on, question, we have a couple microphones. and should we start with tom? >> thank you. first, i have to tell you a story. [laughter] i was, i was doing president reagan's transition. you talked about clearances and stuff, and it was an anniversary of when they first had landed on the moon, and he said let's bring senator schmidt down, senator schmidt from new mexico to talk about his landing on the moon. ten days after the election, down came senator schmidt. and president reagan said, you know, how did defense get so far behind offense and missiles and spears and what have you? and schmidt interrupted and

said, no, governor, let me, let me tell you what we're going on down here in -- are you cleared? [laughter] the governor turned to me, and he said, well, tom, am i cleared? i said, i think they cleared you last tuesday. [laughter] but i apologize for that. my question is you all have been talking about washington experience, senior people that know the system and know what's going on. and when we were running around the congressional affairs, the first rule was no lobbyists. who the devil knows congress and how to run the system in congressional affairs than a bunch of lobbyists? how did that decision come down? and, boy, was that -- consequently, we did not have the best and the brightest in that operation. how did that decision come down and why? >> well, i think every campaign at least in the last few years wrestles with this problem,

because that's become a hot topic. we actually concluded that we would establish our policy after the election and had not done so, i'm not suggesting it would have been markedly different. that's a problem that i wish we could solve, because some of the more capable people in washington or people with great experience need to be, to be there. we didn't actually have to deal with it. maybe, chris, i'll toss it to you and ask -- [laughter] >> i was going to say, the governor's probably too polite to blame us for that lobbyist ban. you know, look, that was, for us, a very early promise that had been made during the campaign back in 2007 when senator obama was running about restrictions on lobbyists serving in the administration. so by definition you had to follow that when you got to the transition. but i think you've raised a legitimate point, that some of the people that best understand policy, the hill, politics in washington are lobbyists.

>> martha, you can go. >> [inaudible] >> wait one second, we'll have a microphone for you as well. >> thank you. i wondered what role governor romney had in the transition planning. what information did you bring to him, and what directions did he give to you? >> the most important directive we received from governor romney i alluded to earlier, we referred to it as the general instructions. this was a carefully-crafted document. it's in the book. laying out the priorities that he wanted to execute during the first 200 days. i then would meet with governor romney, essentially, once a week. i would typically fly out to the campaign, spend an hour or two with him generally on the plane or in his hotel room. i would keep him up-to-date. we used the one-page project manager as the basis of a report. he got to where he would look at it, and he would look for anything that was yellow and red, and he'd want to know about

that. but there's just no -- everything we did was driven by the general instructions. and then we would, there were a couple of occasions where we had to begin to get down to some specific groups of people to consider, and so he got -- we had input from him on that. there would be times when i would ask his opinion about a particular policy matter that could be reflected in our deliberation. again, we kept policy making in boston, but we had execution. but in execution often how that is done makes policy. so there would be times -- but i would interact with him on a, basically, once a week basis. >> one of the principles we had, martha, we had to be tightly connected to the campaign, but we couldn't be what i'd describe as a tax on the campaign. we couldn't take a lot of their time. so things like getting the general principles sorted out,

making sure that we had someone running the transition that governor romney was very confident in and knew was incredibly important. if he was spending more than an hour or so a week thinking about things that were happening on the transition, that was too much. not that it wasn't critically important, but he was setting the framework for what was happening after november the 6th, and his primary and single minded focus had to be on winning the election, not worrying about what he had to do when he woke up on the 7th. >> a couple of things, i allude today the interagency processes that we organized. in many cases you would have teams from different agencies working to solve a similar problem who'd have entirely different perspectives, and that's; of course, why you have interagency processes. it would be my role to sit in in the place of what would be governor romney if he were

there. and there were times when i would say we're working on this issue. this is my instinct, does it match yours. and we would talk about that so that i was in a position then to weigh in on his behalf. another -- tim adams ran that process. tim had wide experience both at treasury and in the white house and a number of other places in the federal government. did an exceptional job in managing that process. another area would have been personnel. bill haggerty, who is in from tennessee, a great job in being able to organize a systematic process. and there would be times when we would say these are the characteristics we're looking for in this position. we rarely got to the point of saying, and this is the kind of person we're looking at. but he was very useful in being able to say this is what i want in that role as opposed to this person is who i want in that role. >> so i think you, sir, were

next. >> thank you. good morning. let me ask the question and then give a postample. the question is we never got a shot at the confirmation process because we never transitioned to a direction -- transition team. but yet the confirmation process is perhaps the greatest hint answer to staffing a government -- hindrance to staffing a government going forward after election day and, obviously, the inaugural. so in this process of confirmation, you know, i remember sitting around the readiness project wondering whether or not we should go on landing teams because the rumor was, well, if you go on a landing team, people will say that i'm thinking i'm going to be confirmed for this position, therefore, don't go on the landing team of a position you may actually be qualified for, have been asked to consider or may, in fact, want to pursue. so the question then, back to the question: what lessons can

we take from either the obama campaign or from our truncated effort on the readiness project for moving beyond simply coming up with names and then working with the united states senate to get senior staff appointees, senate-confirmed appointees in place shortly after the inaugural? >> well, let me acknowledge some -- one of the products of clay johnson's zealousness and others, and that is a piece of legislation that passed during the fall of last year that, essentially, created a streamlined process for committee vetting. that's still in the process, clay, of putting together. but those of us who have been through senate confirmation can tell you if you're in a position where multiple committees have some level of jurisdiction, they all have their own financial disclosures, they all have their

own questionnaires. and you just spend hours and hours vetting. and so to his credit, this legislation reduces, i think, by 160 or so positions that require senate confirmation and then will, ultimately, streamline the process. i would -- we actually started the development of and because this process was not in place were not able to complete, but this is a project for someone to do. we felt there was a need for a means by which a person who was interested and qualified to do public service could get themself ready for nomination in a preclearance kind of way. that is to say i'm going to fill out all the papers, i'm going to have the 268, the financial disclosure, i'm going to have the 84, i'm going to have all

those things predone, and i'm going to go through a process where they're going to tell me the realities of what this is going to look like. we're going to tell people in more detail what they can expect in terms of intrusion into their, into their perm life and what life -- into their personal life and what life as a public servant is like early as opposed to finding that out later and withdrawing. that you're going to have to have the following problems to overcome. it'd be a very good thing, for example, if you could say to a candidate, when you go through ethics clearance, you know they're going to make you sell that. that would be a great thing. and it would, it would speed that process up. so i think between now and the next three years if there's an area where additional focus could be made, it is in streamlining the process of getting good people who are eligible into a period, into a place of preclearance. so that you don't have to use those 77 days to go through that

and end up with 100 people running the entire federal government who have been cleared as late as may or group of the following year finish or june of the following year. >> i would add, and it's probably not a surprise to min that the confirmation process is broken right now, and it's broken in a lot of different ways that people like clay have been trying to fix. it's not only the lack of vetting resources resources andg it takes, it's the number of forms that need to get filled out, the quirks of getting anyone through the u.s. senate. and we obviously had to struggle with this in the beginning of 2009. when you're dealing with an economic crisis as we were, you essentially had in most agency, a sec tear, a chief of staff and maybe a couple of people, you know, minding the shop. the recovery act had been passed three weeks after we came into office, and trying to get money out the door with basically no political appointees, and that was a huge problem. the i think the question you're getting to is how one gets a

broader diversity of people in government. you're by and large using people who have served in government before. and even when we expand our circles, you're still largely getting the same group of people. and one of the things we tried to rook at were people in -- look at were people in the private sector, people in state and local governments. i'm not sure, you know, it's still an evolving process four-and-a-half years into this administration. >> great. john? please. and then i think just looking at the time if we can maybe take one more question, that'd be great. >> thinking about the readiness project as an organization and, clearly, you established a really strong culture, so postelection you would have merged the campaign organization in that had its own really strong culture, what were your plans for sort of doing that merger and keeping all the things that you built be up to that point going? >> steve preston, if you want to talk about that. [laughter]

>> well, this was, obviously, a very, a very important focus for all of us. and i think one of the very important things we did prior to the election is make sure that people on the campaign focused on the campaign, and people on the transition focused on the transition. and there was a very clear rule in place, basically. don't ask about your job. we all have a job to do right now. and if we win the election, that'll all change. and so in preparation for that what we did was we looked to a number of places. we looked, um, very clearly at all of the different positions that were in the campaign already, all the different positions that were in the transition already and then some other areas as well. people that might be getting, that may be in sort of peripheral roles. and then he -- we took a look at what we needed in the white house and in a transition. and we actually had a line by line, extremely detailed listing of what we were going to need and potentially where those

people were going to come from. so we knew, for example, that we had fairly significant -- fairly well established legal functions at both places. so we had a pretty good understanding of how those two organizations would come together. we knew that there were a lot of junior-level people out on the campaign that may be able to come in and help with certain aspects of the transition that would maybe tailor to their skill set. so we really did have a very detailed matching process in place. we, and the plan was really the day after the election to pull all of our heads together, go through those templates and start working very specifically on who was going to fill which roles. but i would say to sort of, you know, sort of an 85% degree we knew generally where those people would have come from. and i'd say probably within a week or so we would have had most of those, most of those very specifically populated. we also had a process just administratively speaking where we were going to get people sort

of, you know, badged, vetted, all that stuff pretty quickly as well. so the administrative side of it was something we'd preplanned. the last thing i would say broadly in all of this is i think it's real important when you're looking specifically at the 75 days to know that there is a lot of very detailed, there are a lot of very detailed things that have to happen. and one of the things that i think is important doing as well is to really sort of think forward to say, okay, what's it going to take to vet all these people? what's it going to take to find time on the president-elect's calendar to look through policy matters? what's it going to take to make sure that he has time for congress and for media? and really sort of like you would in any business or anything else, sort of almost do that contingency planning and lay out the details of how it might happen. and just like everything else we had here, you know, the plans may change. once you've thought through in

detail of how it's likely to go, it's a whole lot easier to adjust. because you have all the pieces of the puzzle on the table. and it's more a matter of moving them around rather than sort of reformulating something. >> jamie, do you want to comment on that? >> just that i -- there could have a hiccup, as dee said, between if we had been successful and bringing the campaign people in p. because as we've talked about, there was a clear division between the campaign folks focusing on their jobs and us focusing on ours. so there budget -- while there was, um, meetings and conversations weekly with the campaign policy shop, as far as a lot of the roles steve was talking about staffing -- karen feeding of the president-elect -- care and feeding of the president-elect, scheduling, anything to do with communications, those functions, the people that were playing those roles in the campaign we

really couldn't distract from their job. and it would have been, i think, helpful to be able to have some conversations maybe three weeks out so we could have prepared so it would not have been probably that week before we could have gotten them onboard. that was something that i was concerned about. and we alluded to this with the confirmation process. you know, the whole focus is on getting them through senate confirmation. and one of the things i have dealt with with people, they have concerns as well. and as governor leavitt said, if you can have some soft conversations about what this is going to be like to come to washington, to take on the role of government service, i think that would have streamlined if we had been successful. because some people are going to remove themselves. some campaign folks want campaign work, and if they found out what government service was going to be all about, they

might have -- that we would have perhaps counted on. so that was the only thing that i -- >> there was two fundamental principles which divided activity, and people tried to game these principles. so there was plenty of activity around them. but as long as we stuck to the fundamental principles, it made life a lot easier. first principle was anyone who was on the campaign was guaranteed a job on the transition if they wanted it. there were five or -- >> inauguration. >> well, i was going -- there were five or six hundred roles in the transition, probably equal number of roles in the inauguration, over a thousand people we needed sum total of people on the campaign, plus people on the transition planning was less than a thousand. so there was menty of work to do. -- plenty of work to do. so anyone who was on the campaign who wished to have a role, we would find one for them in either the transition proper or the inauguration.

principle number one. principle number two, no one was guaranteed a role in the administration. and people confused that, those concepts enormously. but if you kept saying it often enough, they got it. [laughter] there was a 75-day period with a lot of work to be done, and anyone who wished to help on that work we would find a role for them. but there was a defined process during that 75 days for determining who were the people who were going to work in either the administration or the departments or whatever. and just because you'd worked on the campaign be, on the transition was no guarantee that you would then have a role there afterwards. clearly, you had the opportunity to do it. as long as we stuck to those two principles -- many people who tried to came, as i say, on the way through -- it made life enormously easier from a planning -- >> i think a big part of this is, of transition generally is managing people's ambitions and their anxieties.

and the principles that chris has articulated properly are, were key. did you want to say -- >> i just wanted to say because you've talked about this what was exciting to me starting, the mixture of skill sets. we had governor leavitt who had deep knowledge of washington, chris lidell and jim quigley from the private sector. we had -- i'll use daniel as an example, the farm team of young potential political appointees. and as i looked at people, um, to come in to help with the transition, we tried to keep that mixture of washington old hands that knew the agencies, but a lot of people that were new to washington, new to potential government service. and then, you know, a lot of young people that were ready to roll as well. and i think it made it unique because we did have a lot of

people that had never been engaged in politics or government service that potentially would have served. and so that's why having those conversations, filling out the paperwork early and having some sort of system to get them ready in case they were going to be nominated was important. >> max, do i make a few suggestions? >> yes. >> one is i think it'd be useful to hear from drew on the question that tom referenced and your feeling about that and how it might be solved. and then, brian, i think it would be valuable for you to comment a bit on the interest that has developed among people who worked together on the team to keep this policy team as a means of -- or together in terms of the network of resources that was, that was generated. >> i think there were two issues in the legislative outreach group that we had to focus on

that most people don't see, and chris lu mentioned one, and that is the lame duck session. there was all this focus in the campaign on day one and what we were going to do during the first 200 days. and, you know, you had to react to what was going on at the time. and in lame duck just like during president obama's transition, there were some real economic challenges, and we were having the same thing with the fiscal cliff coming up. and we had to get through the whole lame duck in order to get to the 200-day first. that was a big ordeal that we had to set up the decisions to make the day after the election, to go up and brief, you know, president-elect romney and chairman ryan at the time. the second issue, which was also a very daunting task that tom and christine were very helpful on, was setting up the confirmation process. so we had a rather ambitious goal of getting 26 nominees through during the first week of

that meant that you had to have all 26 vetted, you had to have them scheduled to have their meetings with the different senators. we weren't going to control the senate, so it was up to reid to get them all scheduled. this was an enormous task, and what we had done was we had created teams of about 7-10 people assigned to each one of the 26 potential nominees. so we had a whole wing at the transition readiness office at the time that would be designated to each of the people. but this was going to be an enormous task, and as tom said, you know, historically as you have walked people through the nomination process, you've had, you know, old washington hands. and be we found as many as we could that were unregistered lobbyists at the time to she were pa these people around -- sherpa these people around the senate. but i think that was one of the, you know, one of the areas where people don't under -- don't

appreciate the amount of work that goes into that whole process. and you also didn't have a communications staff, so you had to figure out how you were going to announce all these people, and we were working very closely with steve preston and his operation as we mapped out that whole entire process. >> brian? >> i would just mention that there's been some consequence of, i guess, the defeat is that we've tried to make some lemonade out of it. we had all these policy teams that we've heard about, and the foreign policy and national security space that i worked on with cliff, who's here. we had about ten teams, and they were organized -- they were task forces, and they were organized by subject. so we had iran and syria, mostly front burner policy issues. and on election day each team had produced a 15-20 page paper explaining how we would implement the 200-day plan. the general instructions we received from boston. and there was a feeling after

the election it would be a shame to let all of this go to waste. and so after the election we, these teams have largely stayed together. and we now have 16 teams that are organized by topic that are now working trying to help the hill and trying to help republican governors and just be of broader service to the republican party. and that work has continued. there was an esprit de corps, i think, on the readiness project that people didn't want to lose and try to capture it and to keep it going. so we've kept it going, and we've also done a lot of work with house leadership working with, with boehner and cantor's office on being a resource to them on issues that are coming up and trying to make full use of a lot of the key people in the readiness project to sort of help them strategize on issues. >> last question here, and then we'll close. >> thank you.

well, to some extent my question is about integrating the campaign. but another question is the american people have been pretty clear about their feeling that there needs to be change in washington. that government needs to be structured in a way that they view as more responsive to their needs. both candidates in the last election, in fact, picked up on this theme. my question is, to what extent did the respective transitions including cliff -- chris in the obama transition planning reflect this interest? and to what extent is it appropriate for future transition teams to begin to plan for the kind of change that perhaps the candidates are talking about and the american people want? >> well, i'll start. i mean, we certainly in the 2008

campaign talked a lot about transforming washington. a lot of our domestic policy proposals ended up getting put on the back burner because of the economic crisis. so we ended up moving to the things like transparency, accountability much later in the administration. but the broader issue about how you make government, how you make transitions more open to the public is something that we thought a lot about. and it's one of the subjects that i think in hindsight we didn't spend enough time on before election day, but we certainly did after election day, which is the use of technology. and, you know, going forward to the next four years, you know, i can't even envision how you would run a transition with technology. i'm just not that skilled in technology. but, you know, if you go back and look at, you know, president clinton, president george w. bush, they held these summits around the country during their transition period. you know, i could imagine the next president-elect just doing a skype or a google hangout or a twitter town hall or something like that. we also made the conscious effort that we were not going to have people send us resumés in paper form and have to read,

reinput them all again. so we basically created a thing on our web site you could just submit them all. we took with the radio address that the president generally did, we did it on the internet. so i think technology gives you a lot of ways to make, to include more people in the planning of a transition and make it more transparent. >> i would just, again, acknowledge the fact that the key -- i think that jamie mentioned it, and that is getting a mix of people and disciplines. we worked hard to bring new ideas to the american people. one of the things we did that i still believe was the right thing to do was we kept policy in boston. ask that's where the new -- and that's where the new ideas came from. we were about implementing. our job was to say -- we had ways of being able to influence that process, but that's where it happened x. there were a hot, they had policy teams that had

been developed with people from outside of government who were injecting those ideas. once those had been done, our job was to figure out how to work with the federal government to make them happen. >> so with that i just want to end with a big round of applause and thank you for your contribution. prison -- [applause] i know you're committed to this process, and i hope you'll work with the partnership going forward to make the next round even better. >> we should mention that people can get this on amazon.com, and if they want it, it's available to them. and i, again, want to acknowledge the work that clark did along with daniel. they've done -- and chris who were very instrumental in the assembly of this and deserve to be acknowledged. so -- >> thank you very much. >> thank you, max, for making this forum possible. [applause] >> oh, you're right --

[inaudible conversations] >> the labor department reporting today that the number of americans seeking unemployment aid rose by with 10,000. a sign layoffs have increased. over the past six months, employers have added an average of 208,000 jobs per month. that's up from an average of 138,000 in the previous six months. also learning today that the u.s. economy grew at 2.4% from january through march, slightly below the 2.5% initially estimated but well ahead of the pace between october to december when growth was only at .4%. each evening this week on

prime time we're featuring booktv on c-span2. tonight's topic, addressing partisanship. at 8 eastern our "after words" interview with former senator olympia snowe on "fighting for common ground." at 9 a panel on american politics featuring former republican national committee chairman michael steele and former congressman mickey edwards. and at 10 p.m., david on licker talks about two presidents are better than one. that's all tonight beginning at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. on c-span3 tonight it's american history in prime time with personal accounts of the 1960s civil rights movement. at 8 eastern an oral history interview with civil rights activists and sisters dori and

joyce ladner. then at 10, congressman john lewis is honored for serving as chairman of the student nonviolent coordinating committee and speaking at the 1963 march on washington. it all begins tonight, 8 eastern over on c-span3. >> the public's fascination with francis cleveland really extended her clothes, and she was a real fashion icon. women emulated her hair style, her clothing. she poplarrized everything she had and did. this is a dress from the second administration, and in a way this is the most prized piece of all because this is the inaugural gown. this was her inaugural gown from 1893, and it stayed in her family and payment the family wedding dress. and this was used by her granddaughters. even francis cleveland's everyday clothes were very stylish. a lot of them look like something you could wear now.

this is a jacket. wonderful bolero jacket. black with this beautiful purple/blue vel velvet. this is a more evening-appropriate piece x. this was a bodice, would have had a matching skirt. you can see the beautiful sequins, netting, beading. this would have a matching collar. again, you can wear this with a shirtwaist and skirt. >> our conversation on francis cleveland is now available on our web site, c-span.org/firstladies. and tune in monday for our next program on first lady caroline harrison. >> earlier this week the department of education and the mcarthur foundation hosted a summit focusing on innovation and technology in education. one of the panels featured education secretary arne duncan

along with education advocate chris paul of the nba's los angeles clippers. they discuss ways to prepare students for the connected world of learning and provided recommendations for redesigning schools. it's just under an hour. [applause] >> chris and i are thrilled to be able to ask some questions. usually we have to answer all the hard ones, so we'll trade quite happily. i'll start. again, hope you guys had the bios. three pretty amazing teachers, all of whom i've worked with in different capacities whether here or back home in chicago. and let me sort of start big picture, if we could, you know, sort of step back, think big, if you could redesign schools from scratch, and i know your team is thinking about, you know, designing old schools, if we could redesign schools from scratch, what would they look like today? anybody feel free to jump in, and how can we engage kids very differently in their own

learning? >> well, i think we start by looking at things very differently. what we heard earlier today is a good example. i think we as teachers need to simply get out of kids' way the, to give them the space to play, and in my school the kids already have all of the elements that one of the speakers earlier was talking about. they're curious about learning, they're engaged. they ask a lot of questions. but as they get older, it's true what jim said earlier. by the time they get to high school, they're bored. something about what happens at pre-k, kinder and first is something we have to try to harness and move it forward as they get older. >> i agree. and i think it's very important to give teachers time to play as well. i think we focus on what best practices and pedagogy look like for our kids, and sometimes we forget we need to treat teachers

the same way and give them a chance to grow and explore and reconnect with the excitement that made them go into the propossession in the -- profession in the first place. so we need to really support our teachers and give them the tools they need to become inspired themselves. >> i agree, obviously, with what both of them say. i also feel like i think one of the best things for kids, especially high school kids to do, is kind of get messy and actually get involved in these career-oriented, project-based learning things and even get out of the school building. we send our kids out when they're seniors, they get hands-on internships and work with people that are really doing these careers that they, you know, they're solving problems and be working on the robotics club, but let's send them to engineering companies for internships and let them actually see what it looks like. and i think what one of the speakers was talking about earlier, i think that adults out in the real world will get almost as much, if not more from that experience of getting these

absolutely incredible teenagers kind of into, into their daily lives. and it would be a mutually beneficial relationship. >> so what -- let me just push a little bit for a second. what prevents us from doing those things? all makes sense, all sounds great. i agree, most students drop out not because high school's too hard, but because it's too easy. they're bored, they're not engaged. why aren't these opportunities more the norm rather than the exception? what's sop stopping us from giving kids what they need? >> i think the teaching model is perhaps outdated. the industrial factory model. it's easy to control and influence and improve work when it's simple work, but teaching is a complex activity. a single teacher has an incredible amount of discretion and skill, and we may immediate to move our -- we may need to move our profession more into the realm of a professional model. we strive to be professionals,

but i think our society needs to reflect a little deeper on what teaching is more like a medical model or a law model. to be professional. so that then we have the discretion to play with our students so that we redesign the way we spend our instructional time. i think that's something in that area is what i'm thinking. >> let me talk about the model you guys are creating. >> yeah. so in chicago i'm part of a network called the academy for urban school leadership, and we're, actually -- it's funny you said medical, because we have a reds seven si -- residency program where student teachers can go through a full year of training under a master mentor teacher. they get to feel what it feels like to be a teacher from putting up the border on your bulletin boards, taking it down. so that's really exciting, and i think something we're working with a lot is rethinking time and space too. so, you know, what does it mean -- where is your classroom

both as a preservicing teacher and as a practicing teacher and student, and that it should be collaborative so that i'm not just learning from my teacher, but from each other. from people who aren't with me, using technology to access all points and then to scaffold it so that it's digestible. so we think about transformative practices, and unless you're, you know, x awesome hill from x amazing place and you have the funds and freedom to do something, sometimes they're like, oh, well, i can't do that. but how can we modularize transformation so that even the most difficult situations can get a piece of it and grow towards that goal. >> yeah. i mean, i -- my biggest thing that i've learned kind of becoming more of a teacher voice and a teacher leader is just that there really are so many incredible ideas, innovations in teachers out there that we need to, you know, even if we don't like necessarily the pd we're getting in the district, or we don't feel like we have enough

time to learn, we have to find that time kind of outside of the 8 to 8:30 time block and learn from these other fascinating teachers that have these great ideas. and it almost, it means so much more coming from a teacher who says to me, well, here's how i use these ipads in my classroom, and here's how you could actually use them. not, you know, a software company trying to sell me -- no, i want to hear it from a teacher that can tell me this is exactly how you can use it in here, some professional development that i think would totally help you and see you visualize it in your classroom with your own high-needs students. >> i think for me personally i've been blessed and fortunate enough to -- although now i live in l.a., i lived in the new orleans for six years. and one of the biggest issues or maybe not an issue, but one of the hardest things for kids in new orleans is attendance. attendance. kids getting to school and getting home from school. so along with my family and my

parents and my wife and my brother, we started a -- well, i have a foundation, and we have the after school program in new orleans called the cp3 after school zone. and what we found was attendance increased because of the after school program in which kids have an opportunity to, man, i used to go visit the school after practice on days, and it was so exciting to me, and it almost made me wish that i was back in grade school. because the kids were doing karate, they were doing cooking classes. i went to the school one day, and the kids made me sushi. [laughter] i had never had sushi before in my life until i had it from the kids. they were doing film projects where i went into the school, and some of the kids 5 and 6 years old interviewed me. so they were learning things, and they were being so interactive and doing things that we would have never thought to do as kids. but as we saw them having more

fun and incorporating this into their daily lives, it started increasing their attendance. and some of the things that we did with the kids also involved the parents. because at the end of the day, kids are kids. they can only do what their parents allow them to do. so i think once you start incorporating the parents into some of these things with the kids -- because at times you'll find that my son may be able to use that ipad better than i can, you know? so we also have to teach the parents so that they can be there with their kids. >> technology. what are you guys doing with technology, what do you want to do, where are you at, how's it changing how you teach every day, how you work? also how you learn yourselves? >> many our district down in austin we use technology, but we don't have enough technology, say computers, for every kid. we share a lot of this equipment. our students are becoming very

sophisticated using software and hardware to create products, imovies. earlier someone was talking about garage band, making music. these are things that didn't exist 20 years ago when i started teaching. as the kids find out about them, currently my fifth graders are using avatars to make a summary of some of the research they're doing, creating their own avatars. these are things that they're so new that, you're right, they're teaching us how to use it. but some of the kids who don't have access to computers or e-book readerers at home, they really struggle, and they start falling behind. and the kids that do have access to smartphones, computers, internet at home, they keep -- they seem to keep up and then excel beyond that. the concern we've talked about

this earlier is that those kids who don't have technology, that's probably our biggest challenge. >> and i agree completely. and i think that makes it so much more important for us to bridge that digital divide with school. so, you know, public education is the great equalizer, right? we want every american child to have access to an amazing education in their neighborhood. and so instead of, you know, staring at the chasm that is the digital divide and saying, oh, man, that's really scary, let's build a bridge, let's come up with creative ways to come across. and what's really important for us when we look at technology in chicago and at ausl is not just bringing the technology devices into the classroom because that's not even half the battle. a fraction of the battle. throwing technology at problems isn't going to solve anything. it's starting with great teaching and great ped goingy and understanding that technology is a tool to an end. it's making for more effective and efficient ways to meet our kids' needs. and so we try and be device

agnostic. we don't go with the coolest, hip new device although oftentimes that is the right choice for us. but we think about what do we want for our kids? we want them to be creators, mathematicians, writers, inventers, problem solvers. we think about how we want to streamline assessment and create more differentiation opportunities for all of our kids. so when we start with the problem of practice and think about what are we really trying to do in our classroom and earning spaces -- learning spaces, then we can bring in the technology and make more effective use of it through a podcast, blogs, avatars, all those sorts of things. but it's really important not to lose sight of what's important when you bring technology into your classrooms. >> right. i feel like -- my school is mckinley technology high school, so we do have a lot of technology, a lot kind of focused in a lot of our strands. we're a s.t.e.m. school, to our -- so our mass media has a lot of media equipment. i teach math, and i have a smart

board, and these guys are like you are so outdated already. [laughter] but it is true. i mean, it's -- i'm always going to, you know, it's really hard to keep up with how fast things are changing in the land of technology and then, you know, i do firmly believe that the most important thing is that you have a really strong teacher in every class room and then, yes, technology will absolutely, can absolutely help. but when that strong teacher then gets that great professional development, if someone offered me, you know, 30 ipads right now for my classroom, that would be great. i would certainly not turn it down. but i would need before i even handed an ipad to a student, i would need a really good plan of, okay, is this just going to be a fancier way to get their attention? then there's no point. i want it to be something that's going to make my classroom a better place and give them more opportunities to create and learn. >> i would just add that i think as teachers we need to become more comfortable letting go to allow these things to happen.

we do need a good plan as teachers to implement good technology software, hardware, combine z -- combining those things. but we also need to give that space. and i think it's a big challenge for us in the profession, because this is going in a totally different direction, and we need to be a part of that and not sort of be the obstacle to it. >> that's amazing that the smart board is outdated. [laughter] it was probably about a month ago or two months ago, a week before our last game we were playing in new orleans, and i went to go visit my kids. i went into the third grade math class, and, you know, i took out -- the kids had just finished their testing, so i surprised them and took them all snow cones. why i was in the class, the kids said do a math problem for us. [laughter] and i play a lot of basketball. i don't do a lot of math at home. [laughter] but they just so happened to be doing division, and one of the students went up, and i'm 28,

i'm sure you all could tell me stories a little bit further back than me, but i remember the dry erase board or the chalkboard. [laughter] and the kid walked up to this screen and picked what color he wanted to use and wrote it on the screen, and you just use your finger. i was surprised. [laughter] that's outdated, then that is amazing. [laughter] what really made it amazing was the kids saw me do the math problem, and i got the answer right so you know. [laughter] i got the answer right. and at the end the teacher asked if i would sign. so it was a smart board, as you said, and i signed it. and somehow the teacher printed it off for every student in the class. and i was, i was blown away. that was a lot for me. [laughter] and that's amazing that that is outdated. [laughter] >> that's old school now.

>> yeah. pretty cool to me. >> let me push you on the digital divide, because you guys aren't just extraordinary educators, all of you have devoted your lives to kids who don't come born with a silver spoon in their mouth. you have a sense of social justice and of education really being the equalizer. so it's great to say, i love the metaphor hang glide over it, zip line over it. that's easier said than done. the reality of the wealthiest kids in our country often get the best, and the kids that come from the wrong side of the tracks have access to the least. and this is the this amazing tool we all agree, but if we don't -- if we're not creative, we're going to exacerbate the gaps, not close the gaps which is why all of us sort of come to work every single day. so how concretely can we avoid exacerbating the challenges and actually use technology to be part of the great equalizer that you talked about? >> i think that it's really important for teachers to collaborate and to work together. so, you know, i just met jose

and cheryl an hour ago, a little bit ago, and i've already learned a dozen things. i've been taking it down to go back to chicago because i've learned from you two already. so what's really amazing by working in a big diversity like chicago but i think it can be in any district is to make connections with colleagues who are in diverse and unlike settings from the ones you teach in and to learn from them. so the school i used to teach at, we worked with a school on the knot side of chicago -- north side of chicago, very different demographic. we were 99% free and reduced lunch, at risk kids and much more diversified population on the north side. and with different access to opportunities at home. so what's really powerful about that is we compare and contrast our daily pedagogy, what we're doing, the types of opportunities we're offering our kids and pushing each other. i feel like if i had a kid transfer from my fifth grade classroom to mr. kovak's on the north side, they're getting a

similar education, and we don't make excuses ever. i don't say, well, i can't do that because my kids don't have internet at home. he doesn't say my kids have all had ipads since whatever. we feel like we can equalize education and push all of our kids on the same trajectory, but we need different scaffolding. so the pd my teachers might get looks different than the type that the teachers at burly have. >> i would totally agree with that. and i agree with the idea that education is the great equalizer. identify shared with -- i've shared with a few folks earlier my mom, 72 years old, and she's getting her ged in a couple of weeks. she's going to have the cap and gown and the whole thing. she was an undocumented kid back in the '50s and got deported many times. but eventually, she was determined to get her education. i think not only is it the great equalizer in this country, but

we may have to do thing differently, and we may need to take education outside the building to some extent. as a migrant teacher in rural montana a few years ago back in 2000, we had a technology mobile that would go out into the fields where these kids were working as migrant workers. and after they worked, they'd climb into this van that had computer, and they would work. i think those kinds of ideas, those innovative ideas that are occurring out, in some instances out in the fringes, we need to bring them to the forefront. because there are great teachers doing great things, and we need a place -- earlier today somebody mentioned this -- where people can share those good ideas. because research for a researcher, i don't know who else reads that stuff, but we as teachers have great ideas -- [laughter] that we need to collaborate. and just like we've been sharing ideas already, we've only met each other an hour ago.

.. but when you have a group of really passionate, really effective teachers in their classrooms all the time and kind of giving them that support afterwards and if we have the internet after school in every school building and whether or not those opportunities are there at home they, are there when we have them in our

buildings for more than eight hours a day. >> with the after-school program, it all started from the after-school program and me and my older brother -- i have a brother two years older than me and when we were in elementary school, actually there was a morning club and an after-school farm club and we basically had to go to look of them because our parents worked so much. my dad was always at work and my mom was always at work, early in the morning she would drop us off at school and we would have to stay late. that is what me and my brother learned a lot of different things. arts and crafts. we were in a dance with the temptations. my dad has it on videotape, too. it's where you get the chance to be a kid, have fun, interact

with other kids and continue to learn and it's really been great. and obviously we are trying to expand it as much as we can but it's all about finding with the kids are interested in because i diagnosed myself but i always said that i was a.d.d.. i loved the days my teacher would go outside. it's a beautiful day. we could do the same thing just did outside. just try to be as active as possible. i will never forget an elementary school how i learned all 50 states, how i learned it. if you walked into my elementary school, outside of the blacktop there was the united states and some days we would go outside and the teacher would pick this game where i don't know if you have to throw a ball but if you landed on that stage you had to

run to it and that was the game. she sort of trick us. but it helped us to learn. i have a 4-year-old son now and the same thing with him. at times i have to trick him, but it helps him learn. he's already on different things like that learning different things but i think back to how i was when i was a kid my son has homework now when he comes home from school and we will start doing it and he is ready to do something else and i get so mad that i see myself in him. if i could make him a bit more interactive or make it about basketball or some type of game he likes to do then he will learn at. those are the ideas that you have. >> let me push a bit about engaging students differently. we also have to empower teachers and a different way and recruit

the generations and stop losing so many good teachers to get burned out and how we reward excellence and make them heroes and keep them in the communities that are needed the most. walk me through what technology can work and do to empower teachers in a different way doing extraordinarily hard complex work. >> teaching can be a lonely profession. i teach back to my first word of teaching and i thought i was pretty prepared. i got in there and i had someone watch me in the fall and they would pull me aside and said you look like you're scared of your fourth graders. i'm scared of my fourth grader but i'm not afraid they are going to hurt me. someone is not going to come in and say gotcha, you are terrible. but i like about our network and seeing the great teacher development programs, the transparency of being able to be in another teacher's classroom and that's hard to be physically

because unless jose and i are in the same school and he's teaching math i never get to see the magic that happens in his classroom. so leverage and technology can literally break down the walls of the classrooms and invite each other into their rooms. so we use hangouts and face time and skype and put an ipad touch and i can be in the next room over or another country. i had a colleague from singapore who watched one of my teachers teach her a lesson with of the ipad and music. he was writing chats with her. we call them resident teachers and they are collaborating halfway across the world and learning from each other and then he was able to be brief when with her when she was in her jammies on the couch that might. that is one example but getting the teachers to talk and support each other and collaborate, that

is powerful to learn from one another >> another part is telling teachers it's okay to make a mistake. it's okay to experiment with new technology and it might not actually work. but it is time right now with the amount of stress and with the timing of standardized tests and then being observed and knowing that at any point what if my principal walks in and i am trying to do smart responses that are not innovative anymore. stuff always happens. but teachers kind of need to feel supported and feel like it's okay to try something new and it might not work the very first time that you will have support with administrators and other teachers to try these things out and see what does work and what has a lasting impact on your students and on your class's.

>> i know we are running out of time. nothing is more important in school than this great teacher. we help parents with education, 72-year-old mom wingback. how does the technology helps bridge the technology. >> they are leaving and how they keep in touch. >> i work with latino kids and a lot of the parents get the part in the middle of the school year it happened to my mom -- >> we are all grateful adam supporting but you can still

have a teacher conference because before they leave the first thing you get is if you don't have an gmail, set one up. a smart fun is in the best way to go but it's something in you can connect with parents and citizenship, spelling lists, i've worked with parents to teach vocabulary in english. and sometimes a text is a good way for them to become more welcome where we can show them how the children are progressing. >> a big round of applause to chris and jose. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> andrea, welcome to the stage to the american television journalist, anchor, reporter and commentator and she just rushed hear from her msnbc show andrea mitchell reports. i will let you take it away. >> thank you mr. secretary. great to see you. now in the hot seat. thank you so much. what an exciting program. as excited as i am interviewing

you -- congratulations, first of all on the summit to all of you involved in every imagining high school. let me ask you in the perfect world from what you've seen, what would you as a policymaker want to see younce the new form of high school? >> we are spending a lot of time and thinking about this and talking to high school students themselves and talking -- the president talked about $300 million to invest in this. it is a sort of clich how do you get students much more engaged in their own learning. we talked about it in the year earlier panel. i am convinced that is a young majority of people the job out not because high school is too hard but because it is too easy and they don't see the relevance between what is going on in the real world. the more students are not in the classroom but have internships, doing a job shadowing, are engaged in the communities. then they start to understand

how important it is and what they are doing in class to the rest of their life. when that happens, young people don't drop out. the rate is going down and it is still high. as you know it is far too high and too many of the disadvantaged communities. when people drop out today they have a social failure of the mistakes are huge. i will give you just one counterexample of many out there. i went to the school of new york which is right on the river and you have young people who were out of college, and you don't know who is thinking about doing what. it's always got to be both a and come and they talk about, you know, a huge number of jobs in the river and starkly 90 present of those jobs went to people overseas because they didn't have anyone with those skills. here you have the biggest in the world, great jobs, and the school has been created to sort of fill that gap. we have to take a ferry to get to school. first time i'd done that and

this young man was a graduate of the school. continuing his education that has a great job. an amazing example. in new york you have people like ibm that has stepped up and is leading and those people have a great opportunity to learn, but they will graduate from high school with their associates degree. and those opportunities again our great not just for the kids that are bright but those that like to think that colleges and for them and they take the college classes and have that exposure to start feel comfortable in the world. those kind of opportunities have to come to the norm and we have to find out how we take the scale and what is working across the country. >> with all of the it advantages of technology, we still have so many schools in the district of columbia where we are sitting today that don't have the same access to technology that middle class and upper-middle-class kids had in their systems in school and at home. how do you make up for that technology gap?

>> the digital divide is real and it's an urgent challenge and one again that we are struggling with pity and i will say a couple things. first of all education, we are great at doing new things, we are not great at stopping doing new things. we need to -- it's not going to be a new pot of money to do this in the recovery act. it's not the political reality today. but as a country, we sent -- the number is six, seven, eight, nine build billion dollars on textbooks. the question is when are we going to stop buying textbooks and put that money into the technology. the district in north carolina get a lot of press and there are others. but they didn't make this transition because they had a huge influx of resources. they simply stop spending on certain things and spending in a different way. and i think we have to continue to encourage schools and school districts and states to start to think about what are they doing now, what can they stop doing and as a nation we are going to

lead the world. other countries are moving very aggressively and i worry about our children's chance to compete on a level playing field in the competitive economy if the opportunities don't start to become the norm. >> what about online education and various modifications? i've been very involved with it at the higher education level with chris, but at the high school level how can this complying with of the classroom work for kids? >> it's very early on but i think it is just an extraordinary potential. we are on the tip of the iceberg. the idea of whether it is nefarious, the professors teaching not 100 or 150 students, but 10,000 or 100,000, think of the power of with that means. they are not sitting there in the lecture halls and college. i think the implications for not just high school but middle school and elementary school are

huge. think about if we had the top ten, 50, 100 algebra teachers in the country, what if we had access to so many more students they have access to today. and they know in algebra one the students that failed the class have a high dropout rate peeving it's all about the gate keeping class or the high school. think if our kids in the disadvantaged communities had access to the world-class teachers and tutors and those kind of things. so again it was very early on. but how the students learn, how the engage in their own and learning, radical changes. it's happening now. and anything we can do to accelerate. >> you could have the famous alter teacher online and you could have the regular science or math teacher, doing the

classroom work as the backup connector. >> technology will never replace teachers. the goal is great teachers in power with great technology. we put those two things together and special things happen. when the teachers feel isolated and they don't have the support they need and they can't learn from each other, we have to think about many high schools you have a physics teacher and they go to pt and it's about social studies and math and english and science and not too much is directly related. if you are the one teacher in the high school, the one thing the teacher can learn from around the country and around the globe, think how empowering that is and how much better you can do and the students watching the lessons at home coming with you with questions so you are not going kid by cade in an individualized way helping them with their strengths and weaknesses. this i think could be extraordinarily motivated and in

powering for teachers, not something that they should be afraid of. >> the redesigned initiative has been criticized in some quarters for being too focused on stem. can you address that? >> it's not the expense of everything else but it's interesting. i get in trouble with the teachers and we have to do all these things. the fact of the matter is a disproportionate number, young people are going to need some skills in the area. now, having said that, by no means am i saying that financial literacy of the languages for art, dance, recess, by no means should those be shut off to the side. what i think we have to get to is the well-rounded world-class education and that is the norm and the wealthy communities and of a wealthy private schools. that has to be the norm here in

d.c. in the south side of chicago and in l.a.. when we do that they can find out what they are best at. it's not one versus the other. but i think the fact of the matter is in these areas we have huge deficits as a nation. i've talked to lots of ceos as well as the president to say we are trying to keep jobs in this country and we can't hire folks that have the skills here right now. more of those jobs, more of the case going forward than it is even today. so whenever we can do to engage the students in the areas, helping teachers be comfortable and confident with fat content, again not just the level of high school but in third and fourth and fifth grade when the students start to tune out. one example my children go to a wonderful public school in arlington. k through five they have a science focus and the music teacher has the kids singing about the planets and nutrition and food.

there are different ways to teach and to instill lessons that will stay with the kids for a lifetime. >> two things come to mind because i have proselytize on my program and education nation and press conversations with you about arts and music education. and it's the first thing that as the chopping block here with these cuts in the district of columbia. i have parents calling me and asking me about the public-school education which is now the way of arts and music which in my own case a million years ago public schools and new york and the entry into classical music and operating in particular but the classical music and jazz which then changed my life. so, what do we do about a whole generation of kids who don't have the opportunity that i had when in first grade somebody put a violin in my hand which was owned by the school district.

>> none of these have easy answers. i think it is a country that we are fighting a battle right now and its education and investment for education and expense. instead of the folks that look at education as an expense in the tough economic times we need to cut back on i think education is the best investment we can make and if you take it as extensive i never say we should invest in the status quo. we have to invest in the reform but where you see art and dance and drama and the debate when those opportunities don't exist, andrea, we are cutting of those. we are hurting the kids, the country, the economic competitiveness, long term. if you want to reduce the dropout rates, you have to have that, the after-school enrichment activities. there are lots of kids it is a drama and dance and music and you have to have the best full menu of options so kids can

figure out both during the school day and after school what is going to keep them coming to school every day. so when we fail to make these investments as a country, i worry tremendously. and that is the battle right now in the country. >> what do you say to the people in the legislature in texas and governor perry and other states turning their lack of the initiatives coming out of washington? >> as you know we have done so much to empower the folks of the local level. what i will say is whether it is texas or anyplace else, young people are not competing for jobs in their neighborhood or their district or their state or in the country anymore. young people compete for jobs with young people in india and china and singapore and south korea and they will go where the most knowledge workers are. in the country you can keep those good jobs here or fight to bring more here or we can see them migrate to other places. this is about so much more than

education. we are fighting for the country to keep the great middle class jobs here and if we don't do that other countries are going to and i worry if you look at the international metrics, 12 and the world and usually 25th in terms of math and reading scores. we have to get better faster than ever before to go in the opposite direction. how do you see the common core standards setting into your plan to bring imagine high school? >> having higher standards of the benchmark college and career ready standards that is a huge step in the right direction. the goal isn't common. it is high. many states under no child left behind are dumbing down the standards and reduced them to make the politicians look good.

for the kids, education, the country that make politicians work with. having higher standards as a step in the right direction and the 46 states adopted the standards no one thought was possible and the experts predicted we could move this so fast that is the easy part of the job. the hard part is how to implement the standards and give teachers the support they need and help kids understand they have to learn a higher level in their education. much more seriously. how do you wish to keep parents in the business community so it is a step in the right direction but we are just getting in and we have a lot of hard work ahead of us over the next couple of years. if we can persevere with higher standards in the next generation of the assessments coming and better teacher support is going to be a hard three, four, five years. if we can get to the other side i am convinced our country will be in a wildly different place.

>> how do you justify the flexibility that you are trying to show in so many different states with the goal of the overall higher standards? >> the plan was to have the congress fix no child left behind which is broken that so many levels and it's pretty dysfunctional so rather than sitting back and seeing the students hurt and teachers hurt, we decide to provide flexibility and work and partner berkeley with states. it's extraordinarily well. we have states across the political spectrum working with us. what we are seeing, i think a couple of moves that are important, first of all much less focus on the single test score which is too much as a country focused on long-term outcome is increasing graduation rates and reducing dropout rates, higher college going rates, better perserverance in

college, not taking the remedial courses once you leave high school so some people could take that as more complex and complicated, yes it is but with more importance focusing on the third grade test score. the second thing i didn't understand and i don't think anyone in the country did is other than their child left behind it is getting difficult but there are lots of kids with disabilities who are literally in visible. they were not in the accountability system because the end side was so small. they were now accountable for their learning when in a child left behind they were not on their radar. in many significant ways i think that it moved the country in a different direction. the final thing i will say, and we didn't begin to understand this but if congress does decide to fix and reauthorize no child left behind, the worst thing that would happen is first with

the need to do is take the best ideas coming from the best states and if you did that that would be pretty spectacular reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education act. >> we have questions on twitter and we should point out that this is also on education nation and education nation so we are excited participating as we are on this. from hauer twitter friends. >> i think a lot of testing has been somewhat stifling and i think this is an area where we have to get it right. i think we should be assessing kids on an ongoing basis and we need to know how much they are growing each year. there are assessments where they are getting daily feedback on what they are actually learning and not with the teacher is teaching but what they are learning to read that never

existed historically and we've invested the consortium states working on the next generation of assessments looking at critical thinking skills and other things. some folks think we should do no testing and i think we have to be accountable for the student's learning each year. there are the folks that somehow think testing should be 100 percent of a child's grade or teacher's evaluation. those extremes i think are both equally destructive. there is a common sense middle ground in which the ongoing evaluation is important for students to understand where they are and get teachers feedback on how they are doing and in power the parents so they can work on the weaknesses here at home. >> can we do more to democratize and we are going to hear from the students momentarily. but how do you democratize the classroom and have the students

more involved? you just have to listen. i think our students today are so smart and talented and they can tell you exactly what's working and their school or their district and what's not. one of the things i did in chicago we have a student advisory council i met with on a daily basis and many of the policies didn't come from me but the students that said this is what is going on and what you need to be thinking about in different ways. was extraordinarily powerful and helpful to bring the students on a monthly basis now so they get real-time feedback. whether it is high school, even elementary school children tell you the truth. mr. to get the dog and pony show and what is really going on they will tell you. they know it's happening they

know which teachers care, not as much, which parts are faith and what's not, what this hallway. we have to let go a little bit and in power. i am a big believer that rather than having all of these adults do discipline, the hold each other accountable and they build that culture and when the students are invested there, they are helping to shape their schools, they will take care of them in a different way. >> you mentioned chicago. the mayor is trying to get his arms around it but there's then huge uproar over closing schools the district decided on not needed. the union is now going to court. how do you deal with that evolution in a place like chicago? >> it's been from a