students must have other meaningful options. when children and teenagers go to school afraid of being threatened or attacked or worse, our society must make it clear it is the ultimate betrayal. parents of children who have bad options, but get good options if we are to succeed across the country. there are differences of opinions about what those options should be. i made my opinion very clear in the course of the campaign. i'm going to take my opinion to the hill and let folks debate it. today, i was pleased to see joel lieberman brought up his plan. he and i understand the accountability system must have a consequence, otherwise it is

not much of an accountability system. the four principles are the guides on the reform package. yet, today, i'm offering more than principles. i'm sending a series of propo l proposals to the united states congress. my own blueprint for reform. i want to begin our discussion in detail with the members of the house and the senate because i know we need to act by this summer so that the people at the local level can take our initiatives and plan for the school year beginning next fall. i'm going to listen to suggestions from folks. if somebody has a better idea, i hope they bring it forward because the secretary and i will listen. we have one thing in mind. an education system that is responsive to the children. an education system that

educates every child. an education system that i'm confident can exist. one that is based upon sound fundamental curriculum. one that starts teaching children to read early in life. one that focuses on s that do work. one that heralds our teachers and makes sure they have the necessary tools to teach. one that says every child can learn. in this great land of america, no child will be left behind. it is an honor to be here. i'm thrilled you all came. god bless. [ applause ]

this past august, the obama administration would allow states to opt out of the no

child left behind. at time, we talked about the move with sam dillon of the new york times. this is 35 minutes. >> our guest is sam dillon. he is the national education correspondent. the education department makes an announcement about no child left behind. what's the announcement? >> they announced they would be responding to the no child left behind's overidentification of schools failing across the country with the program details to be announced of waivers of the school accountability provisions of the law. >> what forced them to do that? >> well, we're getting large numbers of states, or maybe the vast majority of states now identifying the majority of the schools in each state as failing, which is a big problem educational educationally. they felt they had to respond. >> when it comes to failing, is it overall or in specific

subjects? >> the law requires testing every year in reading and math. the law provides for a pass/fail school report card system. it requires that all states and schools bring 100% of their students to proficiency by the 2014 deadline. and the law worked in its early phases. in 2002. it worked as a prod to get everybody in education focused on that goal, which is a laudable goal. bring reading and math scores up. now when i say overidentification of schools, what is happening is it is identifying literally tens of thousands of schools that you and i would not think are failing. you go to the schools and they are well run, they look good, the teachers are committed.

they are being described as failing. that is a situation in which state education officials have no way to respond to that many schools. if you identify a school that is failing, the natural responsibility of government is to intervene and bring it up to snuff. but when you have 90% of the schools in the state that is failing, obviously, there is nothing that anybody can do about that. that is not a healthy situation. that is what they are responding to. >> the state measures schools by its own system. they do well. when you compare it to the national standard by no child left behind, they are not doing well? >> that is actually -- that varies by state. many states are doing poorly. for instance, florida has 90% of the schools failing under the law. under its own report card system, they have a letter grade for the report card system.

at least half get "a's" or "b's." that is because they have high standards for reading and math. there are states that chose to handle the law by setting their standards low. wisconsin has set low standards. they have a small proportion, perhaps 10 or 15% of the schools are failing. that is not a good situation. >> the education secretary arne duncan appeared on our news makers program. he talked about the vouchers. let's hear what he had to say. >> what you are hearing from teachers and governors and school superintendents, they want flexibility. no one is afraid of accountability. they want room to move. over the past ten days, i probably talked to 46 governors. almost every single governor in the country. not one governor said status quo is okay. not one governor said don't do

this. republican and democrats said thank god someone in washington is paying attention. we feel good about moving in this direction. >> why now as opposed to earlier in the administration if the sentiment from governors probably didn't change? >> well, the hope, i think, in the administration and in many of the states was that congress would rewrite the law this year and actually they tried in 2007 to rewrite it. by rewrite, i mean update it. this law dates to 1965. it has been periodically rewrite in every president except nixon and i believe ford as well, did achieve a rewrite of the law in the first term. obama is the first president in the period that hasn't been able to get it updated in that period. everybody is waiting for the

rewrite all through the early months of this year. arne duncan and the respective chairman in congress were working together. congress is deadlocked on education as it is on many other issues and they didn't get the rewrite. now as the school year is beginning, my impression is that the administration felt like they had to give some of the states relief. >> 202-624-1111 for republicans. our topic is states applying for no child left behind waivers. sam dillon from the new york times is our guest. walk us through it. if i need a voucher and i'm a state, what is the process? >> the term is waiver. if you want a waiver, you will have to wait until mid-to-late september. the date hasn't been set yet. that's the time when arne duncan

will be announcing all the details and all of the fine print that states will need to comply with in order to fill out an application and get a waiver. what they have done so far has been to outline some general principles that they say they will be using and the criteria they will be using and judging the validity of states applications for these waivers. those have roughly corresponded to the documents the administration put out. these are things like commitment to raising teacher quality. commitment to raising the standards in the state and three or four others. >> the state has to say to the government here are my ideas for standards and the government

says fine. they will get the waiver? >> kind of, yeah. they have to make a case that they are not just an irresponsible state that is going to, you know, slash the funding for the schools in a time of budget austerity and have a bunch of sloppy schools. they have to make a reasonable and credible case that they will try to keep raising the achiec e achievement of schools. i think there has been general agreement about one no child left behind of the positive features of the d disaggregation of scores. it has to take care of every group within the school so you don't get a packet of hispanic kids or disabled kids that are not doing well.

while all the wealthy kids efin. the law requires that schools pay attention to their test scores and make public their test scores. so, that's been a positive feature of the law. the secretary has said that in the context of putting out their waivers, that will be one of the requirements that the state will have to show that they will continue to make public the scores and make them available to the public. they will have to pay attention to all groups of students. >> we added a line, i should say, for those who are teachers and administrators. 202-737-2579. 202-737-2579. buck island, virginia. >> caller: good morning. first of all, i want to remind everybody why the no child left behind came into being. it was because teachers and the school system were handing out

diplomas like they came off a perforated roll. secondly, my home state of north carolina has been a dumping ground of elementary school to the college system for the parties we have now broken. i would like to ask your guest, what is wrong with the idea of defederalizing and leaving it in the back of the states and neighborhood school systems that work very well for so many years? >> well, the history of federal involvement in education goes back to about the mid '60s. to a degree, the late '50s. it began when president eisenhower felt in reaction to sputnik that state schools were not producing the science experts and the math experts that we needed to compete in the

cold war. so, there were originally federal initiatives to help states produce more scientists and mathmeticians. in the '60s, president johnson fought and achieved a degree of federal involvement in schools. federal funding for schools. that was used to help disadvantaged students in the schools. throughout the years, there have been people who thought this modest federal involvement is terrible. most of the states seem to welcome the federal aid. >> diane, democrats line in las vegas. >> caller: hello. i'm a school teacher and i have some comments about no child left behind criteria. i have asked and asked what is proficiency and i have been advised that it goes up every

year. that the goal is 100%. it doesn't appear to be a reasonable expectation. >> that is an interesting question. this is an arcane topic. i appreciate your question. a lot of people misunderstand it. i often times have difficulty understanding it myself and i do this for a yjob. the proficiency is basically a cut score on a test that every state sets for itself. that actually doesn't change regularly. some states change it occasionally. the law requires every state to set a proficiency standard in reading and math that they chose themselves. usual usually it is the state board of education. say 65% of the students will pass the test on a math test. it gets confusing because what

does go up, basically, every year under the law, is the percentage of students that are required to meet to pass that other bar. so, you have two percentages. you have a cut bar that is a proficiency level that is set by states and then you have a percentage of students that have to pass it. that's what goes up every year. that's a confusing set of formula. it is a formula that most don't understand. >> kansas city, kansas. nancy on the independent line. you are on with sam dillon of the new york times. >> caller: hi, i never thought we needed a federal department of education like this. i feel local parents and officials can decide what the children in their communities need in school. my grandchildren have learned

nothing in their schools. all the teachers worry about is the testing they have to do. they can't really teach the teachers. i think since the the schools do -- have their own grade carding, their open way they grade, their schools, the states do, why do we need the federal government? why is my tax money going to the federal government and then being redistributed to all the schools in the nation? i think it's wrong and i think the government needs to start reconsidering the department of education. >> well, i appreciate your opinion. there are some people that agree with you. most of the states accept the federal aid to education that they get. and it comes in for specific purposes. mainly it has been over the years to make sure that states pay attention to their least advantaged students. historically in the united states, schools didn't necessarily do that. that's where the federal involvement came from. i think one of the problems that

does occur with federal involvement in education is that you get a lot of posturing and a lot of demagoguery. this happens not only in republican administration, but also in democratic administrations. it happens not only from the white house, but members of congress who posture on educational issues so you'll end up with some congressman or senator who's acting like the national superintendent of schools and the law, the no child left behind law was proscriptive in many ways. in my opinion, it's had some contributions. it was overly proscriptive. a lot of educators complain about it. there are positive and negative features of the federal rule. most people don't agree about the local school. a good solid majority of people have a favorable opinion of their public school, thank you think they do a pretty good job.

>> jan asks you to speak about the move towards common core and what you think the impact might be on nclb. >> well the -- >> what is common core? >> well, the common core was a movement begun by the national governance and the school's superintendents. they were reacting to the fact that our country with educational standards set by every state had a total hodgepodge of academic standards. if your child is learning up in oregon and learning english and math there and then moves to florida, if they're in the fifth grade, they may be at a completely different level. they may not have been studying the same thing.

and basically, the business community across this country that has corporate executives that move around a lot, they found this intolerable. and our country is highly mobile. so those were some of the incentives that brought together the governors to come up with standards comparable across the states. that was last year about 40 some states and their governors ag e agreed to the process of accepting the common standards. they were written in -- by a bunch of experts and academics. from both higher -- postsecondary education and secondary education. so many states are in the process of adopting those standards. some have refused -- texas refused, alaska refused.

>> over what concerns? >> well, governor perry just was the one governor who just kind of postured on the topic and said, no, these are federal standards. you know, we in texas, we know best for our kids. and he took that posture and turned the money -- he turned the money for race to the top down and he said they didn't want to get involved in the common core standards. alaska did that. there were a few states that did that. massachusetts, for instance, they have among the highest standards in the country. and they had a different kind of debate over the standards there because theirs are very high. on the federal tests, massachusetts invariably comes out either first or very high. so a lot of citizens in massachusetts had a -- had quite understandable reticence to give up the standards. eventually, they did adopt, but they had quite a debate there. >> chicago, illinois, gerald is

an administrator who joins us on the line for teachers and administrators. >> caller: a wonderful topic. i have been anticipating this coming out. sam, thanks for answering the questions in a very clear way. the idea of the law was excellent. but the devil's in the details. the idea of the subgroups, the sub group piece where you have eight or nine, you have free lunch, genders and so on, they must continue to meet a certain level of success. and that's where it's getting very difficult for school districts to keep up. and especially a population that's very broad. so you can have students who are emotionally disabled and so forth and learning disabled, yet, they have to continue to progress with the regular population. that presents a significant

challenge for districts. and if in fact one subgroup doesn't progress at a certain level, then that whole entire school is looked upon as a failure. that's where the policy quite frankly is ineffective. you can't label an entire school as a failure because of one small subgroup. that may be making growth, but they're not particularing a particular cutoff designed by the particular state. the question what's going to supplant nclb? there will be a move -- and you talked about this, that there thereby -- that there will be merit and that will reach a political impasse because republicans will push towards more merit process and the democrats may not be cool to that idea. >> we'll have to leave threit t, gerald. >> a good question, and i've heard your complaint of having every group of students in your

school with in some cases the same student counted several times meet the proficiency standards and continue to get larger numbers of standards that are passing the bar. you know, i'm ambiguous about that. i think the law made a tremendous contribution that requiring that schools pay attention to every group. it isn't fair to have a group, a school with 80% of the school in affluent and the parents read to them at home and they're doing fine, so the administration of the school says, look, we have a great school because 80% of our kids are doing great. and then another group that are forgotten in the school. that's the impulse that said, look, you have to publicize the academic achievement of every group. let's keep track of them. setting up a grade card system

for them on the other hand on which one of these groups failing to meet the bar each year and the whole school is labelled failing is basically a pass/fail system for the whole system, a lot of people are sympathetic to that. what the trend is, and basically, this will eventually be fixed when congress rewrites the law. we don't know how they'll do it. but a lot of people are pressing for a system in which as you mentioned the way a school will be judged will be on how much each year they move their students along. not whether they pass the absolute bar, but whether they'll move them along a continuum of achievement. i hope when they do eventually get around to rewriting the law there will not be a lot of posturing, but common sense. >> when is the likelihood of that law being rewritten? >> that's everybody's guess.

it's not happening this year. it's not going to happen next year that's an election year. so probably 2013 in the first year of the next year of the president. >> new york, good morning to rick on the republican line. >> caller: yes, sir, good morning. i think like the no child left behind act, there are the federal programs we could go down to the next president rand paul and ask him what he thinks of the department of education because we don't need it. i mean, the state has been doing fine for all those years. but today is rand paul's website, i'm going to his website. i appreciate it and you have a good day. >> well, that's great. thanks for your question. >> go ahead. >> i mean, people that live in states with good school systems can have pride in their school systems. you know, on the other hand, there's a lot