fair enough question. >> sure. i appreciate the opportunity to be here, mr. chairman, senator enzi, members. for me, unlike mr. schnur, i don't spend as much time on the ground. i spend much more time looking at the questions with some perspective. i think if we look back at a half century of federal efforts to improve schooling, some pretty stark lessons stand out that are rarely kind of taken into account. we often spend time talking about whether the federal government should or should not be involved in education. if we go back to the northwest ordinance, more land grant act, for more than two centuries, we've actually had the federal government involved in some way. for me, the much more useful question here is what is the federal government equipped to do well when it comes to american education. i think the federal government is horribly situated to improve schools or improve teaching. it is just atrociously situated

because schools are enormously complex organizations. what we've already heard today from several of the folks on the ground, from mr. luna, from mr. grier is how much improving teacher accountability, improving teacher evaluation depends not on whether you do it, but on how you do it. and the problem is given this design of the american federal system and the complexity of state education agencies and local education agencies and schools, is no matter how well intended, our efforts around trying to spell out improvement models, trying to stipulate preparation for principals who are going to take overturnaround schools, efforts to specify evaluation models, long experience teaches me that we are going to wind up with much more in the way of regulation and case law and compliance than we are with fulfillment of the intent of the law. so i would encourage us to be as cautious as possible about trying to spell out interventions or remedies for

either schools or teachers that said, i think there are some particularly useful elements to the law. i think a of the federal law recognizes that there are public goods the federal government to my mind is uniquely equipped to provide an education. one is robust and reliable transparency, both around student performance, around outlays and expenditures, and around disaggregating to ensure we have an x-ray on how well kids everywhere of all kinds are doing. second, the federal government i think has an explicit charge to provide constitutional protections for vulnerable populations. we do this in ieda. to my mind, the 5% target spelled out in the committee bill is reasonable. jack welch, when he ran general electric used to have a mind-set that they were going to try to fire the worst 10% of employees each year. not that he knew 10% was the

right number. it could have been 15. it could have been 5. he just thought 10% was a reasonable number. it strikes me that encouraging states to address those 5% each year is not unreasonable, so long again as we keep that focus on encouraging states to address it and not on trying to stipulate models through which they should address it. third, i think there is an enormously useful role in the kind of stuff mr. schnur alluded to provide political cover for state and union leaders who trying to get themselves out of an anachronistic systems. often even when you have superintendents like mr. grier or far-sighted union leaders who would like to do things differently, they get pulled back by their constituents who ask what is in it for us. one of the powerful levers of voluntary competitive grants is the answer to what is in it for us is we can go out, we can bring a spotlight we can bring home dollars. and it provides us a chance to leapfrog into the swoyft. 21st century.

fourth, thing is a federal role when it comes to basic research. it is enormously useful in this front. what i would encourage, though, is we keep in mind that the federal role if we think about doppler rad darpa is how do we leverage technological innovations and involved in trying to recommend particular models of implementation. so i hope that's helpful. >> very good. very comprehensive. >> i'm sorry. in regard to what is positive about it, i think first of all, in your segment, senator was that no child left behind was ineffective. and i certainly have to agree with that. and i would like to think of this as really not the reauthorization of no child left behind, but the reauthorization of esea. as an at just the connotation of the term "no child left behind," it really is

demoralizing to us at this point because there is so much focus on teach -- i mean testing, testing, testing, that we have no time to teach. and it really has become that way within the schools. working with gifted education, i run into this all the time, because things that i want to do with my students, the teachers don't want me to take them out of the classroom because they're addressing a particular standard that is going to be tested. for instance, i was taking a group to view an open heart surgery, a live open heart surgery. and one of my teachers was taking a -- giving a practice test to practice for the practice test to test for -- to practice for the test. i mean that's the way that it goes. these students are testing all year round. and it takes so much time from instruction. and as long as we keep our standards and our gap groups set

up as they are, i think the gap groups are effective. we want to look at those gaps. we want to be sure that that no child is left behind. and that needs to be our concentration. and i was so thrilled when no child left behind passed because i thought hallelujah, now we're going to see that every child learns every day. but what we're doing in no child left behind is we're leaving behind most of our students because our students that have special needs are not being able to be taught the skills that they need to be taught. our fmd classes where teachers really, really, really genuinely cared about these students wanted these students to learn skills that they could use in their lives, life skills. they can no longer teach those skills because they have to address the standards. these students are going to be tested on the standards. gifted students are left behind totally because they are already proficient or distinguished, and

so teachers don't feel that they can use time -- their time to work with these gifted students. so consequently, test scores of our gifted students are getting lower and lower. and these are -- many of these are the future leaders of our country. and we're not meeting their needs. so those students come to school and go home and have not learned throughout the day. but the real concern of mine, and i do work with gifted students, but is what i hear from the special ed teachers and their concerns that they have that they can no longer -- they deeply care about these students or they wouldn't be in these jobs. they couldn't be in these jobs. but they cannot address the needs that these students really need in their classrooms. we have even had an instance where we had a terminally ill special needs child, and tried to get an exemption for testing, and could not get that, even with a doctor's note saying that the testing, just the process of testing would be detrimental to

the child's health. we still could not get an exemption for that child. and their scores were figured in our accountability. we have a student that has a four-word vocabulary. that's all he speaks. and one of the phrases that he uses or the terms that he uses, i don't know, senator paul, can i say that? he can say yes, no, mom, and hell no. that's all he says. and that's all -- he is in sixth grade now. that's all he has said throughout his schooling. he is supposed to do a portfolio. yes, it's an alternate portfolio. that's what people say, well, we have alternate portfolios. but how do you do an alternate portfolio with that? so. >> thank you very much. mr. luna? >> mr. chairman, just one point of clarification. i think a concern was raised earlier about the fact that incentives could create competition in schools and that that could be a negative impact.

just so you understand in idaho when it comes to student achievement, we only go down to the school level. and so actually fosters collaboration and team work amongst all the teachers in the school because they're working together to help all their students hit an academic goal. if they meet that goal, then all of the teachers receive the financial incentive, not just a few teachers in the school. when it comes to no child left behind, no child left behind reminds me of the good, the bad and the ugly. because there is a little bit of that in the law. i think the good part is it brought us -- this was ten years ago. it brought us to a standards-based education system where now we were accountable for every child and we had to have a standardized way of measuring student achievement. the bad part of the law is it was a one-size-fits-all. in a state like idaho which has rural communities within the rural state, it was difficult to implement the law. the ugly part is we had a system where the federal government set the goal and then they

prescribed to the states what programs and processes we had to meet that goal, and if their programs and processes didn't work, we were held accountable. and so, you know, that was the ugly part. i think that this law, this reauthorization has kept the good parts of no child left behind. in fact, i think it's even improved upon going to a growth model. because if we're serious about making sure that every child's needs are met, then a growth model demands that a system not only focus on those students that aren't at grade level, but also the students that are above, because you're obligated to show academic growth for those students also. today, once they hit proficiency, you're tempted to not focus as much on students that are proficient or higher and still focus on kids that are below free throw efficiency. -- proficiency. it recognizes the leadership the states have taken in improving education. states chose to work together to develop a higher standard to hold all of our students to

common core. it wasn't because it was federally mandated. we chose to work together to create the next generation of assessments, not because it was mandated, but because we know that's what is best for our students. and we chose to develop the next generation of accountability. so you have 40 or more states that with without any federal mandate or incentive have developed a higher standard for our students. we're developing higher assessments to measure our students. and we've come up with our own accountability plan that has had quite a bit of influence on the law that has been drafted. and so i think it's a tenth amendment issue, right. and i think it's recognizing the rights that states have and the responsibilities that states have. and i'm comfortable with that now more than even ten years ago, because state news have demonstrated that they are more than willing and ready to step up and hold ourselves and our schools to a higher level of accountability. >> very good.

thank you. >> thank you. i just wanted to say a couple of things from the perspective of easter seals. and i think our perspective is that students with disabilities in general have greatly benefitted from the elementary and and secondary act because the law requires their academic achievement to be measure and reported. and as a result, more students with disabilities have been afforded the opportunity to learn and master grade level academic content. that has been huge for our kids. the whole notion of they get a chance to try. one of the things -- there are a number of things that we like in the senate bill. the notion of states to adopt college and career-ready standards, and an assumption of high expectations. we also are very pleased that the bill does not codify the so-called 2% rule, which for us has allowed people to apply

very, very low expectations to achievement for students with disabilities. we're very pleased with the elements that promote universal design for learning throughout the bill, access to multitiered systems of support, including positive behavior interventions, and the notion that early learning can begin at birth, and that then this bill promotes those things. there are a number of things that we're very concerned about, and look forward to working with you to improve them. the bill doesn't change this notion of end size or subgroup size. and as a result, right now less than about 30% of schools have enough students with disabilities to meet the subgroup category. so 70% of schools don't even measure, don't have enough kids, according to their subgroup size. we know that lots of kids, their progress isn't being measured and reported. the law requires -- requires 95% of kids to be assessed. so we understand that that not

every kid is going to be at every school every day. but we know we need that data on subgroup accountability. we really want at the end of the day for all kids to have access to the general education curriculum, and for all kids to be held to high expectations. i spent the last four days with 350 easter seals people who around the country and i have story after story after story of families who were told what their kid couldn't do. and they came to us and we were able to help them figure out what they wanted to do. so i would plea to this committee, don't put in barriers that make it hard for kids to have access to the general curriculum. before no child left behind, before the secondary education act, for kids that have very significant cognitive disabilities, we used to hear over and over again that what they were taught was their colors. i would get a family that yet another iep.

we got goals and my kid is going to learn their colors. yellow, red, green. next year the goals for my kid's iep are the colors. my kid knows the colors. we need to move on. and no child left behind, the elementary secondary education act has given awes form that says every kid deserves the opportunity to make academic progress. so my plea to you is let's continue on that to make sure that there aren't barriers put in place that disallow kids to have access to the general curriculum, access to the supports that they need to learn and that one of the things that we need are teachers who know what they're doing who are committed to these kids, who will help them learn and the tools to help them do that. >> thank you very much. mr. seton? >> thank you again. one of the things, yes, we do need federal involvement. we need your money. and in order to say that we need your money, you need to be able to have some involvement in the

guidance of where and how that money is spent. i do believe in tennessee tha m culture has been created by no child left behind that looks at the numbers, that looks at data. and we are willing to change and update our strategies on a regular basis. there are three things i want to talk about -- evaluation. real quickly, it has to happen. in the military, they used to say inspect what you expect. so evaluations will cause us to look at how we're going to accomplish the things that we need to accomplish. leaders. we need leaders. and a lot of times people think that becoming an administrator in a school system, you teach 10, 15 years, three to five years and you can just become a leader. leaders don't happen like that all the time. so there needs to be something that guy collins wrote "built to

last" and "good to great." those are big-time business books. but they look at how to be effective over the course of time, and how major companies have lasted. and then what they did to last. we need to be able to take those same types of data points and benchmark what it takes to be a good leader in a school. and we need to look at the top 5% of schools as well as the bottom 5%, because those bottom 5% of schools are our drop-out factories. and we need to address that with accountability. i think that no child left behind pointed us in the right direction, but it didn't give us the resources that we necessarily needed to make those changes. so as i look at what you are talking about, we have a program in memphis called cradle to career. and it looks at education from birth to your career. and so the college readiness program that you all have incorporated, i applaud. and i think that we as educators

and as a family of americans need to get together, and we just need to kind of accept the direction that you all have given us. and i thank you for this time. >> thank you, mr. seaton. again, what is good and what is bad about the bill. mr. grier? >> thank you, senator. thank you, senator. first, we want to say thank you for continuing to have an accountability component in there. focusing on the bottom 5% of our schools that are persistently low achieving, schools that have achievement gap, and allowing states some discretion in developing an accountability system in their state i think is all positive. we also would like very much that we no longer have to set aside money for supplemental educational services. in our district, this after-school tutoring program has not yielded any results. we actually have had vendors that would give the students rides to movie theaters in

stretch limousines for signing up with them. last year in our district we created our own tutorial program in our turn-around schools. we reconstituted five middle schools and four high schools. and we tutored all sixth and ninth graders in those schools in math every day. one tutor per two children. and at the end of the year, we had twice the academic gains that the harlem children zone achieved last year. we know that good tutoring with a good curriculum that is organized and that can occur during the school day can pay huge dividends. based on our own experience with turnaround models, we would like to really encourage you to modify is the one that where the current legislation limits the schools that reclassify as persistently low achieving to only use the closure and restart models.

we believe that repeat classification should only prevent the lea from using the same model they used during that initial classification. we also would like to caution the committee on the additional reporting requirements that we fear may be attached to our parental involvement, and in the successful safe and healthy student initiatives. we worry that potentially a large portion of funding allocations to these reforms will go simply into reporting mandates. we don't need that type of additional bureaucracy. we just don't. finally, one of the things that concerns us in houston, and it concerns a lot of our colleagues, my colleagues, and a lot of the large school district is this issue around comparability. there is some real problems with that in the current legislation. we would love to work with you later to perhaps work through some of this. but the way that you would come in and determine the formula

around comparability is very problematic. >> which is in the bill? >> which is in the current bill. it needs major attention. >> what is in the current bill that we have, not the current law. >> the current law we have. >> got it. i just want to be clear. >> it's just a huge issue, particularly in a district, for example, like houston, where in turning around our nine lowest performing secondary schools, and these were schools that were tagged with the label of drop-out factories. we went out this past year and raised almost $15 million from private sources. we lengthened the school day by an hour. we hired additional tutsiers. that costs more money. to do that and bring those outside dollars in, and now all of the sudden those are there, in the bill's current language, if we had to use the comparability formula that you have a here, these schools would be penalized for our efforts to go out and raise additional dollars. another thing that bothers me an awful lot is the school

superintendent is that it's simply costs more money to turn these schools around. and i wish your current bill had some type of set-aside. in the title i revenues that we receive, that would be required to be spent on those schools. and people can say to you, well, you have the flexibility to do that. yes, you do. you often don't have the political will to do that. and that's very, very tough, because you're then taking money away from another school to insert in your lowest performing schools. i don't have the magic number in terms of what that set-aside should look like. but we set aside 1% for personal involvement. some people argue that's too low. but it is a set-aside that requires us to spend money to make sure we can engage our parents. these schools that are so low performing, it takes more money. i can promise you one of the

things i'm more concerned about than anything we have talked about here today, and i don't know how your bill addresses this is the human capital that is required to address these 5% schools. quality principals, quality teacher in every classroom, those are easy words to say. but when you get out and you start recruiting, our nine turnaround schools, we recruited nationally. we offered 20 and $30,000 incentives, stretch goals, $5,000 signing bonuses to get principals to go into these schools. we didn't have anyone from our highest performing schools lined up to go into those schools. no one. and we recruited 70 principals to hire nine. we hired those nine principals. and after a year we replaced four of them. it is just hard work. and this whole issue around turning around these lowest performing schools, the biggest issue that we'll talk about is the issue around human capital.

>> thank you very much, mr. grier. ms. danks? >> thank you again. something i really liked about the bill was the idea that each state would be adopting the college and career readiness standards. i think having those high expectations for all of our students is very important and is going to get our students ready for the 21st century workforce, or college or whatever they end up doing. something that i think has been missing for far too long from many of our standards are life skills standards, standards that address those skills that our students with the most severe cognitive disabilities need to master in order to be successful after their high school term is finished. so we focus a lot on the students that are typically developing, on what they're going to do after high school. but this other population is i think left behind by not having those standards so that teachers know what to teach, so that we can effectively measure progress towards those standards, and so that we can be assure that those students are ready for whatever they may be getting into when they're finished with high school.

we -- everyone says that we assess too much. i think that we assess ineffectively too much. i agree. we have a lot of practice tests for the practice tests in order to take the real test. i think that's completely ineffective. if we were able to adopt some more effective assessments that provided teachers and administrators with the data necessary in order to inform our instruction and improve our instructional strategies so that we can push our students to the higher levels, then we would be able to assess quickly, efficiently, and more often. that data would be collected immediately. i know we have talked about computer-based assessments. those often are able to give us more quick results and provide them in such a way that the teacher can use those the next day in order to inform their instruction and make better strategy decisions. something that was always a struggle with no child left behind that i didn't fully understand how it was addressed

in this bill are the highly qualified standards. i know when i came through teaching, i did come through an alternative certification program, and the highly qualified standards was a lot of paperwork. no one ever came in my classroom to be sure that i was highly effective, but my paperwork was in, and that's all that mattered. so i feel like we're missing the target on that. anyone can turn in transcripts, but not not everyone can be a highly effective teacher in the classroom. and we've talked a lot about the evaluation of teachers and principals. with that evaluation comes support and guidance. and so i think that is a huge piece missing in those -- in that highly qualified standards discussion. just because a teacher is highly effective one year with a new student population or at a new school, they may not be highly effective. so that continued support to help our teachers into better instructors is going to be paramount for our student success. >> thank you, ms. danks. >> thank you, chairman harkin,

senator enzi, and to all the distinguished members of this committee. i want to thank you for inviting me to this important bipartisan roundtable discussion. on the reauthorization of the elementary and education act. mr. chairman, have i been unchristmascally quiet this morning, and i would hope that gives me perhaps an additional minute to lay out things we like about this bill as well as those that pose a concern. let me begin. let me say at the outset that all of us seem to agree that no child left behind is in need of significant improvement. i think we would also agree that the global economy has imposed new demands on our nation to improve the quality of public education available both k through 12, but also post secondary education. and the fact that our workforce is going to be drawn from an

increasingly diverse population of individuals both native-born and immigrants in our country makes this not just a moral issue, and that is improving education reform is a moral issue, but it's also a national security issue. and the fact that this committee is taking seriously its responsibilities for a deeper dive in this area is extremely important. there are things about this bill that, indeed, represent improvements over current law. i'm going to outline them very briefly, and then i want to talk about the other things which pose concern. we are very pleased that the bill requires more equitable funding within districts. i would disagree with mr. grier with respect to the responsibility of the federal government to use its leverage and its resources to help encourage improvement in this area. i think the bill does an improved effort to address the problems of drop-out factories,

which are those schools that represent a significant part of the schools where individuals drop out annually, and for african-americans and latinos and native americans, we often lose perhaps as many as 50% of our high school graduating class annually. i think the bill does a great job in providing college and career-ready standards. i would agree with ms. danks that there is improvement there. i'm pleased about the importance of data collection to ensure that the subgroups of boys and girls aren't masked, and that interventions can be targeted more effectively. i think that's important. we think the stem courses available to underrepresented groups is an improvement. all those things represent significant improvements. and we were especially pleased with senator franken's effort to provide additional protections for students in foster care.