dozens of civil rights, education, and business organizations including the u.s. chamber of congress have determined that we cannot support the bill at this time. we have issued a statement to that effect, which i would request be entered into the record of this discussion this morning. now, we are troubled by several provisions in the bill. so let me see if i can just outline them with the same that i did those things that we like. we are concerned that the states would be required to take action to improve only a small number of low-performing schools that is the bottom 5% of the schools in most states. and that while the bill does identify an additional 5% of schools with achievement gaps, and those considered drop-out factories, the bill does not require these schools to make any significant academic progress and proscribes no interventions. and moreover, it allows each

state to decide which achievement gaps merit attention and which do not. in the remaining 95% of the schools that are not among the state's very worst performing public schools, large numbers of low-achieving students will simply slip through the cracks. obviously, that happens today. but that is not the measure that we use to determine whether a newly reauthorized elementary and secondary education act is responsive to those problems. in many states, these students will be low income students, students of color, those learning english, and students with disabilities. the bill also does not require states to set targets for significantly improving high school graduation rates, despite the fact, as i noted, every year about 1.3 million students drop out, and only a little over half of the students of color, including african-american, latino, native american, and southeast asian students graduate on time.

and then finely, for english language learners, the bill eliminates annual measurable objectives, which is a critical accountability element for the title iii program. finally, the bill weakens requirements in the current law requiring that low income students and students of color be taught at a higher rate by inexperienced, unqualified, or out of field teachers. we know that we can't close the achievement gap if we don't also close the teacher quality gap. now i don't have the experience of many of the teachers and principals who work on the ground every day. but i am a board member, a trustee of the educational testing service. the educational testing service is a nonprofit corporation, has launched a series symposium and

seminar. and highly academic and a deeper dive, they identify a number of elements that lead to actually reducing the achievement gap between students. but all of them are based on the core principle of accountability. it is indispensable to advancing the common goals that we have about closing the achievement gaps and maintaining our company's competitiveness in the global economy. so i think it's fair to say, and without hyperbole, that the provisions in the bill that we have focused on with greatest concern really represent the de facto end of a national accountability system as we have come to understand it. and while i believe that this notion of providing flexibility for individual school districts and schools may be important given the context in which it is raised, it is not appropriate to offer flexibility that in effect represents an end to the

establishment of national standards that have been the significant, in fact arguably the most significant driver of the improvement of public schools that we've seen over the past decade of no child left behind. so with that in mind, sir, thank you. i appreciate the opportunity. >> i thought that was very thorough. thank you very much. and mr. thomas, you got the hammer. >> thank you, senator. i really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today, and i just want to say that as a principal, i love my students, i love my job as principal. i love working with our students every day and with our teachers every day. and looking at this reauthorization, there are two or three things that i would like to mention that are very positive, and then some things that we could certainly work on. certainly, as everyone in mind, we're looking out for interest of students. so some good things i think are in the bill, in the recommendation would be the student growth model. you have heard that quite a bit. and i think that's a real positive thing to get rid of the punitive ayp stageses was very effective. so we appreciate that effort.

it's also been and a lot of my work is based on the college readiness and career standards. i think that's a good start there as well. i think it is important with the college and career readiness standards that we look at what our states are doing and allow the states to determine what those standards are. and in kentucky we have begun that work and are certainly very appreciative of the opportunity to set the standards as a state. there are some things with the reauthorization that certainly should be looked at, and thought about thoroughly before we move forward with anything. once again, locally determine what our college and career readiness standard looks like. in addition, approving some assessments for our students with special needs based on their accommodation set fort in their ieps. i think the release committees can determine what those assessments look like. and in so doing, there is going to have to be a removal of the 1% cap on some of our

alternative assessments for our special needs students. and an example of that would be if you look at madison central high school, we are about 1750 students. and if you take 1% of that for alternative assessment, that would be 17 1/2, let's round up, 18 students. and at madison central, we have our severe disability students, we have three classrooms, ten students each for a total of 30 students. so now we're looking at an accountability that doesn't include the entire population that could have an iep that says they should be on an alternative assessment. so i would like for there to be an alternative assessment -- just remove the 1% cap and let the local iep/arc committee determine that, would be really good. an issue that we find we struggle with, at least in my district, my previous district is the highly qualified part of the reauthorization. whenever we look at the highly qualified, it's very burdensome.

our teachers struggle, we struggle to hire special needs teachers. and as we are all very aware, some of the best teachers don't come through a natural path through certification. so we would like some alternative ways and not really put the burden on the highly qualified mandate about the testing. so for example, to be highly qualified, and we want to get highly qualified teachers for all of our students. and special needs is one area that we struggle. we want to have high standards and put the best teachers in place there. but to do so requires a very burdensome testing process. we'd like to advocate for some local decisions there on what that highly qualified status looks like. and then lastly, just simply as a principal, i was very fortunate a month ago to come to capitol hill and to petition on behalf of principals across the united states, but certainly as the met life nassc principal

from kentucky, i have to talk about the four school turnaround models that we have that includes getting rid of the principal in each one of those models if they have been in their position for more than two years. and obviously, you know, i think there are certainly principals out there who are poor principals who need to be removed. but certainly if we just put one assessment, or we put one measure on those principals and remove them, then it's going to be quite difficult to keep some of our principals. a really good example would be in our home state in one of our counties. our principal has been there for just a little bit over two years. and he is in the bottom 5%, his school is. and we want to turn that school around. and he seems to be doing a really good job. if you look at their college and career readiness standards, they're doing very well. but based on the sanctions listed by the 5%, he's got to lose his job. so as a result, i cannot support the four school turnaround

model. and i would just like to ask for a fair analysis first to determine whether the existing principal is making gains, and use some alternative measures to make those gains. thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. thomas. let's see. senator paul. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for having this hearing. i continue to learn more about the issue every time i hear more about not only no child left behind, but about various ideas. i think it's a recommendation for the hearing that we have a packed crowd. we've had standing room only the whole time. so i think it is good. and i for one see problems as a physician. you try to diagnosis the problem, you try to fix it. and we should continue to look at that as a problem solving sort of orientation for this. i do think that there is a large philosophical sort of debate and battle that is part of this. for example, i hear ideas from people who are probably

republican, democrat, liberal, conservative on this panel. and a lot of them are good ideas. to my mind, it's not it's a good idea or bad, it's where it gets instituted that makes a difference. mr. seaton has ideas, mr. grier has ideas. they all sound good. i'm afraid once we make them universal -- while i would probably vote for mr. grier or mr. luna to be superintendent, i don't want them to be the national superintendent of schools. so it is a big difference. how much is it federal. i think for the most part -- and this is a philosophical point. the farther we get away from the local school, the worse it gets. and the farther we get way from local government to national government, the worse the oversight gets. i don't know that we can judge who a good teacher is. i would have to know more. i would have to sit in her class and i would have to look at that. i would have to maybe judge on how well her studen at i don't know here whether she is a good teacher or not. in columbia, kentucky is different from memphis is different from houston.

so my argument for it is to keep in mind that there is a philosophical question here on local versus federal. and i think we're coming together in understanding that maybe federal overbearing or federal overreach in education hasn't been good. and that it sometimes makes people a number. people talk about special needs kids and special education kids. i think to put a number on them makes them some sort of abstract mathematical percentage is a mistake. i don't know how whether i can tell whether 17 or 30 is right for the school district in richmond, kentucky. i would think only locally they can figure that out. so i think we shouldn't have numbers in our bill that say you know, i think we all are concerned. i don't think mr. thomas is not concerned about special needs. he is concerned about being judged unfairly, or his school is. now i think we've gone a long way towards fixing some of these problems with ayp, with the yearly progress. but i still am concerned that we still have the testing mandates, which will have people

practicing to do tests to do tests. i don't think we fixed that i think that is still a problem that should be and could be fixed. so i'm glad we're having this hearing, because we still will try on the floor, and i would encourage all of you through your organizations, anybody through any teaching organization still to continue to lobby congress, because i've been at least given some indication that we may allow amendments on the floor, relevant amendments to this. and i hope we will so we can make it better. we don't do this very often. we haven't done it in a long time. so we need to try to make it better. i am concerned, and i would like to ask this question is that we are still going to judge the bottom 5% the way we've been judging schools. but we've kind of determined the way we've been judging schools wasn't very good. so somebody can help me out if i'm wrong on this. but we're still going to judge the bottom 5% the way we've been judging schools. the problem i have with that is that my kid goes to a public high school, and it gets awards from either "forbes" magazine or "newsweek" of being one of the best schools, but it's also told

it's fail big no child left behind. 37 states want out. so really, that makes me think the law is not very good. maybe we need more dramatic changes than what we're actually addressing. but i guess my question is, is how are we going to determine if our model is not working for determining which is a good school now? is it a good thing to keep the 5% judged that way, or do we need to reassess how we judge who are the bottom 5%? and i'd like to start out with mr. thomas and see if he'll make a comment on that. but then i would be more than welcome to hear other folks on this as well. >> thank you, senator paul. >> well, i just think it's very difficult when you use one measure to determine what your school is going to be successful as. under the old law, certainly madison central high school has never met ayp. so therefore we have struggled historically to meet that standard. and of course the standard as it rose became quite frustrating.

however, whenever we look at our new model, madison central high school is in the top third of college and career readiness. so whenever you're using just one kind of goal to determine what is meeting that standard, it's quite frustrating, because it becomes one target is successful, another target is not. it's kind of like what you're mentioning about your local school is that according to one standard, they're a very good performing school. but according to another standard, they're not meeting that. and so that's the issue that i strug with there as well that we need to use multiple forms of assess fire department we're going to do that, not overtesting, by the way. i'm not advocating for that. but let's look at the school holistically in terms of what we're doing. >> i'm sorry. everybody -- okay. might as well just continue on down the line. i assume all of the ones are up to respond to what senator paul said? >> absolutely. >> let me say, senator paul. >> since we're there, let's just go this way. >> thank you, sir. let me respond, senator paul, if

i might to your opening observation that this discussion we're having today involves primarily a philosophical difference about whether the states are the best laboratories for establishing significant reforms for education. and whether the federal government may in fact have a role to play. i don't think anyone is advocating the nationalization of public education. the supreme court, as you know, has already addressed that issue in san antonio versus rodriguez, 1974 case which has acknowledged that public education is not a fundamental right under the constitution. but that same supreme court sought to examine early efforts to implement a states' rights philosophy with regard to public education, and found it deeply wanting. and in fact offensive to the constitution. because the results of the effort did not provide simply

just an equality of educational opportunity, but significant investment in those communities that had the least amount of political power or influence or were tainted by racial bias, which was evidence in a number of the states that spoke most loudly in favor of states' rights in public education. the decision in brown versus the board of education established, established a federal interest which no child left behind essentially sought to vindicate by ensuring that the use of federal dollars could be an incentive to improve the quality of public education available to students. that principle hasn't changed. it has been a bipartisan consensus that included people like senator alexander who as secretary of education sought to implement similar efforts, and george w. bush, who in fact signed no child left behind into law. this is not about a

philosophical conversation about how best to educate students. it's about the practical effects of the failure to recognize the constitutional interests that every student has to a quality public education which was not being adequately served by state law. and so under the circumstances, i don't think this bill represents an extension of that principle. i think it represents a fair representation of where the principle stood. now i've expressed my concerns about the accountability system because i think under the guise of reform, the provisions in the bill go too far to negate the legitimate federal interest that we recognize exists. so rather than weakening that federal interest given the history of bias and discrimination under the state system, if anything we should be looking to reinforce it in a more significant and positive way. so i don't see this as a philosophical debate at all. i see it as a practical debate

affecting real, live students and the consequences of a failure to educate them properly. >> mr. grier? >> thank you, senator harkin. as i understand the bill as it's written today, the bill doesn't just address the 5% of the lowest performing schools or the schools that have the largest achievement gap. it also gives states the option of identifying additional low performing schools in their states. and i think that states are to be commended. now whether or not we get into a debate about whether or not some states are different than the other, i happen to believe that states ought to have some flexibility in that arena, as i also believe local school districts should. when our state told us last year that we had four low performing high schools, that they labeled drop-out factories, well, quite frankly we had three or four other high schools that had -- we had some input, we may have decided perhaps needed more attention than two of the ones

on the list. they were identified by one narrow definer. and so how you intertwine all that local flexibility and the state flexibility i think is important. it's often more difficult to do than it is -- than to say that we ought to do it. >> now i'm going to skip over one, two, three. i know both mr. hess and mr. schnur have to leave. it's 11:30. i will go to those two and then come back to the three. so mr. schnur and mr. hess. >> thank you. i just got word that i was able to move my meeting back. i've got a little longer. >> i'll give to it you later. you've got remarkableschnur. thank you, i'd like to just say a couple words about senator paul's question and then really just a couple other points. one is i think senator paul's

precisely right. one of the zyflaws in no child left behind was one of its great strengths as mr. henderson indicated it took a national xrafr where performing. it told us how they were performing at a gimp point in time. the problem with that is an x-ray doesn't tell you the cause. knowing that students of of this demographic profile in this community are at this level achievement in reading or math or science does not tell us whether that is due to the school'sismence, to their home environment or it is due to you all their prior xwreers of schooling. so one of the problems with that x-ray that no child left behind took was we tried to then use it as the basis to determine whether schools were performing adequately or not. that was a profound flaw, and it's very healthy to see the senate wrestling with this today. the superior alternative to try

to identify this 5%, again, recognizing there's going to be murkiness whether it's the exact rate 5% is to focus on how well those students are faring in the course of that academic year. we want to look at how much those students are learning in things that we deem essential in the course of an academic year. that is right central starting point for identifying whether schools are doing their job well. again, because i think it is an imprecise science because i think no matter how well intended federal interventions may be, they are unfortunately likely to do more harm than good, it is useful to prescribe mod did hes. picking up ten cents on the dollar, it is appropriate for the federal government to insist that states be identifying and coming up with strategies to address these. sufficient a couple other points i'd like to make real quick. one, i think we've heard a number of what i would regard as terrific suggestions and practices about how to educate

children in schools an districts. i think the mistake is to imagine that when they are good ideas, we need to try to then promote them and encourage them from washington. it's not that there's oneestion senator paul pointed out which is the philosophic question. but even pragmatically, when mr. green is trying to drive school improvement in houston, what he is doing is working with a teacher unit headed by houston fed rafgs teachers. he is working with a district over which he oversees control. is he working with a board and employee who's report to him. that is profoundly different from what the senate or house are attempting to do in writing legislation. all esea can do is empower the u.s. department of education to issue regulations attached to funding which then must be funneled through state education agencies which then must be picked up by school district superintendents. at the end of day, what we wind up with are rules, regulars,

case law which create unanticipated compliance burdens. one very evocative illustrationing is robert bob, a detroit financial manager, one of the crazy ideas he tried to promote was the idea they ought to be moving title 1 dollars out of substitute teacher funds and field trips into early childhood litera literacy. the state education agency told him he was not permitted to, that this was in violation of federal guidelines. the u.s. department of education said that was incorrect, that he was actually consistent with the appropriate interpretation of the law. but that's what happens when is we try to write laws from washington and they wind up on books at the state and in the district. we wind up creating enormous hurdles for people trying to solve these problems in schools and districts. two other really quick points. one, let me say that when it comes to school turnarounds and teacher evaluation, i have see

enormous respect for what mr mr. schnur is talking. i would argue decades of experience particularly out of education tell us it's not whether you do it, it's how well. there are three decades on turnarounds. corporate reengineering. in the best case scenarios, these work 30% of the time. to imagine that we can identify some models that we will then require folks to use and imagine that that is going to increase the likelihood that they will succeedcy think just to -- to allow our aspirations to exceed what we can actually usefully do. to give one very concrete example i think particularly on the teacher evaluation front what i am concerned about, you may have read or heard where new school models, hybrid schools like carpe deem or rocket ship academies or you know, the school of one in new york city. one of the important things to

note is these school models become very nearly illegal under much of what we're talking about in terms of state-of-the-art teacher evaluation. these schools do not have a teacher of record in the conventional fashion. so in order to try to track students to a teacher and hold that will teacher accountable in a hybrid model or an online model or the school of one model simply doesn't work. if you require that teachers are going to be evaluated in this fashion, you either need to provide substantial waivers and loopholes or make sure we are not regulating a fashion that is locks us into the 19th century schoolhouse. thank you so much. i was honored to be here today. >> very good. i had three more, i had niece, luna, gisal hart and schnur. if you could give me a couple minutes because i want to the get to senator isakson and senator branken. just a couple minutes please. >> i'll be brief. >> i wanted to just review quickly with the committee who

are students are disabilities. i think there is a great deal of confusion about who is a student with a disability, who's getting special education services. 85% of students in special education have a disability that does not prohibit -- that does not bar him this from doing great level work. so if we look at who the categories are, 4 2g, almost 43% of kids in special education have a specific learning disability. almost 20% have a speech or language delay. 11% have something called other health impaired. so for the kids who could probably be appropriately in an alternate assessment on alternate academic achievement standards, those 1% kids, if we added up all the kids in the category mental retardation, all the kids in the cat of auism, all the kids in the category of traumatic brain injury and all the kids in the category of multiple disabilities, we have

far -- we're still close -- not all those kids are going to be incapable of learning grade level work. but a lot of those kids are being directed to an inappropriate assessment for them simply because of the nature of their disability category. i have been in too many ip meetings and i agree with my klees here on the panel who say the test is driving too many things. i've been in ip meetingses in virginia for kids who can do grade level work in certain subjects who have been told they can't access the general curriculum because the test dictates what curriculum they have. we can't put more kids into in this track where they can't have access to the general curriculum and they can't learn what all their other kids are being exposed to. i think that's just a really important point that we understand who are these kids and a very, very, very small

number of them are kids who cannot do grade level work. the second thing is i think it's absolutely essential that teachers have the skill and knowledge to do the job they've been asked to do. and that third, that testing has to inform instruction. i don't know why we're testing if we're not going to do something that's going to turn around and benefit kids. i think the issues and concerns we have with the bill and we need to make sure we're not putting more kids in an appropriate assessment which is tracking them out of the general education curriculum. i want to add one quick thing about accountability. as you know, your bill limits accountability to the bottom performing 5% schools. and with the other 95% of the schools, one of the things that we're very concerned about is we still have the desegregated reporting requirement which is really good. but where there are achievement gasp, we think there should be some trigger that something has to happen. i keep calling it subsection do

something whereful there is an aachieve. gap, we do something more than report it. that schools need to look at why that gap is there and take some action to address it. i'm not going to sit here and tell you what that should be. schools know what that should be. but they need to do something. so those are my two points. >> thank you. okay. again, just a couple minutes. i want to get senator isakson. he's been waiting a long time to say something. >> thank you, senator. i just wanted to comment that under the current "no child left behind" law, we are on track for 100% of our schools to be held to federal sanctions. under the new law, it's 5%. so i think it finds the proper balance. i think it's also important to understand that states have the responsibility under the new law, states would have the responsibility to intervene for all schools. it's just the federal government is only