counselors engaged in the transformation process at your two respective schools? >> at our school our school counselor does a mir ideologiia thing, first of all creative scheduling, not just frivolous courses to fill the schedule. secondly they take the time to work with individual students to meet the socioemotional needs that they often come to us with. and also career planning as well as college planning. we have counseling staff available to work with students to fill out the fafsa, the federal student aid forms, college applications, job applications. we work on interviewing techniques and strategies for those students who desire to go into the world of work. all of those wrap around

services that students need, that is what our counseling staff is busy doing each day. >> very similar i would say flexibility in terms of making sure students are getting the classes that they need and changing that if they are not on track with what they need is huge and often overlooked strategy that you don't want people looking down the path that they don't need to work on. linking students with community resources that they need as well as paying individual personal attention. we have an exceptional counseling staff at the school that i'm talking about here today. >> there is a national movement for school counselors to earn the turf of college and career readyiness. if your counselors have not signed on, please have them do so. thank you. [ applause ] >> i am executive director of stockton academies.

my question is specific for dequan. you mentioned during your speaking time the culture that was associated with your school. also in response to a question that someone asked you you said you were able to be your own leader. in stockton throughout california and other states there is a pervasive gang problem. we find some of the best students we work with are still overwhelmed by this gang issue whether generational or neighborhood-wise. did you find your success more linked to the fact that you didn't have that family ties or didn't feel the burden to join a gang or be represented by that community? or was that something you struggled with? >> it wasn't necessarily a struggle because i know pressure is a lot. if i don't want to do something i'm not going to do it. [ applause ] where i came from gangs was a big part of the streets. so me being me i just stuck to

the books, listened to what my parents had to tell me, the teachers and a couple of friends who had done it before me such as graduated and gone on to college. i just followed my own route. >> and the teacher, i'm sorry, do you find that you have students that are highly motivated that have the potential to succeed but are overwhelmed to the gang issue to the extent that it interferewise the academics. >> the streets are a major distraction nationwide. the district of columbia is not exempt from that. our students see our school as a safe haven. we have students who attend luke moore from every area of washington, d.c. many times those neighborhoods are overridden with gangs and drug selling and all kinds of negative things. the students come to our school and come into the doors and lay down those neighborhood beeves,

if you will. everyone is a family and they are all there to serve one common purpose which is to learn, graduate and become a successful citizen. [ applause ] >> thanks for jour thoughtful questions. please give a huge round of applause. these are champions of this movement. thank you so much. thank you for the hopeful news on school improvement grants. i think we have to figure out when dequan turned 35. i think we heard a proposal to run him for president. also to carol smith and rose

smith. our next speaker is a national treasure and part of his job is to worry about the state of our national treasure called gene the machine by some for his work ethic. he has been an extraordinary public servant across administrations. first as director of the national economic council under president clinton and then as council to timothy geithner and now as assistant to the president and national economic council for president obama. he is a good midwesterner from minnesota, a great tennis player and a yale lawyer. given the theme, education and the economy he is a perfect speaker for the occasion. to close out this session with key note remarks please welcome from the white house, gene spurling.

well, thank you very much. john got most of that right. it is true i went to college in minnesota but i'm actually from ann arbor, michigan. that's my home. i am a huge michigan fan and i am still in my third day of mourning over the tragic loss to the university of ohio. nonetheless, i will pull myself up for this remark today. i really do want to thank john bridgeland for his enormous commitment and what he has done through civic enterprise as part of the white house council for community solutions. he is a personal example that there are people in this town who are committed to getting it done as opposed to worrying about what party is in power and

who is going to get the credit. i want to thank general powell for their alliance. it is so important that this presence stays. i remember its creation. i'm inspired that today it is still a force in public policy. obviously you actually just got to see our commitment in action and seeing arnie dunkin and all he has done. so i thank them. i thank all of you. let me -- you are going to hear from a lot of people. i'm going to try to make five points quick and let you move on. number one, focus on how education and the challenge of preventing dropouts but beyond preventing dropouts, having higher aspirations, higher

achievement, higher graduation rate and higher accomplishment is absolutely critical to our economy and our economic growth. now, there is a degree and with that it is just common sense. i'm just talking about the basketball playoffs. if you look at any time, any team is stronger, everybody is stronger when everyone on that team is at their highest performance and contributing. of course, if you have an economy where women are not contributing as much, are not allowed to contribute or not allowed to rise, when you have an economy where sotoo many peoe are dropping out of high school and never get the chance to get the skills to compete, that isn't just the interest of those individuals, it is about whether you have an economy that is at full strength.

now, you have seen the studies, i won't go into all of them. you know that somebody graduating from high school is going to make twice as much over their lifetime as somebody who drops out. you know that the unemployment rate for someone without a high school degree is about 13% today but someone with college education is 4%. you know what that means to those individuals and their lives. and we know what it means just to the cost of our society that people who have significant education make more, contribute more, pay higher taxes, cost other taxpayers less funds. those are all things of which the academic evidence is overwhelming and undeniable. what is incredibly important to remember and maybe the most important message is that it benefits all of us. the president held a conference

on insourcing the other day. in the insourcing conference a woman talked about what she advised when she was telling people where to locate their companies. and she said one of the number one indicators was what was the high school completion rate in the area that you would locate that particular service business, the college completion rate was a key indicator in where they recommend somebody locate. so if the high school completion rate is better it is not just those individuals who benefit, that community, that economy as a whole benefits. there will be more job location here. there will be more jobs for everyone. so we need to make very clear that when we are funding and we're inspiring people with higher aspirations and higher achievement and higher academic progress, it is not just about those individuals, it is about

our economy as a whole. my second point, though, is really one that i think all of you feel deeply which is that even if that was not the case my guess is everybody here today would still be here today because we are fundamentally a people who believe fundamentally that the accident of your birth should not be overly determinative of the outcome of your life. [ applause ] we would not tolerate a law that says if you are born in a poor area to single parent only seven out of 100 of you can go to college. we would not tolerate a law like that. we would think that law was cruel. but how much better are we if we sit by and do nothing when that

reality, when that is the reality that we live in. we have an obligation, every generation does to move ourselves closer to the aspiration that the accident of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life. and when we know that too many children particularly too many children of color in poor urban areas, poor rural areas are just by the accident of their birth denied -- have decks stacked against them, that is not something we can stick by and say we'll deal with that some other day. that is something where we have to have a commitment and the commitment has to be from the earliest ages through elementary school to an arnie dunkin calls the bermuda triangle of education, the middle school years to high school to the workforce. and the commitment has to be

deep and it has to be strong and it has to be through that whole process that gives somebody the opportunity others of us are too likely born with to contribute and create economic security for our families. now, the third point i want to make is that i think one of the most critical things for us as a country in making progress is that we establish -- and this is what i believe you are trying to do here -- that this commitment is something where there is an overwhelming consensus in our society to achieving. because having been here for 20 years i will be very honest in saying the following thing. i think there is a deep double standard when it comes to evaluating programs and policies for the poorest children. we do not find out that a

particular intervention to cure cancer has failed and therefore decide well i guess that's an argument for not investing in research to cure cancer. we do not decide that if a certain military weapon is not as effective as others that we give up on the basic security of our country or the basic goal of preventing terrorism. we find another way that is more effective. yet i have seen that when it comes to programs for helping our poorest youth, if it is not 100% effective people use that as an argument to give up on the endeavor, to defund the endeavor instead of going back at it and trying again. how many times have i heard somebody say here is an early intervention strategy? here is an early childhood

strategy. some of the benefits fade out. so when i hear that i think great. what can we do to make sure those benefits don't fade out? what can we do in the elementary schools and the middle school years and the high school years to ensure those benefits accelerate instid of fade out? other people say that is a reason we shouldn't do the thing that is working even for several years. that makes no sense to me. and i'm afraid that it has a negative impact on public policy because when people feel that the admission of any error or any failure to get the performance desired is going to be used as a reason to defund the endeavor people pull back. they are more afraid of experimentation of evaluation and accountability. if we all are committed to the idea that it is just not right,

it is not economically smart, it is not consistent with our values to let a large number of our children have the deck stacks against them by the accident of their birth then we will all be in this together and we will evaluate and we will analyze and innovate. if something is not working well enough we'll go back and double down on our commitment for something that works and not use that as an excuse to pull back. franklin roosevelt said it is common sense to take a method and try it. if it fails admit it frankly and try another but above all try something. that must be our motto. when we engage in the effort to have more children of our young people have higher aspirations and higher achievement in our economy. fourth point i will make is we are in a tough budgett time. this is a time of priorities.

where are our priorities as a country going to be? i'm so proud to work for president obama. i'm so proud because every time we get to the toughest situations, the toughest budget fights and the top priorities have to come into play, what the president puts first or at least at the top of his priority list is making sure we are staying with that commitment to invest and innovate in ways to help children who do not come from the best circumstances, have the same opportunities or greater opportunities to succeed. that is why even in this tough budget over a billion dollars more for head start and every budget we fight and fight and will continue to fight to not let that get cut back so that tens of thousands of children

three and four years old lose at least the chance they have to enter school ready to learn. that is why when we can afford relatively few new programs one of them is a half billion dollar early learning race to the top so as we are funding what works we are looking to see what can work better, how we can innovate so we can do better and invest more in children. that's why amongst all the difficult budget challenges the president has stayed with the historic commitment to pelgrants and has fought to not only have the largest increase but to protect the increase budget after budget in the toughest times among the toughest choices. those are priorities that should transcend political party and political division. that should be about our national commitment to being a people where every child has a chance to move up, not just in

theory but in fact and reality. and my last point i would just make is that we really, really as a country have to continue to focus and innovate and rededicate ourselves to particularly insuring that young people, we reach young people early enough to ensure that they have the aspirations not just to not drop out but to seek to achieve as much as they can. if college education, high skilled education. i think one of the things you realize as you get older is that you're born with many gifts. i think one gift many of us who are fortunate enough to realize later is that just by our upbringing, by the accident of our birth we have a gift and that gift is a very high expectation that we will go to

college. and i have watched friends and relatives. i have seen how children have gone off looking the wrong path, going off. but that high expectation that they are almost born with is like a magnet that pulls them back on the right track. and so many of them, so many of the children of middle class upper middle class families come back because of the expectation and the opportunity. but so many other children are born without that gift. but that is a gift that we can all play a role in. that gift that you can aspire and achieve but we have to reach children early enough and we have to keep looking. we have to keep protecting and investing in programs and youth challenge and career academies, things that reach people to me as early as possible, as middle

school and try to embed in them that aspiration, that expectation that so many of us are just blessed with. that is not an expectation that will necessarily be there for a child born into a family where no one has gone to college. but we have that power. we have the power through the programs we do, through the excellent teachers who inspire, through the after school programs that inspire children not just in a particular moment or a particular course or a particular score card but about what they can be. colleges can play a role in reaching down early into the neighborhoods where they exist. and helping those children come to their campus, see what is possible, have a mentor. have somebody who believes in them and change not just their test score for a grade but expectations for what they can

and shood achieve. all of us, some of us are lucky enough to be born with that gift. all of us have an obligation to make sure every child has that gift and we play a role. we have a responsibility and i think that is what brings everybody here together. i admire what everyone here does, what you give your life to. there is nothing more important economically but nothing more important in terms of our values and who we are and what we believe in. thank you very much. [ applause ] . that completes your morning session. afternoon session begin immediately. lunch begins in this room promptly at noon. and at 8 eastern american history tv prime time. a look at who time magazine

might pick for person of the year. in 1862 james mcfearson is among the historians nominated for the most influential persons on the national stage 150 years ago. c-spans 2012 cities tour takes our book tv and american history tv programming on the road the first weekend of each month. this past weekend featured little rock, arkansas with book tv. >> high school collected photographs and he was particularly interested in the 19th century, the civil war in particular. these are two friends, union and confederate who knew each other prior to the civil war, who fought against each other in 1862, survived the war, came out alive and remained friends after the war. here they are at age 100 sitting on the porch talking about the old days. >> american history tv looked at

life in a world war ii japanese internment camp. >> wrote a book called the art of gamam meaning surviving the unsurvivable. she talks about how the arts and crafts kept their sanity and gave them something to do and how depression was so bad in a lot of the camps and that people, there was a high incidents of suicide so people would make these things of beauty to give to each other just as a way to say we support you and we care about you. >> our cities tour continues the weekend of may 5th and 6th from oklahoma city. house republicans passed a budget last week that raises veterans spending by had%.

most of the increase in both budgets would be used for medical and other programs. veterans repairs secretary explained the plan to a senate committee. we are going to show you that two and a half hour hearing now. he is joined by a number of under secretaries and a group of independent budget analysts give their perspective later. >> good morning and welcome to this morning's hearing on the fiscal year 2013 budget and the fiscal year 2014 advanced appropriations request. i want to welcome our panelists today and appreciate your coming and helping us work our way through these critical issues

for our veterans. as i do most weeks when i'm home, last week i convened a round table discussion with veterans from across my home state of washington. i heard from the very men and women whose lives this budget is going to touch. while some of the veterans praise the care and access they were receiving from the v.a. many laid out concerns that must be addressed in this budget and future budgets. i heard from veterans that still face long wait times for mental health care or are still not getting the type of mental health care they need in their community. i heard from women veterans struggling to receive specialized care and veterans who are fed up with the dysfunction of the claims system. i heard from veterans who find themselves confronted by obstacles to employment and are afraid to write the word veteran on their job application because

of the stigma they believe employers attach to that. last year's passage of the act was a great first step but there is a lot of work to be done. as i'm sure we will talk about now is the time to take advantage of the public and private partnerships and the sea of good will. doing so will also require beating back misinformation about the invisible wounds of war. i'm pleased that the administration as shown real leadership in engaging private partners in the area. i also look forward to learning more today about va's involvement with the president's job corps, anyway to get veterans involved is a program worthy of investment. as everyone on this committee knows with the end of the war in

iraq and the withdrawal of troops in afghanistan the budget challenges will only continue for the v.a. last year this committee held a hearing to explore the long term costs of war and what is 100% clear is that we have an obligation that will continue long after the fighting is over. today as we review this budget fulfilling our nation's obligation to the veterans today and throughout the course of their lives must be our most pressing consideration. as a long time member of the senate budget committee and someone who has seen how difficult this budget is for many other agencies when this budget arrived on my desk i was encourag encouraged. the va has done a good job putting together a budget that reflects a real commitment to provide veteranwise the care and benefits they have earned so thank you for your efforts in doing that. i also want to applaud v.a.'s ongoing commitment to end homelessness. this is an area where you are

making real strides and i am encouraged to see that the administration has again requested an increase in funding for homeless programs. i am home hopeful we will continue to see -- i also believe the va has real work to do in the area of serving female homeless veterans. while v.a. has done a good job putting together a budget that works to tackle the challenges that our veterans face there is clearly room for improvement. for the third year in a row v.a. has proposed cuts in spending for major construction and nonrecurring. these are deeply troubling given last year was the first time for the outline of the ten year construction plan with the price tag that approached $65 billion. for the past two years va has requested only a fraction of the amount that it needs. i am disappointed