we believe that educational improvements and innovative design will flourish throughout the life of the coming reauthorization. we in new hampshire greatly appreciate the opportunity to have our innovative educational practices considered by the committee. we look forward to the future of a speedy authorization of improved elementary and secondary education. >> thank you for this opportunity to be with you here this morning. my name is tom boesburg. i am superintendent of denver public schools. we have seen remarkable progress in the last decades under reform started by senator bennett at a time when he had a job with truly complex and challenging policy issues to grapple with. in that time we have increased

our number of graduates by over 1,000 students a year, increased on time graduation rate for our african-american, latino students by over 60%. we have decreased dropout rates by over 60%. we have gone from a school district with our students having the lowest rate of year on year student progress of any major district in the state to being now the district for three years in a row where our students on a student by student basis are demonstrating the highest rate of yearly academic progress. as a result our enrollment is booming as families come back to and stay in our schools. in the last seven years our enrollment has increased by a remarkable 25%. nevertheless we continue to have significant achievement gaps between our students based on income and race and ethnicity. we are determined to eliminate those achievement gaps. one key to our progress is our refusal to be imprisoned by

debates and false conflicts that we often see around us. we need to focus on what works for our kids. we can't be stuck in an either or world. the needs of our kids over 70% of whom qualify for free and reduced lunch are too great. what does that world look like? it's a world where we can dramatically improve our district schools, unleash creative energy of our teachers to open innovative new schools and at the same time welcome high performing charter schools, a world where both district run and charter schools work together as public schools to drive greater equity in our community. it is a world where we do measure the progress of our kids to see whether they are on track to graduate from high school prepared for college and career. it is also a world where we care deeply about nurturing and developing the whole child, expanding opportunities for arts

and music, deepening interest in history and science, and nurturing our kids' physical, social and emotional growth. there does not need to be a conflict here. in fact, the experiences show the schools that most emphasize a broad curriculum and promote creativity and critical thinking are the ones that do best in helping develop literacy abilities. and newm numericsy abilities. when we went to denver voters two years ago for a tax increase the first thing we asked for was funding to increase arts, music and sports. as a parent of three kids and a superintendent for 90,000 do i care about seeing the progress my kids make every year in literacy and math? of course i do. of course, i at the same time care deeply about opportunities in creative arts and social sciences and sports and their personal growth as members of our community. i do believe that annual measures of progress for our kids in literacy and math are

vital. at the same time as i have advocated in our state we need fewer and shorter tests. for example, i do not see why we cannot have good measures of student progress that are limited to no more than three or four hours combined time for literacy and math per year, less than one half of 1% of classroom time. we need to eliminate other tests added that are unrelated to the law before this committee today. the new generation of assessments do a good job of helping us understand how our students are progressing in literacy and math. this transparency of how kids are doing is vital. vital for students, for parents and for teachers. likewise, having annual data about students' growth is vital to see what is working best in our schools. transparency and the holding of clear high standards are important for all kids but particularly for our kids in

poverty and kids of color. historically too many of our most vulnerable students have not been held to high standards that enable them to compete for and succeed in college and the knowledge intensive careers in today's economy and is absolutely essential that we do so. that is why accountability is also vital. not in a blaming or punishment sense but to recognize what is not working and then to make the necessary changes in the extraordinary high stakes work we are all committed to to help children and families break out of poverty and help all kids realize the potential they are born with. as we celebrate the birthday of reverend martin luther king jr. i hope we can help all of our kids live in the both/and world that they deserve. >> mr. henderson. good morning chairman alexander and members of the

committee. as noted i am wayne henderson president and ceo of the leadership conference on civil and human rights. the nation's leading coalition with over 200 national organizations working to build an america as good as its ideals. i'm also the professor of public interest law at the clark school of law university of district of columbia. i serve as the vice chair of the board of trustees of the educational testing service, the nation's premiere testing assessment nonprofit corporation. thank you for inviting me to testify on the reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education act. the civil and human rights community has long seen education and voter participation as the twin pillars of our democracy. together they help to make the promise of equality and opportunity for all a reality in american life.

we welcome the opportunity that this important and timely hearing provides to look at ways that we can improve esea and ensure that each and every child regardless of race, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability or zip code receives the best education that this great nation can provide. thank you for acknowledging the parents who have come in from around the country, states like washington, colorado, tennessee, minnesota, delaware to have their voices amplify the concerns that we reflect in our testimony today. significantly, this year we mark the 50th anniversary of esea which was a pillar of president lyndon johnson's war on poverty. congress recognized then and has for the past five decades that children living and going to school in poverty and especially those living in concentrated poverty need more, not fewer resources than their more

advantaged peers. today we speak with one voice on behalf of all of our children, girls and boys, students of color, students not yet proficient in english, those who have disabilities or are homeless or migrant. those in the criminal juvenile justice system. we speak with deep concern and growing alarm about increasing child poverty, the persistent low achievement of students with disabilities and the growing income inequality in our nation, particularly as they are reflected and reinforced by grotesque disparities in resources available to high and low poverty schools. education is more important today than before. a high school diploma is not just enough to access the jobs of today and tomorrow. students now need post secondary education or further training after high school. so we cannot ignore the fact

that state and local school financing systems have been unfair and inadequate. we know that money spent wisely can and will make an enormous difference in the ability of high poverty schools to prepare our students for college and career. we also know that money spent on high quality preschool is one of the best investments we could make. that's why a group of more than 20 national organizations created a set of principles which call on congress to maintain and improve strong accountability requirements. our approach to accountability is straightforward and sensible. first esea must continue to require high quality annual statewide assessments for all students in grades 3-8 and at least once in high school that are aligned with and measure each student's progress towards meeting the state's college and career ready standards. next statewide accountability

systems must support all students to make enough progress every year so that they are on track to graduate from high school ready for college and career. states must set annual district and school targets for grade level achievements. high school graduation and closing achievement gaps for all students including accelerated progress for each major racial and ethnic group, students with disabilities, english language learners and students from low income families and evaluate schools and districts on how well they meet these targets. third, states and school districts need to improve data collection and reporting to the public on student achievement and gap closing, course completion, graduation rates, per pupil expenditures, opportunity measures and school climate indicators including decreases in the use of

exclusionary discipline practices, use of police in schools and student referrals to law enforcement. this data must be disaggregated by all categories listed previously but notably disability, gender, race, national origin. i want to conclude by expressing serious concerns with your proposal as it is currently written. we have great respect for you but the proposal as we understand it today is detailed in our written testimony and it needs to be, we hope addressed. the bill as a general manner bends over backwards to accommodate the interest of state and local government entities that have both failed our children and avoided any real accountability for failures. the federal government must continue to hold states and school districts accountable for the degree to which they are improving education for all students especially students who have been under served by the system for far too long.

congress must not pass an esea. >> you are well over. >> i will bring it to a conclusion. thank you for the opportunity to be here and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you. mrs. lee. >> thank you chairman alexander and senator murray for your vision and for this opportunity to offer my remarks regarding impact of testing accountability on our public school children. i'm also a parent of a sixth grader, 11-year-old, and so i speak to you both as a public school parent and as a teacher. i want to provide some context that i've learned about the current educational policies and they're driven by business. the use of competitive performance based practices have long been assumed to motivate workers. microsoft and adobe systems are some of the companies who adopted stack ranking, the practice of applying rewards, consequences and rankings based

on performance. these same business advisers have informed many of our nation's biggest districts including mine. in the past few years, these businesses have abandoned this practice because they have proven to have disastrous effects on collaboration, problem solving and innovation. what was bad for business has been disastrous for public education. a field already plagued with recruitment and retention challenges. i worked in different schools. some of them through no fault of their own have become increasingly data driven, as opposed to student driven. i'm fortunate currently to be working in this public school that was founded on the principles of whole child education, where we, teachers, collaborate to develop curriculum and create relevant assessments. it is the antithesis of stack ranking. this year, fourth and fifth graders are immersed in a study called rights and responsibilities. students develop questions around the origins of the united states the institution and discuss the complex struggles we have made as a nation. these are 8 to 10-year-olds. my class decided to divide themselves into groups.

they are the researchers. my integrated co-teaching classroom consists of students with disabilities, or i should say all abilities, and they work in heterogeneous groups to present their understandings through a variety of mediums. they're learning how to learn, developing life-long skills, researching, analyzing information from multiple sources, collaborating with others, and sharing what they have learned in creative and thought provoking ways. they are the stewards of their learning, guided by their interests and passions. i share this not as a best practice, but to emphasize the importance of fostering learning environments that value a culture of trust, diversity and autonomy, not a focus on test preparation. teachers working conditions are inextricably tied to students learning conditions. when parents and educators have voiced concerns, they have been accused of coddling.

i want to challenge that assumption. the great crimes that the focus on testing has taken valuable resources and time away from programming. social studies, arts and physical education, special education, services, and ell programs. at my school we no longer have a librarian. our parent association works full time to fund the needed arts and music programs that are not covered by our budget any longer. and we're one of the lucky schools. what about schools where parents must work to just survive? there is nothing more painful to watch or forced to be complicit with than the minimalizing that is happening in our schools. teachers, students and parents are finding themselves in a position of whether or not to push back or leave so who is left to receive these tests and accompanying sanctions? who are the children receiving the e stricted curricula while losing other programs? last year over 50% of our

parents at our school refused to allow their children to take the new york state common core assessments. what we now have known nationally as opting out. and we were not alone. i want to remind folks that the latin route of assessment means to sit alongside. until we have teachers and policymakers sitting alongside and getting to know our students and our classrooms in deep and meaningful ways, we cannot fully understand the state of public education and i sit here as a sole female, and this is a field dominated by women. no corporate made multiple choice test will give you that data. last year i decided i'm obligated to my students and their families and that's why as a teacher of conscience i will refuse to administer tests that reduce my students to a single metric and will continue to take this position until the role of standardized assessments are put in their proper place. we just celebrated the life of martin luther king jr. in his letter from a birmingham jail, he affirms, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. he quotes st. augustine, an

unjust law is no law at all. so long as education policy is shaped by the interests of corporate profiteering and not the interests of our public schoolchildren, we will resist these unjust testing laws. i am hopeful we can sit alongside each other and do the hard work of answering the questions most central to our democracy. what is the purpose of public education in a democratic society? how can we ensure that all children receive enriching and equitable education and how do we support teachers and schools in carrying out their missions to educate all. thank you and i appreciate all your questions. >> thank you, ms. lee. mr. lazar. >> senator alexander, senator murray, and distinguished members of the committee, it is an honor to testify before you today. i come as a proud national board certified public high schoolteacher. i teach at harvest collegiate high school in new york city. my students who are listening to us now and who i need remind to study for their history test

tomorrow represent the full diversity of our city. i'm also embarrassed to say i was a teacher who every may until last would get up to apologize to my students. i would tell them i have done my best job to be an excellent teacher for you up until now. but for the last month of school, i'm going to turn into a bad teacher to properly prepare you for state regents exams. we would then repeatedly write stock formulaic essays. and practice mindless repetition of facts so they could be successful on exams. i did this because standardized tests measure the wrong things. i did this because the stakes for my students forced me to value three hours of testing over a year of learning. i did this because the standardized test was the only way for my students to demonstrate their learning to the government. right now the federal incentives in education are wrong. because of this, too many

schools are designed in large part as my may was, to get students to do well on a one-time test. where as schools should organize themselves around student learning. making the tests the curriculum harms all students. but it does the most harm to those with the lowest skills. when i taught seniors in the bronx, i worked with the highest performing students to help prepare them for college. we read philosophical tests ranging from conte and wrote and revised college level essays. at the same time, i worked with the lowest performing students who had yet to pass the state tests. with them, we did mindless test prep. and even though i was really good at it, getting 100% of those students to pass their exams in my final year doing it, i was doing the students no favors. i think to this day about tee, a senior who could hardly write and struggled to read.

she passed the test, but she was not -- she was still not ready for the community college work she encountered that fall. when we focus our efforts on exams, the learning and opportunity gap widens. my current school, harvest collegiate, is a member of the new york performance standards consortium, a group of 48 schools that offer an alternative model. we use a more rigorous assessment system than the state exams. within consortium schools, assessments are not an on demand test, but a college level based assessment. students complete real and authentic disciplinary work, giving them a significant advantage over others once they enter college. the consortium is widely successful, with graduation and college success rates exceeding the rates for all new york city public schools.

models like the consortium need to be able to exist and expand within any reauthorized bill. now, despite its many well known flaws, no child left behind did include some important features that should not be abandoned. its disaggregation has put a much needed spotlight on how american youth is negatively affected by economic and social inequality. that is why i believe that a stance opposed to any requirement for student assessment is misguided. yes, every student must count. especially our students with the greatest needs. but we can do this without testing every kid every year. we could use grade span testing for elementary and middle school as we already do in high school. we could even go a step further and use the representational sampling technique of the nape, universally considered to be the gold standard of educational

assessment in the united states. i support the position of my union, the aft, then reauthorizing esea congress should remove the high stakes mandated tests, limit the number of tests used for accountability purposes, and allow schools to use more sophisticated and useful assess tools such as performance assessments. to do this requires a better balance of government's role in education with that of local decision-making. federal and state governments need to recognize the best educational decisions for students are made by those who possess the fullest and deepest understanding of their needs. educator voices need to be the loudest in making the decisions of what is tested, how students are tested, and when students are tested. senators, my students, my colleagues and i are all encouraged and inspired that congress is putting serious thought into how to improve the education of all our nation's

students. it is time to fix our broken system of testing and accountability. >> thank you very much. this has been an extraordinary variety of views. it is very helpful to us as senators and i thank senator murray and the staffs of both -- for working to have us present those different points of views. and thank you, all. you get an a for sticking to five minutes. i thank you for that. and i hope we'll see if the senators do as well as our time comes. i'll begin with a period of questions. i'll take my five minutes and senator murray and after that, senator collins, senator warren, nor roberts, senator bennett will be the first four. and we'll go based on first arrival. we'll conclude the hearing by noon. let me start, dr. west. you seem to be saying this, see if i got it right. keep the tests, maybe make them more flexible, keep the

disaggregation of the results, keep the accountability system but let the states create the accountability system. i got that about right? >> that's about right. in my view, there is a clear federal role to -- sorry. >> let me, before you -- keep thinking about your answer. let me go to something else. just to frame the question, we're talking about testing and accountability and sometimes that gets off into educationese and i have to refresh myself every 15 minutes about it, even though i've been fooling with it for years. the federal government under no child left behind requires 17 annual standardized tests, right? >> that's correct. >> seven tests in math, seven in reading, once each year in grades three through eight and once in high school. that's -- and then three tests in science, once in grades three through five, once in grade six through nine and once in high school.

these are 17 tests that must be used by laws that primary means of determining the yearly academic performance of the state and each school district and school in the state. but those aren't the only tests that kids take. and i think that's one spotlight we ought to put on today. i would like for you to think about that and other members and answer to the question. for example, the excellence in education foundation in florida reported that in florida, in addition to the 17 federal tests, there are between 8 and 200 tests administered in schools each year on top of those tests. those are administered by the state government. and required by local government. and in lee county, florida, ft. myers, there were 183 state and local tests and in addition to the 17 federal tests. and when this report put the spotlight on the lee county tests, they said, well, maybe that's too many tests and they started giving fewer tests. as we're talking about too many

tests, and what kind of tests, certainly too many tests, i think i would like to have your thoughts about whether the culprit is the federal 17 tests, or whether it is all the state and local tests, or is it because of the high stakes in the federal 17 tests that is causing the state and local governments to create so many local tests? i think the most difficult issue we have to figure out is this testing and accountability issue. i mean, testing with goals, standards, tests, and then the accountability is really, what are the consequences? what is the definition of success on the test? what is the definition of failure and what are the consequences of failure? and really the debate is what decides that? do we decide that here or do

states decide that there? i think i hear you saying, washington should keep the 17 tests and the disaggregation, but states should design the accountability systems. >> that is in fact, an accurate summary of my recommendation. as i said, we don't have great data on the amount of testing that is going on for various purposes everywhere around the nation. but the studies that have been conducted like the one you referenced in the state of florida do suggest that the bulk of testing time is not devoted to the 17 federally mandated exams. that being said, i do think a lot of those tests are adopted by schools in an attempt to prepare themselves for the federally mandated annual exams, precisely because those exams carry so much weight with respect to how their schools are going to be treated by the accountability system. that accountability system sets up unrealistic expectations with respect to student achievement,

those expectations are most challenging for schools that serve students that face a lot of disadvantaged -- >> i'm going to mr. leather or mr. boasberg in my few remaining seconds. does new hampshire and colorado require a lot of extra tests in addition to the 17 federal tests or do you and your local school district require a lot of extra tests or is as a result of the 17 federal tests? >> in new hampshire, we just require the basic federal expectation of the 17 tests, plus we have alternative assessments for students with disabilities as well as students with english language learners. but that's what we do. >> mr. boasberg? >> they have adopted other tests and these are tests -- we as a state have adopted certain other tests in colorado and i and other superintendents in the state are urging that the state not require those additional tests beyond, again, annual testing in third through tenth grade in literacy and math and the science test. >> thank you. senator murray? >> mr. henderson, since no child left behind passed in 2001, we

have seen achievement gaps narrow for black and latino students in both reading and math, according to the nap long-term trend data and the dropout rate has been cut in half. i wanted you to talk about what you saw the role that the elementary and secondary education acts assessment accountability provisions played in narrowing those achievement gaps and increasing graduation rates. >> it is a very important question, senator murray. thanks for asking it. we have seen that the federal governments mandated requirements under esea and no child left behind indeed have helped to push greater accountability on the part of state systems to address the particular needs of poor students and often students of color, students with disabilities. in the absence of those standards, we fear that there

will be a rollback of requirements that are otherwise producing the positive results that you have identified. we have seen, for example, in the states that were given waivers under the previous law that in many instances those waivers have allowed those state systems to avoid the kind of meaningful accountability that actually drives the kind of change that you talked about. senator alexander, you mentioned the proliferation of states tests at the state and local level and that may well be true. but i think the federal requirements that are in place have been so important in producing the kind of high school and career ready graduation rates that are really important. when -- i started school when brown versus the board of education was first decided. i can assure you that here in washington, d.c. there was a tremendous absence of the kind of consistent standards that helped to produce the kind of change that we have seen and

that senator murray has cited. and in the absence of esea standards, i am convinced that there will be the use of title one funds for students who do not otherwise qualify, and a step back from the federal government's commitment to ensure the positive results that senator murray cited. it makes a difference. >> mr. henderson, what would you -- improvements would you recommend as we reauthorized to make progress, to close that achievement gap? >> i think that you have many schools that lack the kind of financial equity and commitment to students that either their state constitution requires or that common sense for purposes of producing positive results would require. i cite senator roberts of kansas which has a supreme court decision indicating that the state's funding of its schools is unconstitutional by kansas' own constitutional requirement, and the result has been a significant lack of compliance

on the part of the state and its ability to educate its students. senator casey, i've seen the same thing in pennsylvania, where the failure of the previous governor to invest in resources to address the problem, the shortcoming in funding of schools has been significant. so in my judgment, these standards help to drive the kind of investments that states must make in their educational system to ensure that their students do meet the challenges of today and prepare to meet the challenges of tomorrow. what i would hope is that there would be restrictions on the casual use of title one funding for students who are not eligible for title one

>> how do high quality assessments help you cater to your students needs? >> at my school we've developed a fairly robust system and have designed tasks that are accessible to a range of performances. so this includes something like when we were studying the declaration of independence later, there would be accessible reading to all students and then they had to write an argument about what the declaration of independence really means. so that's a task that even somebody reading on a fourth grade level could say something intelligent about but my students that are doing better work now than i was a few years into college are able to approach that task in a really sophisticated way. the key thing is how we use that

information, we use that to inform what happens in our classrooms. we use that to inform how we professionally develop our teachers and then we judge ourselves based on how students are doing in similar tasks later in the year. so we're trying -- we're measuring growth so we're not just happy with some kids making progress. we're looking at all of our students, even the ones doing amazingly well and ensuring we are continuing to push them as well as the students who are struggling. >> thank you very much. >> senator collins. >> thank you, mr. chairman. first, mr. chairman and ranking member senator murray, let me tell you what a pleasure it is to return to this committee after an absence of many years. some people would say that i was here when we crafted no child left behind. but remember, i was very young then. in 2005, former senator olympia snowe and i, in response to a lot of concerns about the law, put together an nclb task force

to evaluate the impact of the law in maine and we had parents, teachers, educational specialists, superintendent school board members. so it was really a broad group. and the task force identified several unintended consequences of the law's requirement per annual tests. they included increased test anxiety for students, loss of teaching time, misinterpretation of the meaning of schools classified as failing when they didn't make adequate process and the scapegoating of certain subgroups, like those special education students and english language learner populations. our task force concluded that states needed greater

flexibility and they recommended allowing states to measure student progress over grade spans, which has been witnessed by some of our witnesses today, and to track student growth over time. as we know, the current measures schools grade by grade, essentially comparing this year's forth graders with last year's fourth graders. the approach that was recommended by our task force, known as grade span testing, essentially is looking at the same students and seeing whether they have progressed, which intrigues me. and before the no child left behind law was passed, that was the approach used in maine and

it allowed maine to track the progress of the individual students and gave students greater flexibility. my question to each of you and some of you have touched on this is do you believe that giving states the flexibility to choose grade span testing, which is used now for science and would help resolve the concerns about overtesting that have been expressed or would the result be that we decrease accountability? and if i could just start and go straight across with dr. west. >> okay. so i actually think it would be very difficult under a grade span testing regime to develop a fair system of accountability because actually with the testing it becomes harder to look at the progress over time.

you're looking at their performance at a certain point in time, at their end point in time at a given grade configuration, elementary, middle or high school. at that point, you are focused on the level at which they are performing which i said is heavily influenced by things outside of this school's control. those systems have a punishing effect on schools serving low-performing students and yielding very inaccurate information about the school's effectiveness. >> thank you. mr. leather? >> yeah, i would add that we really need consistency. we need to make sure every parent receives information about how their child is performing academically and it really have to guess on the off year how their student is doing, are they meeting academic goals and whether their school is working to improve performance. research shows that a year of ineffective learning occurs for a student -- and there's lots of

reasons why that could happen -- that students fall behind and their growth is really impeded in successive years. i think the more we keep track of how students are doing, the better off those students are going to be, the better off their parents are going to be in terms of their expectations. >> thank you. and i'd echo professor west's comments and the importance of growth, the importance of measuring the same students as they grow from one year to the next because that is what is most relevant. it's not how this year did against last year fourth graders. it's how did those students do from one year to the next. you need annual measurements in order to see that growth from one year to the other. because to measure how they did

in fifth grade and then eighth grade, there's so much that intervenes and it's equally important for high-achieving kids as low-achieving kids. if you're a parent who is a year ahead of grade level, you don't just want to be told that kid is at standard. that means the kid might have lost an entire year of learning. you want to see how much growth did that high-achieving student make. likewise, with the low-achieving student, those kids need to catch up. to say that they are just at standard, how much have they grown? are they on a trajectory, hopefully within a short period of time to get back on full track to be ready to graduate and be ready for post-secondary. so without annual measurements, you simply can't measure growth in a meaningful way. >> mr. chairman, i'd note that i'm over my time. could i have the rest respond for the record?

>> well, yes. and one is, i appreciate you saying that because every senator uses 4 1/2 minutes and then says, what do you all think, we'd be here all afternoon. but -- it's been done before. but we want to know what you think. so, yes, please send us your thoughts. but i'd like to invite the other three and then supplement it later. >> thank you. >> mr. chairman, thank you. i associate myself with the remarks of my colleagues who have already spoken about the importance of annual assessments as a way of determining progress. but i would also mention, there are collateral factors that affect the performance of students that we haven't talked about. obviously poverty is a huge issue for kids that come to school under those circumstances and we have teachers who are

misaligned with their ability to really impart education. we need teachers who are well trained to go to schools that most need their services and assistance and there are other factors that obviously affect student performance, including school discipline that often runs amuck in terms of the interest of students. >> thank you for your comments. miss lee? >> i want to argue that teachers assess every day in multiple ways and these standardized assessments that you speak of can only measure right or wrong type questions and we want our students to be able to solve are much more complex. so to be able to quantify it, i think, is difficult. another point is that in new york state at least, these tests have changed year to year which makes them flawed or invalid will. i wanted to put that out there. >> mr. lazar? >> we need to focus on where the student is compared to where they were. the thing i want us to be careful about is that it's the

learning driving the assessment instead of the accountability driving the assessment. i think we do need to assess regularly like miss lee said, we assess our kids every day. i do think parents need information about how schools are doing year to year. i don't think the federal or state government needs accountability attached to yearly tests. if we need to have federal and state accountability based on some sort of assessment, let's have that be as small and as little intrusion into real learning as possible. >> thank you. >> senator warren? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm looking forward to working with you and ranking member murray on this committee this year. the federal government provides billions of dollars every year to the states to support public education and it's a lot of money.

so i think we should start with accountability. the accountability of the states that take this money. if the states are going to get federal tax dollars to improve public education systems, then we need to make sure that those dollars are not being wasted but they are actually being used to improve education. one of the reasons that republicans and democrats came together with no child left behind in the first place was the federal government got really good at shoveling tax dollars out the door but not very good at improving student achievement. there are a lot of problems with no child left behind. but according to the most recent education assessment, over the past 12 years, both reading and math performance across the country has risen for all groups of students. poor children, wealthy children, urban children, rural children, minority children, they are all doing better. so while we all agree that there need to be changes here, we need

some basic accountability on the part of the states to make sure that these billions of dollars in tax money are actually buying us better education for our children. so mr. boasberg, you've reviewed the proposal for reforming no child left behind. are you confident that the republican draft proposal would ensure that the states who take the federal dollars will be held accountable for improving student achievement? >> so thank you. and without speaking to details in the draft, that's obviously your prerogative. i do agree, both as a taxpayer and as an educator, that accountability is very important. again, accountability not in the blaming or punishment sense but accountability in the sense of needing to make change. that when schools are failing and where kids aren't making the progress they need to, where they aren't graduating, there is -- has to be accountability to make change.

and that change is very difficult. it's politically controversial, it's messy, sensitive, there's resistance to it. but it's essential that change happen to close our achievement gaps and to give our kids who have been disadvantaged the opportunities that they deserve. so i do believe that accountability is very important. our system in denver absolutely looks at student growth, looks at this aggregated data and looks at important things like graduation rates, parent satisfaction and the importance of multiple measures that i agree with but at bottom we need to be accountable when kids are not learning to make change. >> so as i read the republican draft proposal, all a state would have to do to get federal dollars is to submit a plan with a bunch of promises with no proof that the promises are ever kept and the department of education would lose any

meaningful tools to make sure that the states actually follow through on this. mr. henderson, you've worked hard to make sure that those children who face the greatest hurdles have real educational opportunities. do you see anything in this proposal that would make sure that the states who take this money actually end up helping the kids who need it most? >> senator warren, unfortunately, i do not. i think the bill now would allow this draft would allow the states to repurpose title 1 funded to serve otherwise ineligible students. and without any measurable accountability to make sure that students who are most in need get the support and resources they most deserve. you know, interestingly enough, your point about taxpayer accountability was just reinforced within the last several days by the george w. bush institute which issued a report under the authorship of margaret spelling for purposes of ensuring that dollars and tax

dollars are indeed well spent. from the standpoint of those concerned about the services provided, when you allow states to weaken standards and we've seen how states have used waivers to create a de-facto weakening of standards, we are deeply concerned that the interest of every student but the student we most represent will not be adequately serviced. >> well, i understand the need for flexibility. but if the only principle here is that the states can do whatever they want, then they should raise their own taxes to pay for it. throwing billions of federal dollars at the states with no accountability for the states for how they spend taxpayer money is not what we were sent here to do. so thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator warren. and i didn't welcome senator collins to the committee, which i should.

we're delighted to have them back. she and senator cassidy are the only new senators this year. and you're not really new. senator roberts? >> thank you, mr. chairman. number one, i would observe that we have flipped the seating arrangement here. there's a brand-new start. the lights are a little brighter. the heat is a little warmer. you can see what the majority used to enjoy. but basically, i observed the minority is to your right and we, sir, are to your left, which is seldom. but at any rate, just thought i'd make that observation. i'd like to concentrate on the teachers -- stephen, how do you pronounce your last name? >> lazar. >> that's what i figured.

thank you for your statements on behalf of teachers. some years ago, way before senator collins, i was a teacher for three years. i worried about standard deviation. i had a principal who insisted on doing that and we finally had meaningful dialogue and i was free from that effort. i have no idea how you teach x number of months the way you want to teach and then one month being, quote, a done teacher and i think it was jia who pointed out the mindless test preparation. thank you for your viewpoint. i'm pleased we're looking into this issue. i want to let everybody know, the witnesses and thank you all for coming, this is a working draft. this isn't set in stone. and so that's why we have you here. as a democrat view, it's a working draft and i think that should be emphasized. i'm concerned about recent administration efforts to side step waivers to state.

a waiver is not a waiver. they are only preferred education process. but kansas has created a statewide commission and by the way our state legislature will handle that with the courts. but at any rate, we created a statewide commission to develop principal evaluations. it's been a statewide approach to design a robust system but the department of education is going beyond the statute and issuing conditioned waivers. back in august of last year, kansas agreed that the department of education's requirements and they were informed that their esea was fully approved and they would no longer be labeled high-risk status. that's a pattern that we've seen nationwide and it's clear to me that the administration has tried to query states for something called common core. i introduced the lower level act to prohibit the government from

intervening and through mandates, grants or waivers or any form of manipulation. i appreciate the chairman's draft. it is going in the right direction, i believe, in reducing the federal footprint but still providing accountability. i look forward to hopefully include my language in the final draft. i just don't think washington has any business dictating what is best for students and what they deserve and to make commonsense changes to simplify the law without sacrificing any accountability. the question i have basically is, does continued reliance on testing strike the best balance or what is the most effective paired back accountability that still ensures an education for all, as well as fiscal stewardship. i've done exactly what the chairman said i would do, talk for 4 minutes and now 42 seconds but i'd like to ask jia and stephen to address that question.

stephen? or jia, you go first. the question i have basically is, does continued reliance on testing strike the best balance or what is the most effective paired back accountability that still ensures an education for all, as well as fiscal stewardship. i've done exactly what the chairman said i would do, talk for 4 minutes and now 42 seconds but i'd like to ask jia and stephen to address that question. stephen? or jia, you go first. >> i definitely see the role of assessments, you know, at a larger level but reviewing that at the state level, i feel that the federal's role in addressing senator warren's concerns is to ensure that states are using tax dollars appropriately for public education and hasn't happened in our state. our state has not been held accountable to those federal tax

dollars. but what i do feel is that there needs to be a balance, a communication. and if you were to ask me what my vision is, it's to create alongside educators, alongside district a system that involves much more comprehensive assessments and ways of communicating information besides the single metric. that can be very flawed. so i just wanted to put that out. >> mr. chairman, can i ask stephen to summarize in 20 seconds or something like that? >> i'll try to do less. we need better and more diverse assessments used primarily to help schools and teachers adopt and plan, we need to remove high stakes from those assessments. we then need to limit accountability through the use of grade span or

representational sampling. >> i appreciate that. thank you, mr. chairman. >> lazar gets the award for succinctness today. senator bennet and then scott if he is here and then senator franken. well, let's just go to senator bennet and we'll see who is here after that. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i hope that wasn't as reluctant as it sounded. i read last week and others in the committee i'm sure did as well that for the first time in the country's history, a majority of our public children are poor enough that they qualify for free and reduced lunch. that is a shameful situation that we find ourselves in and when no child left behind was passed, we couldn't say that. the majority of our children weren't that poor. they are today.

and, in my view, that's why this discussion is so important, because it was to create a system of accountability that showed us how kids were performing by income and also their ethnicity and it's demonstrated a huge achievement gap that exists in this country. and all of us have different policy issues that we focus on but, in my mind, if you want to cure this problem of poverty in our country, the way to do that is by making sure people can read when they are in the first grade. that's the most important thing that we can do. and senator collins made an excellent point i thought earlier, which is no child left behind asked and answered the wrong question, which is, how did this year's fourth graders do compared to last year's? and not only the wrong question but an irrelevant question if you're a fourth grader becoming

a fifth grader but then there was high-stakes accountability tied to that that meant that schools were responding to the wrong question by attempting to make changes, which in the end did not do much for the kids. the field has moved well beyond that. the people have moved well beyond that and part of that is because of waivers that we're able to get and i wonder whether you could describe for the committee how you've used student growth measures to drive change in the school district, how does it inform the district's policies with respect to choice and i think we would benefit from understanding that. this is bigger than just what is happening in a single classroom someplace and i guess if you get hit, the important distinction between growth and status for the committee. >> so thank you. and i think that is the fundamental question. they look at the percentage of

kids that are proficient or grade level and as professor west mentioned, it's more likely to predict where kids start and how much they are learning in school. and so where we have moved is looking at growth, which is how much progress does a student make from one year to the next? and again, that's equally important for high-achieving students as is for low-achieving students. when you just measure status, i.e., are they at grade level, you're ignoring well above and ignoring kids well below because it's unlikely their status will change from one year to the next but you want to see their growth, you want to see how much they are learning so we look first and foremost at growth because, for example, we used to have schools where the students were relatively high status but their growth was low. and they coasted. congratulate us.

kids weren't really doing that well. when we begin to disaggregate growth based on students with disabilities, that shone a light on how kids were doing. and not just to shine a light but what are we going to do differently? what are we going to change to see more growth? and parents should visit schools and visit the teachers and see if they have the kind of teachers that we've talked about, teaching around critical thinking. but it's also important again for parents to see the growth. so we're very transparent about that and that's published. and particularly when you're in a district where parents do have

choice where you have charter schools and district-run schools, it's extraordinarily important that parents get information about how much kids are growing. because if you have a system that says "x" percent are proficient, a disincentive to take kids who are lower performing because somehow that will show you have "x" percent that are not at standard. but when you look at growth, you equally have that obligation to serve kids well. therefore, technically in an era of choice and accountability, for example, with charters we have to make decisions on what to close and we've closed more

charter its in denver than the state has combined and that's helped us to encourage our growth and focus on the growth that kids are making year to year and make sure that the parents have that information about their kids and their schools. >> i'm out of time. thank you. >> thank you very much. senator burr? >> thank you all for being here sharing your knowledge and suggestions with us. i've got to admit that senator warren stimulated something in my mind. because i agree with her. if we said to a state, okay, we're not going to take your tax money for education, we're going to let you keep it, and you figure out -- you fund education. the first question i thought of was, how many states would take us up on that? federal government gets out of my way, i get to decide how it's

done and really the important question that came to my mind is how would they do it differently than today if in fact we got out of the way but we didn't penalize them financially, we put the burden on them. so i throw that out to you just as a thought to go through. this is extremely simple and i'll start on this end with mr. west and then end with mr. lazar. my kids, now adults, never tested well. it's probably genetic. but they didn't test well. so my question is this. is it more important that we know what students know or is it more important that we know that students are learning? dr. west? >> so it's much more important if we're trying to think about the performance of the school

system to focus on what students are learning because that's what schools have more of an impact on. what students know at a given point in time is more influenced on genetics, as you mentioned, perhaps, but by the family environment that they grew up on, a whole host of factors outside of the school's control. so when we're thinking of accountability, it should be for student learning. >> mr. leather? >> yeah. it's a conundrum, i think, to try to separate whether we need to know what they know versus what they are learning and i think you need to know both and in the end, is it student ready to make use of knowledge. >> do you reward a student for what they know or if they are learning. >> when i worked closely with

the bush administration and that's not necessarily what you know. that's where you're learning. i think this got hijacked somewhere to where everything is about what they know. that's what the annual test is. >> sure. again, i think those two are pretty linked. i think we emphasized how much students grow in every year, how much they are learning. at the same time, that's to a standard. it's very important that our kids graduate from high school ready for college or for career. that is a standard and it's a clear and articulable standard and it's important that we do everything to help our students and prepare our students and to have accountability and transparency, are we graduating

kids, are they prepared to succeed in college and in today's economy. >> mr. henderson? >> it's a philosophical question but it assumes that students begin on an even playing field. part of the concern i have about the way in which the question is framed is that students who are poor, students of color, students of disability, students who are not proficient in english are not given the resources that they need and only through these assessments are we able to demonstrate that the state has failed to meet either its own constitutional obligation under state constitutional law or whether they have failed to make the kind of progress that will allow them to continue doing what they are doing without interventions of the kind that the law would

require. part of the problem that we have is that when states are given the kind of deference and latitude that they have, you see a weakening of standards, you see a failure to invest in communities most in need, you see a reinforcement of existing inequalities about how schools are funded and there are no ways of reaching those problems because the state has no incentive to necessarily correct the problem other than to say, yes, the business community wants to have a stronger graduating pool. but leaders of the state are not held accountable by the failure to meet those standards unless the federal government steps in and i think the history of how the waivers have been used and how states have squirmed out of their responsibility reinforces that point. >> thank you. miss lee? >> i want to start by saying many students who are brilliant are poor test takers and they go on to become brilliant people and go on to do amazing things. the tests alone does not define their value nor their contributions to society. so i want to emphasize the fact that these tests, again, they narrowly measure -- they are narrow measures. i can test my students on basic skills until you quantify that

information, such as multiplication facts and spelling and when it comes to the knowledge that we're talking about, it's not easily quantifiable because it's limbless and there has to be a better way to assess students, to share information that goes beyond the realm of the standardized assessments. >> mr. lazar? >> my job is students learning but for my students, i care what they know and what they can do. so i think schools should be accountable for students learning but i think students need to be held accountable for what they know and can do, which is exactly the model we used in consortia. students at the end of high school need to demonstrate mastery on four performance tests. students at the end of high school need to demonstrate mastery on four performance tests. we can do a much better job at helping students prepare for those and truly learning if we got rid of this notion that a

kid who enters in ninth grade needs to be done four years later. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator burr. senator franken and then senator isakson. >> i want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for these great groups of witnesses and where we're getting. mr. boasberg, i think you, from senator bennett's question, hit on this question about growth. it's a great topic because a sixth grade teacher who brings a kid from a third grade level of reading to a fifth grade level of reading is a hero. under the proficiency, they are a goat. in minnesota, a race to the middle, they would focus on the kid just above proficiency and just below proficiency to get just above proficiency and the kid on top would be ignored and mr. lazar, you hit on this, and

the kid at the bottom would be ignored. to me, to do growth, you've got to measure every year. now, i also think that you should do it in realtime, all the assessments in realtime. that's why i like computer adaptive tests so the teacher can use the results to inform their instruction. the nub that we're getting to i think is what kind of assessments you are making and because the assessments that measure these fine, little discrete skills, that's what you're going to teach to. so that creates a curriculum that is focusing on the wrong thing. if we can create assessments that is measuring what miss lee or mr. lazar want to measure to, then we have the answer to our question. so what i'm saying is, when i go to talk to employers in

minnesota, they want people who do critical thinking. they want people who can work in teams. we also have to make sure that they are accountable for making citizens and people who can think critically and really learn and that's what everybody on this panel wants. so mr. boasberg, i just want you to run with it and everyone else run with what i just said. >> great. thank you, senator. and i think you put it very, very well, about how important it is to care about growth for all kids and not just kids on a cusp of a particular line. >> the thing i liked about the law is called no child left behind. that's the thing i liked the most about it. >> and i'd also -- one of the things that we're very much looking forward to is the new

generation of assessments which are introduced in the spring is a much more sophisticated set of assessment, it's centered around complex thinking, problem solving. it's not about rote memorization. it's about the kinds of skills that we care about for our universities. at the same time, again, we try and create too much this one vessel of this assessment holds everything. it can't. i think you want a good assessment to measure progress and literacy and measure math at the challenge that we are seeing in the assessments introduced this year and to welcome multiple measures, the performance-based assessments that mr. lazar and leather spoke about, to be able to judge, as miss lee said, no one assessment is going to be able to judge everything. so i think absolutely, again, this is not an either/or.

to be able to have common statewide measures, sophisticated measures of student progress in literacy and math is essential. you can see how kids are doing from district to district. you can see where the best schools in the state working with english language learners. if you have completely different measurements, you can't capture best practice. you can't understand where the most progress is being made. but again, i think those should be short. i don't -- i'd like to keep it to no more than four hours a year. but then welcome other more performance-based assessments and all of that should be part and parcel of what a teacher looks at, what a school leader looks at and potentially if a state can get to that level, what a state looks at as well. >> anybody else want to weigh in?

mr. lazar, on your performance criteria, don't you agree that if you're going to hold schools accountable, you have to have something that you can objectively look at but can you design a computer adaptive test, say, where you're filling in circles, can you design something that gets more at the kind of thing you want to measure? sorry. >> you can. it takes more time and it's more expensive. i have worked on a lot of assessment development, both at the city level and prototype tasks for smarter balance. it's a lot of hard work. it takes a lot of time and a lot of expertise to design those. i think if we were going to identify a role for the federal government in education, it's put funds and resources behind

test development and assessment development, do a range of them and make them available to schools to choose. because the type of work we do in my school, we have a group of wonderful teachers who are committed to doing it and we've arranged the time in our program to be able to do that in large part through the pros initiative in new york city but what we do isn't something that all schools can start doing tomorrow. so if these assessments were out there and schools could choose the ones that fit their curricular needs, we're in great shape. >> thank you, mr. lazar. senator isakson? >> thank you, mr. chairman and thanks to ranking member murray for having what i think is a very important hearing. i was listening to michael bennet talk a minute ago. i happen to be one of the two remaining members of congress who wrote no child left behind. everybody else has gone on to bigger and better things. and we would all tell you the following. last night when ted kennedy and i and george miller and john boehner were in the basement of

the capitol and signed off on the conference committee report, we almost said in unison, you know, if this works, we're going to be in trouble in six years because it's going to be harder and harder to do. so if we had done a reauthorization seven years ago, a lot of the problems that we know are going on right now wouldn't be going on because we would have corrected that. and number two, this is not a defensive speech i'm making here but it's for educational purposes. assessment was very important. disaggregation was very important and no child left behind did that. no child flew under the radar screen. we did something -- we always averaged them out and set our basic skills said we're doing "x." that wasn't good for johnny who couldn't read. i hate that reference but i have to use it. but we need johnny equally

involved, too. i have a question for miss lee or a statement. i didn't get to hear your testimony and i apologize. we almost got there on reauthorization and it fell apart. i fought very hard to allow for alternative assessment for special needs children. to take a standard test for a disaggregated group and make a special needs student take it when you have assessments, cognitive disabilities, connective disabilities, it's impossible to have a one-size-fits-all assessment. i always thought it was best for the parent and teacher in the iep. >> as a special education teacher -- >> everybody make note of this answer now. >> i actually started teaching the first year of nclb so i've seen firsthand -- i actually started teaching in what was called a high school for students who were at risk. special education district in

new york city. and what i found was that, you're right, no assessment fits all, including all students and what i would have to do in my assessments is diversify. what i know about my students, i assess them. again, sit alongside them, get to know them and who they are, their abilities, set very high standards, work with the parents and the team. it's not just me. it was related service providers. you have experts and specialists coming in and we worked together as a team to develop assessments to determine students where they were and where we wanted -- and to set goals for them. so that work has continued and i feel as though, again, to echo steve lazar, that federal government has a role in ensuring that this was made possible at the states. >> one thing i learned as state board chairman in georgia, if your testing is not aligned with your curriculum, you're never going to get good data. to align a test that we required with a curriculum that was national would blow up in our face because nobody wanted a colorado set of curriculum to

apply to a georgia student. so what we did is we did a random sample to try to assess the integrity of whatever assessment they were using. one thing the federal government could do is give them the excuse that we are making them do it but make sure the curriculum and alignment of testing are in line. if you do that, you find out what the students are learning. people say that's teaching to the test. that's what education is all about. if you teach a subject and you test what the student was taught, that's curriculum alignment and then you get a true measure of what they achieved. mr. henderson, you want to speak? >> yes. i think mainstream assessment

means more students are going to have access to mainstream curriculum. one of the principles that the communities representing disabled students with disabilities have said is that the only exemption in the regulation is the students with the most severe cognitive disabilities. one of the concerns we have is that you see frequently that students are misclassified as having emotional disturbance disabilities or being intellectually disabled and those labels frequently apply to students of color and they are then taken out of mainstream curriculum, given inconsistent with the requirement of the law, access to less rigorous forms of academic accomplishment and the results have been disastrous for many of those communities. i think there is a real concern, certainly among students representing persons with

disabilities that they not be taken out needlessly from mainstream curricular offerings and that doesn't have anything to do with the kind of assessments that states might develop. i completely agree with mr. might develop. i completely agree with mr. luzrd. there should be a more sophisticated form of assessment to complement and provide the kinds of insights that these wonderful teachers have asked for. but that is not inconsistent with the requirement of an annual assessment that is used to get diagnostic assessments of how communities are doing that might otherwise be left behind unless you have a uniform standard and application. >> my time's up. but thank you both for the response. and thank you, mr. chairman, for holding this hearing. >> we have senator baldin, senator casey, senator whitehouse, senator murphy unless some random republican wanders into the room. and there should be time for all of you to have a full five

minutes. then we'll be close to the noon hour when we conclude the hearing. senator baldwin. >> thank you mr. chairman. very grateful to you and the ranking member for getting us off to a great start with a bipartisan dialogue and how we can best address the shortcomings of the no child left behind law. and i'm hopeful that we can find a thoughtful path forward to fixing this law for all students, parents, teachers administrators, policy makers. we need this information also. great panel. thank you to the witnesses. now, a well-designed standardized test is one important tool among many that can help all of the stakeholders i just listed understand how well individual students are doing as well as how well our nation's schools are serving all of our nation's children. as such we should know if the tests given those required by

federal law as well as those that are required by state and local districts are of high quality and aligned to states' learning standards. we should also have a clear idea of how much classroom time is spent on preparing for and taking the standardized tests as opposed to instruction. in preparation for this very debate i introduced the smart act. along with representative suzanne bonamechi in the house of representatives and senator murry and others in the senate. the smart act is designed to update a specific federal grant program that already goes to states every year for assessment and development and implementation. it will allow states and districts to audit their assessment systems and reduce unnecessary and duplicative state and local tests with the

design of freeing up more time for teaching and learning. i think this legislation presents a common sense approach to help reduce unnecessary testing. which is why it has widespread support from our nation's largest teachers union and other education reform groups. i'd like to turn to our panelists for their perspectives as well. particularly, i'd like to ask both dr. west and mr. boseburg, because you've referenced the importance of these sorts of audits. understanding what's truly happening across the country. can you talk about the importance of states and districts auditing their assessment systems and how such audits could take place at the state and local level? why don't i start with you, dr.

weston? >> sure. i have not reviewed your legislative proposal in detail. but in general i think it's absolutely critical that state and local education officials have an idea of the role testing is playing, the amount of testing and the quality of those tests as they try to understand how districts are trying to improve student learning. >> did you testify that was sort of lacking at this point that we have -- >> absolutely. we have very few systematic sources of evidence on this and there's often confusion at the school building level i've found in my own experience about what's being assessed for what purpose. there are a lot of frustrations among teachers about a lack of alignment between a given interim assessment program, that is tests they administrate to students over the course of the year to see how they're doing. a lack of alignment between those assessments and the schedule of the curriculum essentially, the district scope, and sequence they're required to teach. if those don't line up you're getting useless information out of the assessment.

there are huge potential gains from getting a better handle on this. i think it makes sense to encourage states and districts to do it. i would be cautious about the federal government trying to direct states and districts to test less. we don't know the optimal amount. my understanding of what's going on in new hampshire is that as they move to a more competency-based model they may be testing more important using higher quality assessments over the course of the year. that might look bad in some audit where the premise is we're testing too much and we need to get that down. so i would be cautious about that type of heavy-handed approach. >> mr. boasberg. >> thank you. professor west says it very well. i do think it's important states and districts be very transparent about what is required. we in our state have a committee that is doing just that and that committee is making a series of recommendations to the legislature to reduce some of the mandated testing that has nothing to do with no child left behind.

we as a district also published exactly what we do and what we don't do. i do think there is also a balance that -- of exactly what the federal government says in terms of how much reporting, exactly how things are reported. as mr. lazar and ms. lee said. teachers assess their kids in some way every day. that could be a quiz, a check for understanding, an exit ticket. that could be daily. that could be weekly. and there's nothing that i would dread more than our teachers in some compliance exercise having to classify and record every single thing that could be somehow classified ann as an assessment or test of student progress or student learning. >> thank you senator baldwin. senator casey. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the panel for being here today for your testimony, especially giving us

firsthand information and experience from the trenches where a lot of you work. i'll focus on a particular question for mr. henderson but i wanted to commend him and others who have talked about the broader context. this is a hearing about no child left behind, elementary and secondary education. but at its core because of what undergirds those policies and those strategies it's also a hearing about child poverty. it's also a hearing about other major challenges facing children. some of the numbers just by way of background, some of the numbers on childhood poverty are really bone-chilling. there's a report from about a year ago and i'm sure they'll update it this january or soon from the oecd, the organization for economic cooperation and development. and they rank kind of the top 20 countries on a whole range of

areas. one of them is on child poverty. so we're -- of the top 20 in the world we are fifth from the worst. our child poverty rate. this is a 2010 number. it will be updated. 21.2% of children in the united states live in poverty. we are just a little better than spain and italy. and we're not too far off from mexico and turkey by way of protection. if you update it the n.e. casey no relation to me that tracks data on children, annie casey foundation says that childhood poverty number in 2012 is even higher, goes to 23%. so it puts us ahead of chile. by that ranking we're fourth from the worst not fifth. so when you look at the data and you look at some of the data on progress that's been made, and some of it can be attributed to federal policy but when you

step back sxand look at all these issues, what we have not done for our kids is really a national and i would say bipartisan failure. after world war ii we had the g.i. bill. that was a good idea. we did a lot of things that were smart at that time. but we also had for europe a marshall plan. but we've never ever had anything even approaching a marshall plan for our kids. so that's the predicate, and i think that is kind of the background. but i want to be much more focused, mr. henderson on the question of children with disabilities. you mentioned the concern you have about kind of treating them different as it relates to some of the assessment that we undertake. one data here, one piece of data, and i just want to have you in the remaining time walk through your reasons is that we've got about 6 million students in the country with

disabilities educated in public schools, most of whom spend their day learning alongside other students. according to the national center for education statistics, 90% 90% of students with disabilities do not have intellectual or cognitive disabilities that would limit them. so you're talking about 10% of children with disabilities are in the much more severe category. mr. henderson, what's your basic concern about where we are now and where we could be if the draft that's on the table now were to be enacted? >> senator casey thank you for your question. and thank you for putting your question in the broader context of the totality of circumstances, that students in poverty, students with various disabilities will face in states that are making policy choices about where to make investments. so let me