it's always darkest before it's totally black? thank you. on c-span 3 tonight, a discussion on the role of u.s. special operations forces in combatting isis in syria and iraq. then trends in school crime and violence. later a hearing on implementing obama administration immigration policies. and an update on the world energy outlook. the labor department reports that employers added 211,000 jobs last month, leaving the unemployment rate at 5% for the second straight month. the associated press writes that this makes it even more likely the federal reserve will raise interest rates later this month.

you can hear more about the economy from federal reserve chair janet yellen in testimonye week on tol hill this c-span.org. and now joining us on "the washington journal" is a guest we've had on relatively frequently. this is linda robinson on the wy rand corporation. she's also an author. i linda sirobinson, where were yo last? >> i think we're going to this about isil today, so i have been out in the region this year. i've been to iraq, jordan, and d kuwait. in iraq, ith visited all the various units that were doing k. the advisory and training work y out ou wthere. >> now are you working with the pentagon in your current role? >> so rand is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution. it works for bulk anyone, but d say probably the bulk of its work is for the u.s. governmente and of that the biggest part is u get dod research.

>> so when you're out in the field, do you get a sense of who's fighting who? who's winning? >> it's so complex, so i think that's very important to establish. it is in my view we've had a number of iraqi units over the past year that we've been able to -- the u.s. military has thea re-engaged with and is starting to understand their exact state because there was a loss of visibility of who was leading ty these units, what their capability was, what kind of equipment they had, and it runs the gamut. the best out there are the iraqt special operations forces. up or they're called the counterterrorism service. and i actually watched that unit grow up over my many visits.theh and they became the most proficient unit and they still are. hig they've been in every battle. they've suffered a lot of losses. they need a lot of equipment, s. that's the high end.

the low end are units that , complete ll ll ll lly disintegre and we're re-engaged again withr those.no and i think that thatw, is reala where the main hope rests right now, but because you need a hold force, as they say, you need units enough mass of indigenous forces to be onis -- keeping th peace after a clearing operation, so it's very important to be working with the full gamut of units. and we can talk more about the shia militias and the sunni a wl

tribal forces as we go forward. then syria, gro of ups.course, f whole different stew of groups thatst: we're working with and can talk about that. >> linda robinson, we're going to put a map up. if you could, explain looking at this map where u.s. forces might be. it's a map of iraq, but it showr the surrounding area as well and they'll put it in your monitor over here, but you can see it right over here as well. you can go right ahead and look at this one. >> it is -- the u.s. advisory role -- and i should throw out t few facts here. there have been 3500 u.s. military in iraq over the past n year. that includes special operations forces, conventional military, i and an and couple of thousand coalition partners doing three things basically. n

train and equip onorth six site. most of them are around baghdadr inound t the kurdistan region.ce then there's the advisory mission, and this is where the a specialtt operations forces havn beentioned heavily devoted and s with the units i mentioned. the iraqi special operations forces is a very mixed unit. a lot of times people just assume that things are broken down into the various sects. this is the one unit in iraq that has the full complement of shia, sunni, and kurd. our special operations forces hb andee coalition special operatin forces have been out advising, but they haven't -- they've been very restricted in where they're

been able to be and what they've been able to do. i would characterize the advisory mission as having a kurd up the headquarters level.v a lot of people in the field have been pushing to get the advisory mission happening at lower levels, brigade level and below. and this is very important because you need advisers from d the ministry of defense level all the way down to the field in orderhings to have that full e on the unit. and they're doing things -- a un lot of the debate here in the revolved, i think, unfortunately around joint terminal air forces.it is those guys we put on the ground to call air strikes. that's just one element of an advisory mission. that i think is where we're is s headed now is too expanding th- there's also, i think, a new use

that's being authorized by the u.s. government to have the troops out in a combat role. tha and i think it will just be thiy special operations expeditionary force. >> how quickly will those troops be added to what's already over there? >> the exact date isn't known.bo we don't know when they're actually going to get on the ground, but it will be soon. i think what you have heard consistently from both secretary carter and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff -- i do

think it's important while we're entering a newhave phase now to point out these special operations forces have been e year working in these various ways, and the embl emblematic region people have mentioned is syria. theycaptured a huge trove of intelligence a information. and that's the key reason for sl these raids is they're going to yield a huge trove ofthen intelligence and capture isil ew members that can then be interrogated. that is going to greatly expand the knowledge of who's doing st what in that network and allow e targeting. hopefully something on the scale or rapidity of what was being done in iraq during the days ofa the surge where you got a huge effect on the network by having

multiple raids at night and having this information come in and before it gets cold people t are moving onhe it.have in iraq they're going to do in in conjunction with these iraqil forces. operations . in syria, they'll be doing unilateral. i should say when it is a case i of a u.s. hostage, they will ros always reserve the right to do a unilateral mission. >> linda robinson is our guest, and we're talking about u.s. strategy, more troops into the iraqi region to fight isis/isil, however you want to refer to it. >> caller: yes.of good morning. let me say this. first of all, we could get rid n of isis in one day of truman an.

ike were around. they would drop an atomic bomb h in eseraqqah.ple is we did that in vietnam. the reason why we don't get ridh of these people is who are we going to fight. we have a $700 billion militarye budget. wepe need to keep that up. we need 500,000 soldiers. >> i think wegues got the point sam. were you able to hear that, linda robinson? >> yes, i was. >> we could handle this in one p day or a shortow period of time. >> obviously, the u.s. has a tremendous amount of fire power and we have been conducting an air war.physic i didn't mention that, and we can talk about that more. what you achieve from the air is physical destruction and if you don't have the rules of things engagement that have been c applied, you can have mass civilian casualties. there's also this central question of then what.

who is going to come along er behind to guarantee the peace rt andd that ensure these areas doe become a terrorist sanctuary s leave or minute youin stop bombing and that's why in e approach is being taken to work through indigenous forces in iraq and syria so you have an end game. i think that's why there's a lot of disappointment about u.s. military activities over the i past year. the end game can take a long while. it can take a generation to work with these forces and build enough competency there so they can do it, but i think there's a great deal ofd, paris frustratie wake of the various terrorist attacks that have been occurred, paris being the most notable, but also we had the russian jet shot down in egypt. so i think there's a desire right now to just quickly finish the problem.ey hav

isil, islamic state, is the group's own term for itself. they are heavily dug in. well ov they have fortified these cities they've been holding now for well over a year. these are going to take a long time to recapture and most importantly hold with capable ground forces. >> charles, ohio, independent line. please go ahead. >> caller: good morning, sir. i find it amazing that the guest you have on will not call what happened indo tha santa barbara terrorist attack. those people didn't do that on the spur of the moment. are >> you know what, charles, i have to move on. because we're done talking about what happened in san bernardino andu. we've moved on and we're talking about the current u.s. policy towards syria and iraq oh and possibly more troops headed over there.

linda robinson, when youat hear the term boots on the ground, what does that mean to you? we've got 3500 people over there already. we're sending another 6500 overv >> yes, i'm delighted that you brought this up because this hai bothered me from the beginning when this term was used.ng and it's d a vague term that only creates confusion.urse, as it's very harmful to any public understanding and debate about what we're doing.ad the bootsver ther on the ground had 3500 advisers over there.wo they all have boots on.ry they're all u.s.men. military i uniform. i would say the majority of them are combat arms and infantry men. if you were to employ them in a combat mode, they would be combat troops, but they're all qualified to conduct combat. as i listen to the debate over the authorization for the u.s. of military force and read all the congressional testimony over the pastrm to year, i believe t

administration employed that term to mean it was not going to count any option of sending large combat formations, brigades, formations, cores, over to fight in the front of -- they were not going to take the leading role in combat.st we've crossed the line now, i an think, into combat. there was the first combat deat with the u.s. special operations forces participating with the kurdish special operations raid on a prison to free the captives there.kurd and the delta soldier died in coming forward to help the kurds who were bogged down. that was not a planned activityo but thatw in crossed the line ae we're now in a combat mode. but what i believe the administration intends is to remain keeping the iraqi and syrians in the lead, but in

these raids the u.s. special operations forces are going to be allowed to participate in combat if and as needed.less the the more competent the ground force is, the less the u.s. force is needed. i should point out the counterterrorism service that i mentioned, the iraqi special operations forces, they have 14 jpacs. there's not as proficient. theed use of the english langua is very important. that's the language of air emphs power. you growi do need to have a com effort at this stage. the emphasis is on growing the capability of the iraqis. polic >> go ahead. >> caller: the policies that hii she'ss talking about, it's mor or less, well, everything's worked well and everything else.

i know you don't want to talk about the shooting, but it is ey related. when the u.s. is seeing they're not doing much about isis and they're not going to vet -- i talked to the guy on c-span. he voted that bill down to vet these people. what are the united states citizens supposed to do? my daughter now wants a gun for her birthday -- i mean for a rot christmas. >> i would say i think the paris attacks have evoked a fear and it is a real fear that isil is now moving into a phase of focusing more on external attacks than attacks in iraq anx syria. ofviewt. them is they shift -- they will attack where expedient. we've seen that within iraq over the past year when they were t attacked inar tikrit. they didn't stand and fight. they melted away and they begang

attacking ramadi. appro there are three options. on an b containment, standing off and using air power and not getting involved.believ there's the building of forces on the ground. then there's direct military intervention that i believe there is very little support for among either party to go in and do that, but there is agreement that you've got to deal with thh iraq/syria problem and the fromw amount of territory they're holding because that's really the central base from which all of this emanates and where most of the foreign fighters are enti gravitatingne to. >> shawn sommerland, florida, independent line. what do you think? >> caller: good morning. discuss let's be realistic about this. this entire discussion and our h actionsat are predicated on a cg premise. that premise is we originally

went in tohe get the weapons of mass destruction. there were no such things.ted sc all of the actions that have been created since then have tho been destructive.f they've been ruinous for the e n nation. and here we gobu again stepping into a place where we have no g business being, making mistakes that are going to lead to further mistakes down the road. what is necessary is for us to take a brave step and step out u of there.ch a where there's the need for humanitarian help, we are there to protect and help as much as we can, but we have no business being there. we are there because we made mistakes and this is not going to end and this intellectual discussion is all predicated onu a premise. >> those with long memories as f

this caller certainly has, the original sin of the invasion inh iraq in 2003 t was this premise there were weapons of we destruction, which turned out to be incorrect. time has passed now and we did fight a very large war there. we withdrew. isil rose up out of the ashes i and it holds more territory with more people, more guns, more than anything we've ever seen. in reaction to what the caller said, i think there's been an e effort, but probably not a sufficient effort to ask the ino arab countries to do more because they do.and those surrounding countries have the greater interest and you see, for example, saudi arabia l has been very itpreoccupied by s own military operation in yemenn which is on its peninsula and is directly south. middle but saudi arabia is the big doge ind the arab middle east and sy needs to be doing

more.fter m it finally opened an embassy ina baghdad afterd many years.nmentt they've been holding the baghdad government at arm's length and e it's very important, i think, for the arab world to step up. likewise, we've had difficulty with turkey, which is the main route for foreign fighters and material and the oil smuggling into thsyria. so the engine of isil passes through turkey.se and there's been a consistent effort to try to get more cooperation from these countries and much more needs to be done.d the more they do, the less the e u.s. and the european and other allies need to do. but i think everyone's galvanized right now by the idee that this group left alone is not going to do anything but get bigger and conduct more attackst so the question is what's an effective attack. if i could say in response to that previous caller, i view our effort over the last years as t. insufficient. i don't think it's the wrong approach, but i think the advisers were too'restricted.

they were restricted to very feo areas. they've had to be very d co sequesteredpe w away from the s militi militias. there's also been a very slow equipment pipeline. this equipment has to be they delivered much more quickly. they need humvees.adios. they need anti-tank weapons. they need securebecause radiose that i ha they've just now delivered line charges because the isil units l are ringing these cities with multiple iuds. they're there's a real need to speed up the material and the u.s. system has been far too slow. the production line of humvees in this country is back at a peacetime level. these are all thingsn th the department of defense needs to focus and. they did it in the early days of

the iraq war when there weren'tt enough. they are bolting on armor to t humveesef to survive these masse bombs. and it's not just ading a matte sending a few hundred or thousand more, although i do think more advisers, but more id importantly distributed geographically, and distributed throughout the units we're trying to support.re fac >> what do you think about the narrative that the iraq war is the direct link cause of what we're facing today? >> well, you know -- so iraq was being governed by a dictator saddam hussein. desert storm pushed saddam hussein army out of there,

contained, if you will, through a no-fly zone, sort of suppressing the threat. at some point that was probably a dictatorship that was going to end in one form or another.goino and when that did, of course, the shia majority are going to take control of that country.ry we've been involved in a very long running process of change in iraq. kurdist many people just assume it is fly apart into three he parts, kurd, shia, and sunni. i think the question is still open. what kind of new national identity will iraqis, shia and sunni, form? the only path to a stable iraq h i see is eventually another province in the sunni areas in f the north and orwest. we want it to be over. we may assume responsibility for

havingheless i exacerbated it, nonetheless it's the drama of that country and history only ee moves at a a certain pace. we can do things to make it i worse.e in c i believe more active diplomatic engagement might help.peting we sometimes say the iranians are in charge now. sup they have so much influence, but we're not even competing in the influence game in my view. the iraqi government has been asking for our help. i i think that would gain more influence to help some of these things lohappen., >> thanks for holding.. you're on with linda robinson of rand. >> caller: hello, sir. hello, ma'am. a young man called a short whilh ago named sam, i believe. he touched on something that i e agree with.

we seem to be himming and hawing around too much about what we're doing. if we're goingmili to fight a w let's do it with resolve. he said something about the military budget, which i believe is beside the point. it's about protecting our collective livelihood and our rights as a nation. and i believe a lot of times thn when wek make these decisions, don't think we think them through necessarily all the way through. i just think we need to make sure we're doing the right thing and when we do it, do it 100%.bt that's all i'm saying. thank you. >> obviously, everyone tries to make the right decisions, but wc can't always understand the effects of our actions.at has i would share a critique, i think, that the caller is making that what has been done over the last year really until just a few weeks ago has been too for

minimal, but also as changes have been made, they've been very incremental. for example, when i was in iraqd a decision was finally made to send a few advisers out to a base in anbar. and people had beena agitating for this within the u.s. military for a while to get these advisers more distributed to get in contact with these units, start advising them, start coordinating them, and that was a very slow decision in coming. and i'm concerned nowthough a tn though a series ofot b decision have apparently been taken, it's important that they not be incremental. i think it's important to insufy the insufficiency, get enough people out there in will enoughf places, but not ricochet off es into a major combat roll. i think the long-term effects of

that -- it creates dependency. i may create more recruitment of isil fighters. it gets the u.s. into a combat mode when it is leading. whenever the u.s. gets into thea lead, it tends to be the type a personality and it doesn't let the host country come along to do what it needs to do to develop. >> caller: i'm an independent. i dialled the wrong number. here's my comment. we send people, money, equipment. a kno bunchw th of the money, t equipment, got turned over to the exact people we don't want to have it. they have a magazine. they have a warehouse., as muc we tried surgical intervention. and unfortunately as much as i would like a diplomatic solutioi with the host country, stepping up and doing their job on their

own -- we're always responsible for everybody's problem -- to o just knock it off. burn it down and start over.f why have a prolonged world war 3 iii when we don't have to?th >> the answere i think is what happens next. sai you can go in big and heavy. you can burn it down, as the caller said, but they're still going to be a country. i think having a farsighted di approach is important. that said -- and i'mas worried i that theed current approach is being discredited because it has been so minimally applied. there's something between what we've been doing and an onslaught that the u.s. opens up

its guns, levels towns.forward. i think it's very important to consider the impact and the cost of rebuilding this country as the war goes forward, but a greater intensification i think is at least worth trying. i frankly do not think that a large scale combat deployment -- we're talking 100,000 troops, v. those kinds of numbers. i think they could have very negative effects than positive. >> carrie urges deft removal of assad to crush isis. secretary kerry says in an d wie agreement can be reached, a coalition of americans, russians, and syrian forces could wipe out the islamic state in aourse, matter of literally . >> we've been talking mostly

about iraq and that is hideousle complex. syria part is even more hideou complex. there's the isis war in the eastern part of the country. we don't have a map up, but the isis self-declared capital is te raqqah. the syrian kurds primarily have been able toa squeeze down thatr territory that isil holds, but , it is still largely in charge. it has a lot of oil. >> and that's in the iraqi border area, correct?lf >> that's right. if you laook rou at syria, it i the green area, that is isil e t territory with thehe syrian kur up on the northern part on the border with turkey.key, they've been gaining territory and starting to close off that o border with turkey, although

there's still -- i think it's about 45 miles, 90 kilometers still in the hands of isis. so that still have a conduit to and from turkey. over in the western half of the country, that's where most of the population is.ab spr the regime of assad has been int power and it was one of those hg arab spring countries where people rose up against him and he began crushing them brutally. 250,000 syrianare now dead. kery it's the source of most of the refugee crisis that europe is t suffering.he secretary kerry has launched a i diplomatic effort to tryn to gm the various countriese involved in this complicated war to come together around a scheme that will plot a transition for assad to leave. this has been a long standing desire to have assad leave, have

a diplomatic resolution, get a b new government, and focus everyone's attention on attacking isil. a lot ofgett thein arab countri turkey are more interested in fighting assad and getti intingd out. we had the russian intervention there, which is shocking and noe has furtherdi complicated the situation. russia has always had a base onf the med terrainian coast. start they brought in massive air power, ground defense, troops.li they saw assad starting to wobble. mostly the islamic extremist groups are the ones that have been gaining because once again we have been very minimalist in the support we've been willing w to provide in theak people fighting assad.

the question is whether russia, in the wake of thee attackwakes people, the russian jet bombing in egypt, is going to make putin, the russian president, a partner in the fight against isil. right now, t heo shor has been the syrian opposition aimed at assad. he is trying to shore up assad,, protect that space, and re-enforce assad's grip on the intern country. so it is a question in my mind s whether russia isupport there m indefinitely to prop up a regime that has no popular support similarly to iran, or are they ready to join a diplomatic effort and start fighting isil.

some people are willing for m russia to join in the bombing a campaign, let them continue to do what they're doing in the western syria, but i would say first we haven't seen russia te bomb very much aty all of the isil facilities, but they're also using dumb bombs. we have precision bombs. britain just joined the air fr campaign inan syria. we have high-tech equipment ando high-techst allies. i don't think russia is the game-changer for isil in syria. >> linda robinson's most recent book. next call for her comes from rachel in forney, texas. >> caller: a lot of people believe that isis sprang up when obama pulled our troops out of iraq, but we allit h knew that e didn't happen just all of a andc

sudden. when we got t ther. into iraq, they was already over there. and we trained them. decid i knew that there's something is going on because bush o -- theyt decided to surge because they es knew they were over their heads. there was a bigger problem than they thought it was, and we the train these people. but it upsets me when we're having people attack us and people are going around talking about how weak our president is. it does not make us look good e and it makes them want to come over and attack us., are >> rachel, we're going to leave it right there. with all these interrelationships, are there isil/isis fighters that were at one point u.s. allies?ch of >> no.ip was d in fact a lot of the isil leadership was detained by the u.s. army back when it was in iraq. true certainly that isil

grew out of the ashes of al qaeda in iraq, which sprang up -- it was very largely sunni and bathist, but it had a heavy component.ired al zarqawi came from jordan.of e the core leadership remains iraqi and many of them were former sunni-bathists. so saddam hussein's former people. but when we came in and toppled saddam, they went into the opposition. people wonder if there was a different path. this if we had a different strategy g with regard to the bathist, er: might we have forestalled this l entire situation.

>> hi, phillip. >> caller: hey. how are you doing? >> please go ahead. >> caller: yes, i have a coupler of questions for linda.ho in history, how many air campaigns have ever won a war? >> why do you ask that questioni phillip? >> caller: because it's been brought up we're launching in all kinds of air strikes. how many special forces have ever won a war? >> given your rhetorical questions, we'll get an answer tota those.my that question that you ask, what is your point? >> caller: my point is it takes an army to defeat an army. >> great. we got it. >> air power has degraded some

of the capabilities and assisted the ground forces, but it has been very constrained. the opening of a base in turkey to bombers is huge because that has radically cut out the time.y it alone does not win a war. there are some air power advocates that think you can win wars by air, but i think there' large literature and evidence : against that. i think it is very important to know that it is one component of the strategy going forward. >> and cordell in kansas city, kansas. you are the last call.. >> caller: ms. robinson?especi >> yes. >> caller: yes. i want to ask you two questions. the people that's coming over here, especially the men, why can't the men stay there and

fight for their homes?, whic the second question is they wers talking about sending the men home, which is the people in th. united states said bring our our troops oohome. and they keep on blaming him for bringing the troops home. we wanted our troops to come i home. why can't the men stay there ano fight for their own country? thank you. >> i think that you are correct. certainly president obama campaigned on ending the wars and it's been very important tor him to bring u.s. service people home. i have been in iraq. 18 visits to iraq over the to o years. there are iraqis that want to fight for their country, and they need support from their own government to do so and they n o from other countries to do so. i think your question, though, also involves the refugee population. of course we've seen in syria

particularly just utter devastation through indiscriminate bombing that's led to the massive internal many displacement and external displacement. h we've alsoer eff had, i think, e syrians. we wanted them only to fight isil. so very few came forward in that train and equip program because, they want to get rid of assad.tw some of them are willing to fight both, but we had a litmus test that excluded people that said they were going to go and t fight 'assad.of i think you would have more people fighting if you were willing to say let's a concernew approach to this problem. >> france, britain, other middle east countries fighting in this

area. how much of a muddle is this, or is it pretty clear cut? >> there are 65 countries in the coalition, but really only 24 om doing actual things with this g problem we've been talking about and a smaller subset of that bia conducting airp, strikes and sending trainers and advisers in, but there is a substantial number. the big gap is saudi arabia and turkey, frankly. what are they willing to do? we've been waiting on turkey, which presumably was going to try to seal that border and possibly help protect any safe zone that might be created in se syria. there were a number of things that have been on the table, son i think there's a possibility ofecruitme some of those allies to step up. i think, of course, in the t information campaign and the recruitmenthe campaign to try t stem the recruitment of these would-be isil fighters, the arat

world, but ong ga mostly theme arab sunni world needs to grapple with that problem seriously.sume that's really the long game here. >> okay. final tweet. wild and wonderful says let's assume isil is removed and assad defeated.. to whom do we turn over to power? without that element, it's a waste. >> that's a very important if question. a confederate formulation is most likely to emerge if syria remains as an intact state.es. you might have a bunch of microstates. i think the future is really ru unknown, but it's unlikely to come back and certainly under the rule of a minority, a shiite ruler. >> we appreciate you coming over. an update now on the investigation into the shootings in san bernardino, california

from attorney general loretta lynch and fbi director james comey. >> well, good afternoon, everyone. thank you for coming over. i've joined the director's briefing today, although this will be his briefing. as many of you know, the news from san bernardino continues to evolve. obviously we have now have seen the names and faces of those victims, the fallen and the injured, and as always our hearts go out to them and keep them in our prayers. not just those who did lose their lives, but those who were injured in this and the law enforcement officials. it is an evolving investigation. we also told you we'd keep you informed about this investigation. just recently there was a press conference in the local area with the assistant director in charge of the los angeles office providing more operational details. the director is going to give you a further briefing as well. the fbi has taken the lead in

this investigation. they continue to work with our local partners who are outstanding partners also along with the atf and u.s. marshals. there's been a lot of new information that's come to light, and the director is going to give you some more insight into that, so thank you all for being here today. >> thank you, madame attorney general. our hearts continue to ache for the people lost and wounded in san bernardino and their families. and i also want to say a word of gratitude and say how impressed we were with the response of local law enforcement in san bernardino. they were simply amazing. we're all very lucky that really good people become police officers in this country. i want to say a word of thanks to the people who rendered emergency care and aid. those are the people who are the angels of our business and don't get the thanks they deserve, so

thank you to them. we're here today because we want to make sure you understand this is a federal terrorism investigation led by the fbi. the investigation that has developed so far has evidence of radicalization of the killers and inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations. we are spending a tremendous amount of time, as you might imagine, over the last 48 hours trying to understand the motives of these killers and every detail of their lives. we're going over a large volume of electronic evidence. this is electronic evidence that they tried to destroy and conceal from us. we are keeping our minds open as we always try to do. i know that there are a lot of good questions that folks want answers for quickly, but i hope you know about our work. we aspire to do it quickly, but

we most aspire to do it well and carefully. we're trying to be very thoughtful to understand it and to make sense of it so we understand the full extent of what we have here. let me offer you, though, a couple of specifics on the investigation. first, our investigation to date -- again it's only two days old -- so far we have no indication that these killers are part of an organized larger group or form part of a cell. there's no indication that they are part of a network. again, i quickly add it is early. we're still working very hard to understand, but so far we don't see such indications. second, there is nothing in our holdings about these two killers. i have seen reporting where folks have focused on reports that they were in contact -- at least one of the killers was in

contact with people that were the subject of fbi investigations. there were no contacts between either of the killers and subjects of our investigations that were of such a significance that it raised these killers up onto our radar screen. i would not want you to overindex on that just yet. it is, as i said, 48 hours old. there's much about this that doesn't make sense to even those of us who do this for a living. let me close by saying something the attorney general and i have said before and that is we know that this is very unsettling for the people of the united states. what we hope you will do is not let fear become disabling, but instead try to channel it into

an awareness of your surroundings to a place where you're living your, but if you see something that doesn't make sense, you say something to somebody. in almost every case we find somebody saw something and didn't say something to law enforcement. wrote an innocent narrative over some facts that were making them feel uncomfortable. please don't do that. we have worked very, very hard since 9/11 to get ourselves to a place where if you tell a police officer and call the fbi and say, i saw something next door that seems off, it will get to the right people and we will investigate it quickly and responsibly. if there was nothing there, no harm done. if there was something there, great harm may be avoided.

so we would ask you please channel that sense of fear into something healthy, just an awareness of your surrounding, and let us do the work that you pay us to do. on the next "washington journal," former nsa general counsel stewart baker discussions nsa's collection of phone records. then physician dennis cardone of new york university talks about sports-related concussions. after that, supreme court reporter david savage previews upcoming cases before the high court. plus your phone calls, facebook comments, and tweets. "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span.

on news makers, virginia congressman bob goodlatte comments on including immigrati and sentencing reform legislation. news makers sunday at 10:00 a.mt and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-spanm here on the "washington journal" we do a segment calledn america by the numbers where weo try to statistically look at certain aspects of american society.wh and todayere it we are looking school violence and where it stands today. joining us is dr. marisa randazzo. she's with sigma threat management associates and the hi former chief research psychologist for the u.s. secret service. also with us is tom snyder who t is with the national center for education statistics.h tom snyder, what is that on at

organization? >> the centerl le collects data education at all levels starting from pre-primary education through higher education. today we'll be talking about kn some of thesa findings we have from our annual report on indicators of school crime and safety. so the news opens up with some positive things about a decline in school crime.ol so overall if we look at a long period of time we have a decline in school crime this is reported by teens and what we see is thar 20 years ago in 1992 we had 181a crimes per thousand students and it's down to 55 now. >> how do you define a crime? how do you define violence in schools? are we talking about shootings? bullying? >> primarily we're talking about fights. a lot of thefts, these would be. things that might be taken from lockers. it has to be something of a value of $10 or more. these are crimes reported by the students and one thing i think we want to highlight is that there's lots of friend crime

data reported by schools, perspe teachers, the students themselves and those can give us a different perspective that can be helpful.he not one statistic is the full answer. we need to look at various crimes and how the measures relate to each other. >> here are the trends as ate at by the national center for education statistics. the teen victimization rate at school declined from 181 to 55 victimizations per 1,000 ere bu students between '92 and 2013. fewer students were bullied in 2013. 22% then in 2005. >> 28%.guest: tom snyder. does that mean 22% of students were bullied? is that what the 22%? >> that's right, 22% of teens t reported being bullied at school over the past year, perhaps ed c something that's interesting. most of those bullying cases, most students report being bullied once or twice but on ths

other hand there was about one in seven of theseed every stude reported being bullied once a week and some students were uden reporting bullyingts i everyday >> so approximately over one-fifth, almost a quarter of m students in america's schools have been bullied in the past year? d >> that's correct. ,0 >> total crimes00 s reported by colleges decreased from 36 to 18 per 10,000 students. however reported cases of sexual assault have increased and r liu arrests for liquor law violations at colleges were lower in h 2013 than in 2001 bu arrests for drug law violations were higher. dr. vúrrandazzo, we want to br you into this conversation. first of all, what is threat assessment? what is it that youn my l do?oos >> in my lineover work i work with colleges and with schools and also with workplaces and certain high-profile individuals to look at threatening situations and threatening behavior. if a school gets a threat from a

student, from an external source, we help them figure outw is thereha really a risk here? is this a real sflet is it a st: credible threat? if so what can we do to reduce the risk and prevent harm before it occurs? >> so when we're talking about these trends, these top-line hi numbers in school and college violence, what do you see? >> what are you hearing?ming out >> first and foremost i see good news coming out of this data. the decline in the victimization rates that we're seeing for teens is, i think, a significant decline over the past 10, 11 years. the decline especially in bowlin bullying, i think, is very encouraging. it used to be the case that bullying would occur in schools and the mind-set used to be ids. almost a matter of that's just kids being kids and especially boys being boys. aware i think schools have gotten mucs savvier and much more aware and

taking an active role to address and prevent bullying not only among boys but girls as well and that has contributed to the decli decline. >> it appears bores females are bullied more than males? >> it seems that's true. with bullying it's more likely to be females victimized than be males. and some of this isber bu relat cyber bullying, about 9% of females reported being sicyber bullied compared to 5% of malesy >> the does your organization attribute reasons why the drop in some of these figure s? >> we can't establish a cause a. and effect.rk is school

school. >> one of the things i see in my line of work is that a lot of school shootings across america had a bullying underpinning to it. i want to be very clear that not every child who is bullied is ao risk of doing harm to anyone else or even to themselves however we've mean?o ha shootings ofiled across america that these were carried out by students who had been bullied for extensive t period of times. so one of the things i think schools have done in the past ten years, 15 years, is really e the importance of addressing situations as they eg start to occur. and addressing bullying that's occurring not only physically between students that may be . occurring on campus but also in the cyber domain as tom was talking about. we see especially among femaleso a lott of informational bullyin and social bullying that doesn'r take the physical form we think of when we think of kids bullying other kids.aring wh it can take the form of social exclusion. it can take the form of sharing

what had been private or tion confidential information shared between two close friends now used as ammunition against someone else for social exclusion purposes.ll so schools are now taking a very active role in saying it's not going to happen here and it's e not going to happen between our students in the cybere domain. we've seen schools adopt policies that say just because it's not occurring within our walls don't mean we approve of : it. it's behavior our students are engaging in, we'll take disciplinary measures to address it. >> let's get the numbers on the screen. we want to hear from you and fy have yourou participation in th program as well. parents and students, here's the number -- 202-478-8000. if you're an educator or school administrator, 748-8001.m snyder all others 202-748-8002.

tom snoyder to build on randazzo was saying, here's a chart. most students have emergency plans. walk us through this. these are data reported by schools and these are the types of plans they have in place. we see here nine out of ten ies. schools, in other words most schools, have written plans to deal with a variety of emergencies and lesser numbers are drilling the students on those plans so if we look at something like natural ose disasters, nine of ten schools have such a plan, nearly all g schools are drilling on those plans. something less frequent such aso hostages about n 60% of schools have a plan. relatively few are drilling. >> tom snyder, is violence in th schools a new phenomena? >> we have measurement back to 1992 so we can comment on numbers from that period forward but i think it would be naive to

believe that there wasn't ave violence from much earlier periods. dat documentations just not statistical data but from the beginning of the 19th century or earlie earlier. >> back earlier than -- >> 1821. >> why did you start doing this report in 1992? >> there is a -- it was started by the bureau of justice statistics so we worked in concert with the bureau of justice to develop a survey.rma. there was an understanding that we needed to have more red in comprehensive information. there already were other surveys that gathered information on crime from police agencies but there was a need to get also more information about schools as well. and some of the police agency data would cover schools but it wasn't comprehensive, it only covered types of certain e. reported crimes marisa randazzo, we had an earlier segment about

violence and we saw 62 people have been killed in school this is year is that a remarkable fig injury? is that a low figure?hing w >> one of the things we see d across the data from tom's organization and from others ist that first of all any homicide or suicide, any violent death it school is a tragedy no matter what the trends are saying, no c matter how prevalent it is. but we still see when it comes to homicides, when it comes to serious violence where studentse are victimized, students still remain safer in school than they are outside of school, if we look at tom's data, the victimization rates overall show kids are at greater risk in thei school because of a whole host of things that happen to them, n from the minor h incidents to t bullying to the more serious assaults or even to suicide. but when we're talking about the most serious violence that students are victim of, they're at much greater risk outside of school than they are in school

itself. >> so in your current position c and maybe perhaps ine wo your fr position what advice would you give to a school?o >> one ofis e the bestnc thingsr schools can do is encourage their students to report threats and other troubling or disturbing behavior they can ca become aware of. f one of the biggest things that we have seen after school shootings across america from research on school shootings is that typically other students know about violent plans beforet the violence iss carried out i school, it's the students who are aware of this, they hear about it directly from a student who's planning to engage in a school shooting or other school violence. they hear about it from friendsy they see it on social media. they're the ones who know long s before the adults in school know. so when schools take steps to actively encourage their students to say to them you are a key part of school safety, yes, you're a student, you're

here to learn but you're a key layer because you may be the first one to know of something troubling of a violent plan, ofn a friend or fellow student who'. feeling desperate, feeling like they need to engage in violencen tell us.steps to let us know, we can take steps to help them and keep school safe at the same time. >> did new techniques develop after columbine in '99, i believe it was? >> yeah, they did. in large partrese because of research that the secret service and u.s. department of educatioo conducted on school shootings across america. i was fortunate to be part of that when it was conducted but it was ground of breaking and remains the largest federal study of school help s shootings across the u.s. and there were some surprising findings that helped schools do a much better job at figuring out when a student is planning to engage in violence because it's not impulsive. the schooln shootingsthe un we in the u.s. are thought out in advance and planned out in advance which means we have a

chance to stop them to stop a student who has stoppen on what we call the pathway to violence. they're usually there because they have personal problems they're trying to solve and they resort to violence or see violence as the only option. when a school can get in and work with law enforcement and mental health professionals, they can help that student figure out non-violent ways to solve those problems and they get off the pathway to violence and stay off. tak >> let's take some calls and we'll continue to go through the statistics that the national center for education statistics has found on school violence. carl's in neptune beach, i have florida. hi, carl. >> hi, i really just have one question and i'll hang up and listen to the answer. is -- a person that's confronted with racism on a regular basis

in schools or even college, and i'll give you an example things written in the form of a swastika, is that bullying? t andha i'll hang up. >> that would be included, tom : snyder, such as the incident in the university of missouri or racial incidents, name calling, itself? >> definitely, but beyond that there's a special category for hate crimes and we don't a slide prepared for that but colleges are required to report all hater crimes and the nature of the hate so that's something that definitely would be carried in our reports. i think in 2012 there was about 800 hate crimes reported across u.s. campuses. >> how does that compare to other years, do you know offhand? >> unfortunately we only have se the datath for a few years so w don't have a time series with y that. it's new but something we are highlighting. >> okay, over the past ten xpan years, you report, public schools have expanded their security practices and the firs

one up there is student est: uniforms. why is that a security practice? >> it can be in a sense that it can -- students that would have kinds of wear that other ing th students want to take. so if everybody has the same ii type of clothing there's less animosity between the students because somebody has something somebody else doesn't. ac >> andross reduce student victimization along a couple dsn fronts. it evens the playing field so kids don't have designer this on that that might be coveted and someone might try to steal, theh also don't have clothing or garments that look subpar and would be the basis for bullying. so it helps put them on an even footing. >> that goes with a strict dress code. 68% of schools, if i'm reading this correctly, require faculty badges? >>. >> that has increased over the time period that faculty are

identified clearly for parents and other teachers and students. >> peter, let me just highlight that. this underscores something in a we le often overlook when talk about school safety and sco that is that adults in a school, working in a school, having affiliation with a school couldi pose risk for harm within the school. so when we talk about school safety we often default to at i thinking about harmfulno studen, dangerous students. that's not the case at all. schools are workplaces as much as educational so we often -- my colleagues and i often work on cases where you have a staff member engaging in behavior that's trouble organize threatening or someone the school has had to terminate and is now a disgruntled former employee. you have domestic violence at yu situations where someone who may have been victimized in a domestic situation is employed y and their ool

estranged spouse may know they can always find that person at your school so school safety encompasses safety for employees in the workplace as well as students in school, the biggest increase in security practices is security cameras.in 36% of public schools to 75%. that's an advance in technology. the technology has gotten much cheaper so this is something schools can adapt to. it has a lot of security possibilities because they can monitor halls or entranceways so this is a big improvement. >> i think it also may be tied e to why we're seeing a decrease t in bullying victimization where becauseth you're able to have es on places in school where there hadn't been previously often times we see bullying occur in places where adults are less likely to be so out on the playground, in hallways that aren't monitored as much. with security cameras you have additional eyes.

and 43% of public schools have security personnel on site. is this a big increase? it has this been study?s just p >> it's been pretty steady.the o if we look at the graphic, we can see the total has not changed a lot over time. there's an increase with school having only part time staff and somewhat less with full time staff. i shouldpercenta emphasize that percentages are much higher forh large high schools and if you go to a large high school, chances are they will have a security learn from. it could be a school resource officer most typically, so about 90% of the high schools or larger schools will have a security person. >> marisa randazzo, what would you advise? what are the top three things you would tell a high school ta principal or superintendent whee it came to his or her high school for safety? >> for safety. one is have open communication with your studentsmeone at and e every student feels like there

is someonetu at your school, an adult at your school, that they can turn to or confide in or share information with. develop a threat assessment process or threat assessment ico team. this has been identified as bes. practice for preventing school c violence. it gotthe aco lot of attention columbine. places like the commonwealth of virginia passed legislation requiring all of their public ee k-12 school toes to have a thre assessment capacity. this is great for schools to not only prevent school violence but identify problems as they are emerging and developing like bullying, like harassment, like the hate crimes the caller asket us about. and to make sure that there is a climate that feels safe for students and employees, faculty and staff alike. when people feel like information is treated fairly, there's someone they can go to, , at things won't be blown out of proportion or handled in a

way that's insufficient and comfortable and safe bringing concerns forward knowing they will be address ed >> what about x-rayarme d detec? what about lock doors? security personnel? armed guards? >>. >> depending on the school that may be appropriate.ght wa of all of those i'd want to go for armed guards but mostly forp aos school resource officer as opposed to just a private i th security guard and the reasonino think school resource officers are a critical piece of school safety is because they are sworn law enforcement haveo personnel, they come from the local police departments, sheriff's office. they have gone through law enforcement training, they know the laws, they know how to use weapons appropriately and so they have the right skills and schools that a private security guard may or may not have ource experience in.ofe but the key to having the rightr school resource store really enhance school safety is lookinh for people who have the right

personality match, the right disposition to be working with kids. we've seen a real change and emn improvement in schools and loca law enforcement working together to select the right officers for those positions.as alm it used to be a matter of -- it was almost a position that efor officers would take as their nfe last position before retiring. t now law enforcement and schools figure out who who among our current officer personnel want to do this and would be best suited?eir ow when that you have right person, often times it's young officers themselves who pol. get in andlace work with the schools. they actually become a place cm where students feel very comfortable and safe bringing concerns and telling them about problems happening in school or that they friends may face outside of school and getting good advice so they become heir confidantes and an emblem of school safety. >> sonia, gig harbor, washington, please go ahead witn your question or comment. >> caller: yes, i was just wondering how young of a -- it t

would start. because my grand daughter is inn fifth grade, she got a note fro. somebody on the bus saying that they were going to kill her andd other people. well, she took the note to her school counselor and the counselor said "you know what? it's in the past, forget about it, leave it alone." to me that's serious, even though this is only fifth grade, how young do you have to be to start taking these things seriously? and she's bullied my granddaughter before but when the counselor says leave it eop. in the past. but she's threatening to kill not just my brand daughter but other people. so what happened here? >> how old is your granddaughter, sonia? >> caller: she's 11. she >> all right, thank you very much. is what's your responsest to of sonia had to say and i want to n talk about this chart afterwards? >> first of all, her granddaughter did the right thing inponse talking to the s counselor, but if that's the response she's getting i would encourage her to tell other people as well.al

i would encourage her to talk to the school principal and call local law enforcement. you can make an independent call, it doesn't have to go through the school. here's why, local law ve enforcement may already be awarr of situations involving that particular student orortant p hr information and this will be ans important piece ofha the puzzle. the school counselor is often bound bid confidentiality so if you can tell several people, maybe the principal knows infor something else and they've got enough of a critical mass of llh information to do something.e so first of all, bravo, she did the right thing by bringing thit information forward but that response is -- given the aid he severity of what we're hearing i'd want her to tell additional people as well. >> sonia said her granddaughter was 11, according to the national center for education we statistics,re middle schools weo more likely to report violent

crimesin in 2013/2014.r tom snyder, does that mean middle school there is's more crimes or bullying or et cetera in middle school than there is e other places? >> twell,his ty that's right. middle schools are more likely to report these types of es we behaviors. i should emphasize a lot of theb crimes thatee we're seeing ther are fights or students being imt attacked by other students so that's the serious crimes that you see reported here, primarily that's what's occurring. >> one of the examples that's used as kind of overreach is the little boy who bit his pop-tartb into the shape ofe repo a gun o saying i'm going to kill you and they have to be reported now. is it overreach, dr. randazzo, c in your view to report those types of incidents as crimes and violence?rreach will. >> let me back up with the reporting aspect.who sees i don't think it's overreach atu all fort someone who sees that,

hears about it to report it to teacher, principal, school resource officer because they can look intoor not it and see s something serious or not? often times we don't see the bot entirety of a situation, we heaa things, hear about things so pass that along. the overreach part comes where there is automatic suspension or automatic expulsion for thmething like that. that's something we saw previously that i think schools are moving away from and this io zero tolerance policies where e there's an automatic response is someone says something e po context s of thep they -- as you were talking a about with the pop-tart, they ha chew it into the shape ofte a g. when i happened to see that at particularbe thing i thought ite looked like the state of idaho. so if we look at what is this?tb what was being done? what is the students' perspective on what was being done? let's look at this reasonably, objectively and gather other information. are there other students worried about what they saw?hers w

are teachers worried about how this particular student is doing? do local lawe ther enforcement things that maybe there's been department of social service t involvement. maybe there's been things going on for the students that'sdisru. but without that context we don't know.onse so to have a policy where t schools have to take certain ikv severeer disciplinary measures response to these things, that's where it feels like overreach ea and that's what can result in a climate that feels to students n and to employees that it's not safe to bring these things forward because they don't know what will happen if they do. >> janet is calling in from boston. hi, janet.ho >> caller: hi, how are you? >> good. >> caller: can you hear me? >> we were listening, go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: my question and d i i comment is that myd daughter wa bullied and i did bring it before the principal, went through the teacher because i always tell her you have three

responded -- tell the student, tell the teacher, tell me. then when i heard i took it to the principal of the school andt the child had actually ry physically touched my child and when i told them i was very ot o upset, she said "well, your my u daughter got in a couple of good licks." because my daughter doesn't like to fight, she doesn't like to have any kind of physical -- she wants the education and i said she shouldn't be made to feel like she has to go somewhere and fight and so i was very upset and i subsequently pulled her out of that program but you see you have administrators that are obtuse to what's going on or sag don't want to t react. then you have -- and i'm saying bullying because the child had been went each year something coming up and then t's

child has a problem and the problem becomes your child's problem and they don't want to react because they want to be sensitive to the -- and then the collective work in the classroom can't go on because it's a didy behavior issue. >> janet, did your daughter immediately tell you when she had been bullied or did it come out inadvertently?ry day, >> caller: oh, no, everyday -- see as a parent i would pick her up and i would say "how was youe day?"d. and each day she'd say "my day was such and such, this a dai happened, that happened." and it was a mantra. so i could hear from her on a daily basis as to what was goin on and things i needed to either adjust, react to, let go on, see what's happening and i would say do you think you can handle this or do you need me to intervene?

and she would say "i think i need some help with this." issi think i'm going to be okay." but, again, know this child has an issue and now because my child's issue and then -- >> and how old is your daughter now, janet? >> caller: my child is now was 13 but at the time it was going on it was 11 -- between 11, 12. >> thank you, back in the middle school range, tom snyder.an anay but before we get analysis from dr. randazzo, i want to look at this chart. about half of frequently bullied students never told an adult. >> and this is perhaps the areas of greatest concern about those students who were bullied, somea of the ones bullied everyday or once a week, they haven't told e an adult.. that's what we're getting to here and talk about the importance of notifying perhaps more than one person or at least one adult. mar likely school personnel as

well as parents. >> and that's the second time a parent of a female middle schooler has called in. dr. randazzo? your response? >> ias think that can be part o it, too. as many advances as we've seen schools make across the country and taking a better stance t the against bullying we still have individual administrators here and there who don't see it quite the same way and who often made the fault, well, it's two girls it can't be that bad. the truth is it can be very, very bad. especially for the girl who's tn feeling victimized.ca i want to say tote a the caller think her daughter has a wonderful advocate in her and the quality of her relationshipw will help her daughter be lifet resilient across a whole host of issues and challenges throughout her lifetime. and i'm sorry the response they appear to have got felt dismissive but i would encouragt her toin report to other peopler she's not getting a satisfied o

asponse and sometimes or sch parents we have to be a little bit of a thorn in the side of administrators or school saying "i don't think you understand, this is more inh serious and i don't think at t bowlers, the people who engage in chronic bowling who are often identified as the source of the problem, when we actually look at them statistically, they are often students who are clinically qualifyd, or who would for diagnoses with health along the mental health spectrum dealing with depression. not awhat we see is symptom, with the right of evaluating mental heal as bullying behavior is a symptom that with the right evaluator, with the right mental health care can be addressed well and provides wonderful relief for the person who had been engaging in bullying

behavior as well as people they victimized. so when we see student are bullying, instead of saying "well, they said your child was the person. this person said the other i student was the problem."tiple e let's look at what's behind the behavior when we hear multiple y reports and say what can we do helped a dress this student's behavior beyond discipline.he i it maynfor be that they need moo care from a mental health perspective. >> tom snyder, this information we're looking at, is it available online?es. >> it's available at nces.ed. v nces.ed.gov. >> roy is in cambridge, massachusetts. roy, you're on the "washington . journal." we're talking aboutll theer: statistics around school violence, et cetera, please go ahead. >> caller: i have two comments and a question one is regardingf ms. randazzo's emphasis on school resource officers. there was an incident recently in ohio where the gentleman was.

fired because he was allegedly too violent with a student who was confrontational with him. so he was trained in that area but he still had a problem. on the other hand in general, bull league is a problem, in pub granted but i think it's being a emphasized too much in public q schools and they're forgetting what their primary mission is, namely educating students and my question has to do with resolving these problems with students that get violence in school or school violence in ah general. in 1965 senator patrick moynihan did a study on families and found that families that don't have a father present, the judge men grow up with a more likelihood of being violent. now currently one of the expertr in the area says the same thing that patrick moynihan found.n tg so do you ever consider that fact finding and that report in trying to resolve this problem? >> thank you, roy.

>> one thing i want to point out and appreciate the caller's perspective on this. one thing i want to point out is that when we talk about school violence, it's not all just they domain of boys. we see girls increasingly engaging in violent behavior. not just cyber harassment and bullying but violent behavior an well. when we look at a particular case of a student who is threatening to engage in violence or has been violent, we look at every aspect of it. so we look at, as the caller war suggest, family dynamics. we look at sources of support or lack thereof.really we look at how well the student is doing? school, not just from an academic perspective but in terms of emotional adjustment as well and look to see where there's unmet needs and what wea can do to helped a dress the problem. what we see at the root of most violence are personal issues and problems the student is facing that they are choosing tose hane through violent means or don't see any other options. s

so when you can start to work directly with that student and their support mechanism and connect them to better resourcey and more support for them and da their family as miwell, whether it's one parent family, two parent family, blended family, stepparent involvement, whatever it may be you can help to bolster that poor support with q additional support from aue coat from a church or mosque or din dog, from something the student feels involved in. helping them get involved. so if there are gaps like the mn caller was suggesting you can help to fill in those pieces through other means. an >> when you g sawirl that vide the policeman taking that african-american girl out of her desk, what were your thoughts? >> my thought initially was that first of all we didn't see the whole context so it's hard to pass judgment on a situation we are only seeing a piece of.ody i but when situations like that get to that point of violence and confrontation in school nobody wins.f what t because it feels disruptive even

if what the school resource officer did was appropriate or not. it creates such a disruptive any scary feeling for that classroom and that school generally. my comments about school resource officer, taking that to incident out of the equation, is that on balance they are a mattr beneficial asset w to schools b it does matter who is selected for that position and like any employee in any position we see the vast majority of employees function well and according to policy and protocol but ever so often we have people that do things that are inappropriate, counter to policy, break laws and we have to discipline them according accordingly. i feel badly that that school had that experience and that things got to that level of confrontation because it has a ripple effect on the school. re >> tom snyder from the nces report, this is one of your d mortar dramatic charts. what are we seeing? we are >> we're seeing a