at how states revise -- education law called the every student succeeds act. they discuss issues of equity, and how the measures are addressing civil rights and what can be done to hold schools and districts more accountable. this is part of a conference of journalists.

>> hi everybody. we are going to get stashted. i think everybody is still trying to find the room. so just a couple house keeping things if you are tweeting, please use the #ewa 17. everything here is on the record. remember to use the sign-in sheet. it is right here. i think. shall i pass it? i will pass it down. i am going to hand that to you. okay. yes, sign the sign-in sheet. we're here today to talk about the every student succeeds act and the state. my name is caitlin emma. we are going to talk about this law that passed in 2015 that replaced no child left behind

and sort of where states are at right now. so we are going to talk about that today. so to bring you up to speed, there are two submission windows for states to send in their plans under this new law for holding schools accountable, for how they plan to intervene in schools, and how they plan to intervene in groups of students who are consistently under performing. 16 states in d.c. have submitted for the spring window. and another window coming up in september. i am sure you are familiar with education secretary betsy devos is tasked on reviewing these forms along with peer reviers. to my immediately we have chris minn minnich. and we have linda

darling-hammond. mike petrilli, he is the president of the thomas b. fordham institute. and liz king. i would love to get started by you know jump into this, and make sure we have a lot of time for questions at the end. i would like to ask you krichri so if you can talk about the work and where you see states right now. >> it is a real honor to be on the panel with these three folks. i don't often get to speak with them. so it is great to be here and thanks for inviting me to ewa. i think essa has been a devolution to the states as

promised. 17 state have submitted so far. the rest coming in september. if you are in a state that has submitted you are aware of their plan but if you are in a state that has not submitted there is a lot of work going on. there are two pieces i think we're most interested in, one making sure that as states set these plans we don't go to a time pre no child left behind where we were able to ignore groups of kids or poor performance. so before no child left behind, we didn't report out subgroups. so a school could just sort of skate by on averages or things like that. i think it is important and that is good in the first 17 plans that we don't see a backing away from student performance as the goal for the states. and so i think that is a real positive. i think another area where i think we have a lot of work to

do is on the intervention side. so let's say we grade a school a "d" or an "f." or in a star state one or two state stars. there are new parts of the law that gives states more flexibility with those resources, the money. and i think we will largely look back on this law as a success or failure about how we do with the schools that aren't getting it done with kids right now. meaning the lowest performing in our state are we able to significantly improve those schools. and i think some of the techniques we have been using in the past haven't worked in states. so under no child left behind has done a lot of reporting data and asking districts and schools to improve themselves. either coming up with a plan or

just saying you need to improve and that didn't work as well. and i think we need a structure in place in each state. so one area where i am interested in states improve signiing is to -- is just as we have these conversations, it is really important that we get into the plans and figure out what states are actually doing. states may have submitted something to the federal government that may not have everything in it that they are going to do in their state because of the way the template played out and other things. the federal government is only asking for certain types of information from states. their process and their plan may be bigger than what they submit to the federal government. so that is an important thing for reporters to ask. what else is going to go on in the states to help improve.

>> thank you chris. i would like to turn to liz and ask about what the change in the administration means for the plans. so obviously, civil rights advocates have been a little bit concerned about president trump and education secretary devos and how they would be looking at these plans and what level of scrutiny giving these plans. we have yet to see how it will play out. liz, i would love to hear from you about what is the civil rights community looking for when you are going through these plans and what are the concerns that you might have when how this administration will be scrutinizing them. >> thanks. one thing i would say right off the bat because of who you all are is a big thank you on behalf of marginalized communities and civil rights community to

education reporters. there is a great piece in the atlanta journal constitution about the qualifications and the background of police officers who are serving in schools so the individuals charged with policing children and value that work. so thank you to all of you and please keep going. so on the essa implementation what we are looking for is that the process itself is inclusive of diverse communities and there are diverse parents and community stakeholders at the table when decisions are made. and at each point in the process that we drive towards equity. and ha that is what we are look for. i think we are absolutely concerned about the review process coming from this administration. we keep hearing over and over a deference to states even at times when states are violating federal law. we saw for example recently in

the appropriations hearing secretary devos was not willing to commit that federal dollars would not be used to discriminate against students. i think that is something we all should be concerned about. and it is the responsibility of the secretary of education to stop that. we have not gotten the assurances that we need that this administration is going to make sure that these essa plans are consistent with the laws and the laws long standing intent to raise achievement for marginalized children. we have seen bright signs in plans being returned to state because they are insufficiently complete. but we all need to make sure that it is not just that they are using a sufficient number of words but the words included in the plans are compliant with the law and describe a system of accountability which holds

schools accountable not just for the performance of children on average but for the performance of each group of children. the purpose of the law is not just to raise educational quality overall but to address long standing barriers to success. faced by low income students students with disabilities and if the states are not doing that, their plan should not be approved. and we are concerned that we can -- >> do you feel as those states are delivering on this promise of ensuring equity, are they being innovative and thinking about accountability differently. what are you seeing? >> well there is a gamut of approaches. the earliest filed plans are less ambitious in some ways in innovating in some cases than

the ones that are still under construction. partly because you know, when you have more time, you can think harder and doing more modelling of different approaches. i think there's even more to come in the next batch. there are some places that are really picking up to just to take up liz's equity theme which is so important, that are taking up equity in some really interesting ways. one of those is taking up the place of the kinds of indicators that typically discriminate between and among subgroups and have strong implications for whether kids will graduate and go on. so for example, places like california are taking up an indicator of whether kids are suspended at differential rates and just having had that in the state accountability system have

reduced suspension rates a lot. illinois is one that is taking that seriously. if you look at that carefully, those kinds of indicators can create quite a lot of information about how kids are being treated in school, as well as giving school people information that will allow them to improve. access to rich curriculum for all kids. a number of states are doing college and career ready indicators. this is really important because course taking is a stronger predictor of success in college and beyond than test scores. and so getting access which has been typically unequally allocated to advanced courses, advanced placements, to strong career technical education programs that meet a quality standard. those kinds of things, and getting to a place where 100% of

kids are prepared to go on in life would be a huge change in where we are as a nation. a lot of other countries have been way ahead of us in thinking how to ensure that everybody is prepared to go on. and a number of states are looking at those things. new york is looking at a diversity indicator which would look at the extent to which within a district students are together in schools and classrooms relatively to their proportion in the district by race, by class, by special education and english learner status. so there is a lot of states that are taking up these questions in interesting ways. and looking for the equity nuggets in the law which we identified in a publication called equity in essa. there are ways by which you can highlight the school funding differentials across districts,

encourage weighted student formulas. there are 50 districts that can engage in pilots. look at assignment practices to encourage integration. all of those things are baked into the law. and they are lurking there for states to pick them up and pursue them. not all of the states are doing that. but some of them really are pursuing those kinds of strategies. >> mike, i know that you have a few thoughts about how you feel states are doing in this respect. i have seen you write about how you feel, you know, they could be doing better when it comes to high achieving students. where do you think there is room for improvement for what you are seeing and is there a state that you think is being particularly innovative. >> it's great to be here with you all today. i would have worn my flashy jacket. just kidding. but i always look forward to the ewa.

you love twitter. i love twitter. you are my favorite peeps. and when it comes to q and a, i hope somebody asks linda about her son who is the american ninja warrior superstar. >> competing in las vegas. >> back to essa. i think when we look at these plans. and especially when it comes to the ratings, a couple of things that i hope you ask, is the first one whether or not it does a good job helping parents and t taxpayers, understand if a given school is a good school or not. this law does provide more fl

flexibility. and it does not say you have to provide a special rating. that data is a form of transparency. and those data can be helpful when schools, teachers, parents, administrators sit down and try to understand how they can improve what they are doing. what that doesn't do is provide a clear answer to the public or taxpayers, hey, is this schoolcy good school or not. so ask that question. you now, if you have got a rateding in your state where it is some kind of language and the rating is, this school got a sufficient improvement rating, i hope you go after the state for stuff like. that is that a good thing?

is that a bad thing? so that is number one. if there is a clear ratediing. you could take your data that you are getting from the states and build your own rating. in california, if the state of california is not willing to do this, you could do this and you can construct your own rating using the state data to come out and say based on this information we have, are the schools doing a good job or not. the second thing i look at is if these states are doing a good job differentiating. we had a huge problem which is that basically every high poverty school got labeled as a failing school and that was because so many of the indicators were strongly correlated with demographics and prior achievement because we looked at proficiency rates.

even if you are doing a phenomenal job, you are going to have low pro fificiency rates. if that is all the state is looking at, you are going to get a low rating. if you see these ratings come out and not a single -- you can model this right now and try to ask these tough questions. if you are a high poverty school and you do a great job, is it possible for you to get an "a" or a five stars. what are the signals that states are sending to the schools in terms of who matters. we want to make sure that all kids matter. that we don't go back to the old days where you can do well on average and sweep low performers

under the rug. so not just low performing kids who need to catch up but kids in the middle and kids at the top. the message i hope we want to send is it is your job to make sure -- because the standards were so low, all of the incentives were about getting the kids to the proficient levels. kids who were to pass the kids in september, you could ignore them and still do fine. schools that were at risk of hitting these interventions had a strong incentive. so that meant that high poverty schools and high achievers were

not priority. now states have a chance to moving to growth models and looking at growth for all kids they can send a message to those kids everybody matters. low performers, middle, high achievers. so ask those questions. who matters. do all kids matter and who are the winners and losers in that kind of a stmystem. in terms of a state doing well, we like colorado's plan. they have gone out of their way to make sure the way they measure academic achievement sends a message that everybody matters. they look at average scaled scores. they also do a lot of looking at growth over time and we think that's a promising start. d.c.'s is goods.

massachusetts is interesting. they are a little complicated. but many of the others unfortunately have not moved far past no child left behind. there is a good chance no those states you are going to have a situation where basically if you serve a lot of poor kids you are going to get a low grade and if you serve rich kids they are going to get a high grade. >> i know that chris and linda would like to share thoughts. >> about my jacket? i am ready for it. >> this is your super bowl. you just love this panel. i think mike brings up good points. one point i would bring up to push on a bit is thinking about overall ratings. so california's dashboard has gotten much better. i could look at a one pager on a

page a school and understand. i think the bar is correct that parents should be able to look at the report and understand how their school is doing. i think a second thing is thinking about how you rate schools, you know, if you have 15 indicators, maybe there are things you should be reporting out but not including in school performance ratings. so for example, suspensions data. i think it is something that we should be monitoring and something we should be looking at across the country. but if we start putting that in to school performance, the reaction from schools could be to simply not suspend kids and find other ways to deal with that. and i think what we learned with no child left behind, i was in

oregon right after, and we had tests before no child left behind in oregon and they didn't have the kind of stakes they had after no child left behind. so behaviors changed about assessment. and i am worried we could have a similar challenge here if we are not careful about how we weight indicators. >> linda? >> well i want to agree with mike about the fact that you should be looking in states to see if they have measures of growth or progress which is how you give credit to schools for what they contribute to student learning. new york actually has measures of both growth and progress for each of their indicators or, at least, growth for the academic achievement one and progress in all of the others and a lot of states are trying to figure out how to do that and thath really important. also very important and i agree with that, that states should move away from proficient which

only tells you how many kids met a score and looked across the continuum. the use of the single score, is the "a" through "f" or a single number can mask. l unless you are also clear about having a dashboard. california has seven indicators on its dashboard. you want to know how they are doing in math, in english, social studies and science and maybe citizen, et cetera. it is less of a need i felt as a fiernt have my kid rated on a single sum of score. and what we found in studying the data is very few schools do badly on all of the indicators. most of them are low on one or two. so if you really want to address improvement, you've got to know

where schools are doing well and where they are doing poorly and design the interventions to discuss those areas. and actually working with them very intensely to move the needle on that rather than just saying you are in the bottom 5% or you got an "f" and then you have generic idea what we are going to do with or two you. so whether you have a score or not, the dashboard itself, is really important. those measures that tell you this schools are struggling to move english learners forward and then what are we going to do to build a system in our state to ensure the schools and teachers and principals in the schools know what to do to improve that situation. so i think the dashboard piece of it is what can drive the school improvement system. >> liz, did you want to jump in on this? >> from our perspective, the

central question here is whether all kids matter in the system or not. and i think that is the bigger challenge that we see. the politically hard thing to do is to hold accountable a school which on average may be performing well but is really just failing to serve a group of students. whether it's an all-white middle class school that is not serving its children with disabilities well or an all-white school that is not serving igts children well. that is the politically hard thing to do. it is not hard to hold accountable a high poverty racially isolated school. those schools are in the situation they are in because they have such little political power and when you design a system which is only about holding accountable schools with the least political power, you are under mining the valuable of accountability to create the behavior change. and chris talked about behaviors changing when you measure and report things and that's absolutely true. and they can change for the

worse but goodness knows we hope they change for the better. the system we have is not working. these historic barriers to opportunity persist. and in order for them to go away, behaviors need to change. policies and practices need to change. and our theory of action here, the logic of accountability is that if you come up with a system which makes clear where schools are supposed to be going, how they are supposed to be serving kids, what the goal line is, college and career readiness for every child, right, if you start with that's where we are trying to go and come up with a system that indicates where we are doing well on that path and where we are falling short. not just overall better for every group of children. these stat plans are not following the law. they are focusing only own overall achievement and not holding school accountable for

disaggregated achievement. and that is unacceptable. >> with all do respect, is that we are learning that some of these groups have not learned the lessons from no child left behind. i understand that your concerns is that there are schools that should be rated poorly and they get away with a high rating. we should also be -- by the end of the no child behind process. and what we could have if we are not careful about how we design these systems again. and if you have every school now is rated as failing because you take literally the -- that ain't going to happen. not going to happen in my lifetime. we are at maybe 35% of kids of college and career ready. now, should we be aiming to boost the numbers? absolutely. if you literally build a stnl

that you are failing school -- at that point what you are going to have is what we had wherever schooling is a failing. so there was no accountability because nobody took the rating seriously. so you have got to be able to differentiate between those schools. if you have a really good growth model, well designed that controls for prior achievement, and is for everybody, that it would be almost impossible mathematically to mask, to have a school you know, where on average the kids were doing well and they weren't doing well for certain subgroups. you know, there is going to, if we design these systems right, i think we are going to be able to address that issue. let's make sure that we don't go back to the day wherever school in america is failing because we set these utopian goals. >> every kid puts their baby on

the because so they go to school and learn what they need to learn to be proficient. so that is the priority and the belief of every parent. and i believe every educator goes to work with the intention they are going to serve all of their children. this is not you pass, fail, ayp, it is a nuanced and frankly more complicated stj. we are unwilling to accept. we think it is a fallacy to argue that achievement gaps are pre ordained. and we are working very hard now, many of us, to fix that. and that's the work that we need to be doing and it didn't start with nclb or the civil rights movement. this work is much older than all much that. this is an america as good as its ideals. we all believe in an education stmg which supports the success

of all children and that's the system we need to be working towards. and i think it is wrong to argue that our options are only to ignore historical differences to sweep under the rug inequitable opportunity and to look only at overall achievement -- >> that is not what i am arguing. what i am saying is watch out for utopian goals. here in washington, d.c. look at kidnap. they start at age three. so they have these kids from age 3 and work with them all the way until they go to college age 18. th we are still talking about, i think the last data was somewhere like 50% of their kids graduating college. that is five times better than the national average. that is the best case scenario

right now. so 100%, yes, aspirationally, rhetorically, that is great to aim for that. i promise you, that will results in every school in the country failing. and if that happens there, is no accountability. there is no differentiation >> i want to come back to the equity opportunity gap question and point out in this law, in contrast to nclb where you rank and sort the schools and create a set of sanctions that could occur, there was no requirement to improve and invest in those schools. a lot of schools were unundder resourced. to really look at the ways in

which the resources may be inequitable or inadequate to do the work in the school. and i think that's part of what has to be leveraged. some of this is about measuring but we can't just keep weigh the cow over and over again. the 100% of college and career ready that i was talking about, i don't know what your 30% is, maybe it is the share of people who end up with a college education which is about 38% or 40% -- >> it is from nape. from s.a.t. and we are about graduating seniors. >> our hitting a's -- >> and right now it is about the same as the kids -- >> what i am talking about is make can sure the kids have the opportunities. you have to get a certain set of

courses and certain grades on those. as well as approved high quality career technical pathways and in most countries around the world, kids are in some set of courses, and learning situations where they graduate either ready to go into a reasonable career or a reasonable working situation or ready to go on to college and i think that is a reasonable goal. a lot of countries do that. and we could do that. and states that are working towards 245 could substantially improve the opportunities. and then that is the school of prism pipeline that creates a lot of social dysfunction that we see. >> i am going to give chris the final word on this one. i want to make sure we have 20 minutes for questions. >> i will be very quick.

first i want to thank you for trying to moderate. and i want to, my admiration for these three people is quite high. could you imagine being a state commissioner and having these as your stakeholders. i mean i have heard these architects in state town halls. so my came to spoke to our meeting in march. and you know, advocated for growth. and somebody else advocated to use proficiency more heavily. so state commissioners have this process they have to go through in trying to write a plan to satisfy all of these three folks. and so they are not going to be able to do that. and so when i talk to commissioners, i am talking to

about holding on to making sure to liz's point that we don't lose kids in this process. there that are clear benchmarks and clear goals for all kids. at the same time that we set goals for those kids that are reasonable. they may be interim. but that we can set benchmarks that we know we are on the way to that. i think it is dangerous to say, because which kids can't make proficiency. i do work about. that if we only have to have 30% or 40% of our kids, you know which kids will be left out of the conversation. i think these are all hard questions. i think mike is probably tweeting right now as -- >> why not. i have a problem. >> but this panel shows what your state is dealing with as a microcosm of what the feedback

they are getting from people and they are going to get reviews of their plans and people criticizing the plans. states are engaged with people in the state having conversations. so i think that part can't be oversold. and some states need a push to do more. >> who wants to start us off? >> there is a microphone on either side of the room. so please use those and identify your name and where you are from >> nick garcia, this is a question for mike and liz. what sort of questions do you think reporters should be asking state regarding targets intervention for particular subgroups instead of schools as a whole? >> yeah, so the first question

on that, so one of the problems that we have is this continued use of super subgroups which ignores the differences between african-american, latino, asian-americans white students, low income students and students with disabilities and english learners. so how do you aplan to apply -- disaggregate among groups of students. so what you need is the information about who is not being effectively served. and to linda's pointed earlier on what. a general knowledge that the school is not working for that kid is not workable. so having those pieces of information, who is not getting the splort they need and then in what area, how is that manifesting itself in a student outcome. the very next question is how are you going to engage the parents and communities of affected students and decisions

of what you are going to do. if you are talking about a school that is not effectively serving african american students i bet you the parents in that community have a good assessment of what is part of the challenge. whether it is discipline, disparities in school push out, what the sort of the cause of the challenge, i think that parents are in a really important source of information about what to do there. and looking at other schools that have done a great job. for all of the challenges we have in our system, there are schools that really are excelling and serving all students. and learning from that and figuring out what they did and how did that work. so that is where i would start. >> let's start with humility. we don't know what to do with schools that have low performing

subgroups. we really suck at turning around low performing schools. i think that in colorado where if you have a low performing subgroup, that means they are not making a lot of progress, growth from the beginning of the year to the end of the year and then you have to get under the hood and look at the teaching and learning. are the teacher not strong enough. is there issues with low expectations? this is difficult work. i mean this gets into the very heart of the educational enterprise. so you need to build capacity with people who have these skills to go into a school and get under there and figure out what is happening. >> we don't know how to do this in washington. so don't look to d.c. for answers on this one. >> do we have any other questions? over here.

>> i'm wondering with growth model. my name is sara. one of the issues that i have is that it is hard for me as a reporter to look under the hood of growth model and especially as we change accountability tests, it kind of seems like a mess. and i am very suspicious because i can't understand what they are looking at. so even though you might look at two scores, two average scale scores, they could be exactly the same but yet have different growth percentages. and i know that is because it is individual students but it is a mess. >> yes. i agree with you. i actually think we should be pushing towards simply models that people can understand. i think states have a responsibility to have the public and reporters be able to

replicate their calculations. and i don't think, i think we should be able to give reporters access to the data sets in a way that you can check that. so i understand growth modelling is very complicated, but i think we could do better at sort of understanding if similar kids with similar demographics should have similar growth targets. i think it is something that we kind of, we get into the research side and sometimes lose the ability to explain what we are doing and therefore we lose parents and the general public. so i think we can be better on that front. >> and linda has a lot of experience. >> we talked about the interim benchmarks and i know, so what i have seen is certain subgroups have lower starting points and we get this, oh, well, we are

just being realistic, how do you feel about that. everybody has this starting benchmark, earlier that it's important to set, you know, achievable targets with effort. and most states are doing that in a way that looks at where kids are now. and then sets an expectation that there will be steeper growth for kids who are starting further behind. so that you're looking at lines that should, you know, over time, move towards convergence. and i think that's a reasonable thing to do. a lot of the challenges are about how quickly do you expect that slope to, you know, go up, and over what period of time? but you have to start with where things are now. and then set that expectation

for closing the achievement gap. that means, though, also closing the opportunity gap. and we've been so familiar with talking about the achievement gap for the last 15 years, that there's been much less conversation about the opportunity gap. the fact that kids do get access to very different curriculums in many, many places. they get access to very different learning opportunities before they get to kindergarten. they have access to very different resources within schools, et cetera. so as we worry about the goals and the targets and the movements of kids along those, it's really important to continue to loop back to the question about what opportunities to learn are different groups of students receiving. really from birth forward. and as we look at the interventions that states can -- the evidence-based interventions that states can put in place, it's going to be very important that they consider such things as -- and some places are looking at this. as preschool, as high quality

preschool for some children. it may be very important in some communities for high-quality community schools models to be put in place, we're doing -- releasing a report on monday looking at 125 studies of community school models, many of which have very strong achievement gains because they get the wraparound services that students need, plus before and after study time and support systems. there are a variety of ways that states and districts and schools can approach the improvement question, including strong curriculum in reading and math and professional development for teachers. well designed. again another place where they're going to need access to the research about what actually works and what doesn't in that regard, but those are going to be the most important questions once the target is set. there's a lot of, you know, measurement angst right now but the next angst really has to be about the investments and the improvements. >> and if you want to find schools that are making that

breakthrough progress, for disadvantaged groups, in a lot of states, at least the ones with high quality charter school sectors, i know patrick not ohio's, what you see is a lot of them are charter schools. charter schools in neighborhoods where you've got lots of kids in low performing schools, hope to see states doing some innovative things with that, as well. and again, we know that on average charter performance, district performance, you know, depending on the study, but, what you tend to see again in high quality places is that if you want the really high performers, it is overwhelmingly in the charter sector. >> i would take issue with that but i don't know that we have that question on the table. >> question over here. >> -- grand rapids, michigan. so our state has submitted a plan but our legislature is in the process right now of recrafting our own state's

accountability system through the legislature. i'm just curious, what happens if there is sort of a duelling accountability system? you have one system on the federal level and one system on the state level? what impact would that have on education in the state? >> many, many states are working very hard to create an integrated accountability system. i think that's one of the states that the essa reboot is allowing people to do. to try to figure out what they want to do and what they think is viable as a state can also meet the expectations for the federal law. so i think it's going to be less common. >> i think the word linda was looking for was shitshow. but that's just my opinion. that's nuts. they don't need -- sorry. they don't need two accountability systems. sounds like you're going to have a great story to cover. at some point these things should converge. >> from our perspective, part of this is the state plan other than a policy compliance exercise. you know, from our view, the state planning process should be the state coming together and

deciding what it's going to do to meet the needs of all children in that state. and that's what we are expecting and we're see sol strong state leadership around that. we're seeing room for improvement when it comes to state leadership. but really these state plans should be a demonstration of the commitment by a state to educate all the children in that state. and that necessarily involves an integrated system of holding schools accountable, providing reports. i think differentiated targets, the question that you need to be asking, right, so okay so we're saying in year one or year two, we're expecting lower achievement for students with disabilities, but you're telling me that the long-term plan is everybody get into the same high goal and that's great. and we're going to all have to move faster with different group of kids along the way. the big question then is, what are the differentiated supports that you're providing? so we're going to say as a state we have not been serving children with disabilities for way too long and here is our plan to change that. talk about integrating.

states also have plans under i.d.e.a. and how they're going to better serve children with disabilities are they integrating their plan for how to serve children with disabilities for their essa plans for how to serve children with disabilities and are they integrating all of their state processes? if you've got a state making state driven progress on closing discipline gap and ending exclusionary discipline and racial disproportionality discipline how are they integrating that to help raise achievement for students getting pushed out of school? our hope is really that this is an opportunity for states to come together and really make a new commitment to educating all the children in their state. >> and where they have that happening, i would just like to call the question of paying attention to the schools that are succeeding and sometimes those will be some charter schools. not always everywhere. there are also, in some states, more likely schools that are run by districts that are outperforming others. but knowing who they are, knowing what those districts are doing to make those changes, studying that, making that

available to others, if you look at other countries, comparing schools and putting schools and networks where they learn from each other from those who are defeating to help teach those who are doing well is really part of the strategy here. it's you know, start more schools, or leverage more schools to do what those who have succeeded have done and districts are a key part of this. and can't be ignored in that process. >> last thing on this. i just think -- well, first my communications people are hoping i don't cuss up here, i think. >> sorry. >> i think that's probably what's going on over here. so, i just think it's ridiculous that we would -- that we would have two sets of plans. now, to be said, the federal government isn't asking for everything that a state needs to do to make their school successful. so, to be fair, if i was sitting in a state i don't think i'd send the federal government

everything that i'm going to do, because they're not asking for it. now, i think states should have one plan that they might send parts of it to the federal government. you look at d.c. d.c. deserves a ton of credit for getting their charter schools and public schools on the same accountability system through the essa process and they're working very hard to have the same accountability system for both sectors and i think that's a huge step in the right direction. so things like that are happening and i think states should drive towards a single plan. >> let's see if we can get two more questions over here and then over here. >> r.j. wolcott from lansing, michigan. when states are putting these plans together, how can they ensure that the impact of poverty, you know, that poverty doesn't have a significant impact on achievement so that like michael said, districts that serve large populations of students in poverty aren't all just marked as failing? >> one thing i think that is you think about your metrics. i think it's really important to

balance the access metrics with the student achievement metrics. so if you prioritize only student achievement on a standardized assessment score you will see the biases that come up in some of these metrics. so if you are simply just recreating your no child left behind plan, you will see some of the same problems. and mike is completely correct if all your high poverty schools in the state are ranked low, that would be a sign to me that you would have to do some serious investigating about what's going on in the schools. maybe they're all failing, but i think there's at least one school that could be showing progress. so i think the metrics actually matter the most in that conversation. >> and i would say -- sorry. the other piece of that, right, is it's not just about the metrics. you could also then remove the barriers to opportunity that exist for children in poverty. >> right. >> you could provide, you know, greater funding for schools with greater challenges. you could provide the strongest teachers to students who need the strongest teachers.

you could equalize course access so all children have regular access to meaningful courses and college preparatory curriculum. that's where we want to see it go. it is really dangerous if we play with the metrics but don't play with the opportunities that matters at the child level. right? the child doesn't get to -- the child does not care about the metrics. right? the child cares about their experience in school. do they have a school with a high concentration of novice teachers? and i think these are the real core questions and this is to the point of not -- you know learning from the lessons of past and making the changes, we need to solve the fundamental inequalities that exist. we need to stop providing less to children who need more and that's what we need to do. >> yeah i want to just i was going to go that direction and take it a step further. if you look at massachusetts which is our highest performing state and has been for quite a long time, what they did in the early 1990s was first they put in place a weighted student formula for a way of funding schools so that schools serving

poor kids and english learners and special needs kids got more money. one of the first states to do that. they then put in place useful standards, and put in place preschool education, they put in health care for students. they have a system of wraparound services, statewide. that's been evaluated. so they've looked at all of these components that really provide opportunity and they've provided stronger, better, and more equitable opportunities, and other states are now beginning to look at that, but this is an agenda that has to go state by state. in addition, we have a higher rate of poverty of children in this country than we have had before. the poverty rates for children now are almost double what they were in the 1970s. half of the kids in public schools receive free -- are eligible for free and reduced priced lunch. and if you compare us, somebody asked a question on the earlier panel about how we compare to other countries on things like pisa. one of the things that really

differentiates us from the high scores is the rate of poverty in the country. we are way above any of the high achieving countries in that regard. interestingly, in literacy, in schools in the u.s. that serve kids with fewer than 10% of kids in poverty we're number one in the world. if you look at schools with as many as 25% of kids in poverty, which is way above any other country we're still number three in the world. a lot of our teachers are working very hard to make progress, but the context is really challenging so at some point we have to have a conversation again as we did in the '60s, about how we're going to reduce poverty. and, you know, in addition to doing everything we can in schools to address the effects of it. >> yeah, and i mean just sort of building back on that again, mass deportation, mass incarceration, taking away children's health care, taking away access to family nutrition support, all of those are bad for student achievement. right? even if we all -- if we only care about student achievement all of those things are bad for student achievement. that's also not the society any of us want to live in.

but that's the proposal on the table. >> one last fact the war on poverty and the set of programs that were part of the great society in the '60s and the '70s actually reduced the reading achievement gap by two-thirds by the early 1980s. had we stayed on course with those programs we probably would have had no black white achievement gap by the year 2000 but almost everything was undone. so we have never recouped the opportunity strategy that we once put in place that were successful. >> okay, we have one time for one more quick question jackie. >> i'm just curious in connecticut, we -- the overwhelming majority in our high school or our elementary and middle schools are graded on test scores. there's been the explanation that in high school it's easy to see how many people are going to college. grade them on that. there's a lot more measurements in high school access to ap

courses. do you have recommendations in elementary and middle school of alternative measures that are aren't based on test scores as well as financial. there's a lot of things that go on input into schools. have you noticed any districts or any state plans that have begun grading their schools based on what's going into the school and not just on the test scores and outputs? >> you probably know that connecticut has access to the arts in its list of indicators and i think access to physical education, as well. there are other states that are trying to look at how you get measures of access to a full, rich curriculum including science, including social studies, et cetera, because the curriculum got so narrowed. of course, some states are looking at measures like for the school quality and student success indicator school climate, as another part of what can be looked at at the elementary level. so, folks are reaching for ways to describe the students' experience beyond the english

language arts and math test scores. >> but i think it's telling that so few states have come up with other measures for those grades that aren't test scores and the reason is, it's really hard to come up with measures that are valid and reliable and statewide and can be desegregated by the subgroups. and one lesson is that, even though everybody loves to hate tests, there is a reason that we use them. and it's that they are valid and reliable measures, they're not perfect. but they're better on the other things we've got. it's just good context to be reminded of, that when people say let's stop testing or let's stop grading schools based on tests, what that basically means is, let's stop providing information to the public that's transparent about school performance. and so, you know, because that is at least the current state of measurement. >> the key for us beyond that, i think, there is a demand in the u.s. for the data that comes in from tests.

is that we improve the quality of the assessments we give. we are alone in the world in relying heavily on multiple choice tests in the way that we do in most countries the assessments even at elementary level are open ended assessments where kids are writing the answers to questions. they may be doing oral examinations, as well as written examinations, as well as problem solutions of various kinds in math. as well as investigations in fields like science and those are scored. just like ap tests or ib tests or any others by teachers in ways that are reliable and valid. but they are much more conducive to a curriculum in which kids are taking up the inquiry skills, the investigation skills, the communication skills that we really need in the 21s century. and i would refer you to look at what goes on in singapore, in australia, in the uk, and in a number of other countries if you want to see the thoughtful

assessment that really supports what a rich curriculum looks like. >> the other thing, though, i would say that connecticut is doing is they have a super sub group that includes low income students, students with disabilities and english learners. they do not hold school accountable for disaggregated performance. i don't know that their assumption is that all children of color are low income students or students with disabilities they're not. there's also a difference between being an english learn and a child with disability and being low income. those are not redundant category. each one of those students has a different experience even while they have an experience shared amongst themselves. that's the other thing to remember. right? not just what is being measured but for whom and whether schools are being held accountable for disaggregated performance across all the indicators they decide to use in the system. >> i feel a need to stand up for connecticut. so i will. i don't think that's quite true. because they do have a super subgroup but they are also as part of their accountability system disaggregating. we can have that out if you want some other time.

>> in accountability or just in reporting? >> in the reporting system. so they're following the law is what i'm saying. >> okay. so that we can have out later. >> okay. >> will there be cussing? >> i mean, i just think this is a great example of what, you know, like when you get into the details of this, there are things that really matter. and liz is very passionate about making sure that we tend to every kid. and i am as well. i just -- i worry that we're relitigating some of the things that were decided in the law. so, you know, some of these things are allowed under the law. if we didn't like the law we should change the law. but now states are responding and getting criticized for doing what's in the law. >> right and some of them are just are not complying with the text of the law. would have been great to have a regulation to clarify the law. >> it's debatable whether they're -- i guess we will have that out later. >> okay, well, this was a great discussion. and mike, i think you are

officially banned from c-span, but feel free to follow up with these guys afterward and please give them a round of applause. thank you, guys. [ applause ] former fbi director james comey testifies thursday before the senate intelligence committee. investigating russian activities during last year's election. the committee says director comey will testify in an open session which will be followed

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