accountability. that's what the charter framework is about. in new jersey, the middle class folks moved out over the lost 30 years. they moved to the suburbs looking for better schools. what was left behind were kids in school systems that were for many decades not operating at a high level. that does not mean you need unregulated markets where private actors can discriminate and say they're not going to serve special ed kids or based on sexual orientation or we're not going to have meaningful accountability. that's where president obama and some on the center right have aligned around for decades. what i want to emphasize is that that is the space where i think, one, there are amazing results in terms of that working for kids. you have accountability, equity,

transparency bli transpar transparency built in. as long as people can move out and go where they want to go and pursue choice, we can't say to low income people you're trapped based upon your zip code to a school system that we wouldn't allow our children to be in for one day. that's what we've seen for a long time. that's different from what we see from did evos and the trump administration. they're perverting that. they're not even investing significantly either. so it's like the worst of all worlds. what i emphasize is that kind of tradition is a space where it's a part of the public education system, not an attempt to disminutdi dismantle it. it's a space where people like al shankert and people on the far right have gotten a lot of things done. >> we have to leave it this

there. >> lindsey, you would say it's okay for a school to take the voucher to discriminate against a gay child. >> if i were operating a school i wouldn't operate a school that way but reasonable people can disagree about some of these sensitive issues. i think marriage is a sensitive issue. at the end of the day we have federal civil rights laws in place. >> we are past our time. i am sorry. thank you all for coming. i appreciate it. if you didn't sign in, if you could sign in on the sign-in sheet, that would be helpful for us. [ applause ]

hi, everybody. thank you for coming. we're going to get started. running a few minutes late. i think everybody is still trying to find the room. a couple housekeeping things. if you are tweeting, please use #ewa17. everything here is on the record. remember to use the sign-in sheet wherever that is, going around. please sign in. it's right here. i think. i don't know. should i pass it? i'll pass it down. >> yes. sign the sign-in sheet.

awesome. we are here today to talk about the every student succeeds act and the state. i am a reporter at politico here in d.c. covering education policy. we are going to talk about this law that passed in 2015 to replace no child left behind and sort of where states are at right now. so we are going to talk about that today. to bring you up to speed, essentially 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, for how they plan to intervene in groups of students who are consistently underperforming. so we have about 16 states in d.c. so far -- and d.c. so far have submitted for the spring window. another window is coming up in september. i am sure you're familiar with

the effefact that secretary devs tasked with reviewing these plans along with people called peer reviewers. i'd love to get started with our experts. to my left chris minnic, the executive director of the council of chief state school officers and linda darling hammond ceo of the learning policy institute. mike pa treli, he is the president of the thomas fordham institutes. and liz king, the director of education policy at the leadership conference. i would love to sort of get started by jumping into this, making sure we have a lot of time for questions at the end. i would like to ask you, chris, if you can sort of give us a high-level overview of where states are right now. obviously ctso is an important

partner in this process. >> it's an honor to be on the panel with these three folks. i don't often get to speak with them, so it is -- it's great to be here. thank you for inviting me to ewa. i think esa has been a devolution to the states as promised. we have 17 states who have submitted so far. the rest coming in in september. if you are in a state where they've submitted, you are probably pretty aware of their plan. if you are in a state that's not yet submitted there is a lot of work going on between now and september to define that for that state. i think there are two pieces that i think we are most interested in. one, making sure that, as states set these plans, we don't go back to a time preno child left behind where we were able to ignore groups of kids or ignore power poo poor performance in any way.

before no child left behind, a school could skate by on averages. i think it's really important. that's good in the first 17 plans that we don't see a backing away from student performance as the goal for the states. 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 inititervention si. if you are in a letter grade state, d or f, or a star state at the low end of the stars, one or two stars, what are we going to do as a state or district to help that school improve. there are new parts of the law that give 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 are not getting it done with kids right now. meaning, the lowest performing in our states, are we able to

significantly improve those schools. and i think some of the techniques we have been using in the past have not necessarily worked in the states. largely, under no child left behind states did a lot of reporting data, and then asking districts and schools to improve themselves either by coming up with a plan or, you know, 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. it has really been left up to the state. one area where i am interested in states improving is to think about how do we intervene in low performing schools. the last thing i'll say because i don't want to take all of my time -- is just, as we have these conversations, it's 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 anything 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. i think it's important for reporters to ask, what else besides the plan is going on in the state to improve schools. i will stop there. >> thank you, chris. i would like to turn to liz and ask about what the change in this administration means for these plans. obviously civil rights advocates have been a little bit concerned about president trump and education secretary devos and how they will be looking at these plans and what level of scrutiny they will be giving these plans. there is sort of a concern out there that essentially the process will amount to a rubber stamp. we have yet to see how that's going to play out. liz, i would love to hear from you a little bit about what is

the civil rights community looking for when you're going through these plans, and what are the concerns that you might have about how this administration will be scrutinizing them? >> one thing i would say off the bat, who you all are, a big thank you on behalf of marginalized skun marginalized communities. investigative reporting right now is so important. there is a great piece in the "atlanta journal-constitution" about the qualifications and bound of police officers serving in schools so that the individuals charged with policing children really value that work. thank you to all of you. please keep going. on the sort of the esa implementation, our two biggest priorities are that the process itself is inclusive of diverse communities and that there are diverse parents and community stakeholders at the table when decisions are made and that, at

each point in the process, that we drive towards equity. and so, that's what we are looking 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. i think we saw, for example, recently in the appropriations labor hhs house appropriations hearing secretary devos was not willing to commit to federal dollars would not be used to discriminate against students. i think that's something we should all be concerned about. using federal dollars to discriminate violates federal law and it's the responsibility of the secretary of education to stop that. we have not gotten the assurances that we need that this administration will make sure that these esa plans are consistent with the law and the law's long standing intent to raise achievement for

marginalized students. we've seen some bright signs in plans being returned to states because they are insufficiently complete. it's not just that they are using a sufficient number of words but that the words 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 this law is not just to raise educational quality overall but to address long-standing barriers to success faced by low income students, students of color, students with disabilities and insufficient learners. if that's not what they've described, their plan should not be improved. we are concerned that we will not be able to count on secretary devos to do that job. >> linda, from what you've seen so far by the plans that are out

there, do you feel as though the states are delivering on the promise of ensuring equity? are they being innovative in thinking about accountability differently? what are you seeing? >> well, there is a whole 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 do more modeling of different kinds of approaches. that's not to say there are not some interesting innovations in some of the plans that have been filed, but i think there are more to come in the next batch. there are some places that are really picking up, just to pick up liz's equity theme, which is so important. that are taking up equity in really interesting ways. one of those is taking up the places, the kinds of indicators that typically discriminate

between and among sub-groups and have strong implications for whether kids will graduate and go on. 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 has reduced suspension rates quite a lot. school climate indicators are being looked at. illinois is really taking that seriously, for one. if you look at that carefully. they can create 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 lot of schools are doing college and clear readiness. course taking is a stronger predictor of success in college

and beyond than test scores. getting access, which has typically been unequally allocated to college preparatory curriculum to advanced placement. dual-credit courses to strong career technical education programs that meet a quality standard, those kinds of things. getting to a place where 100% of kids are really 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 about how to ensure that everyone is prepared to go on, and a number of states are looking at those kinds of things. new york is even looking at a diversity indicator which would look at the extent to which within a district students are together in schools and classrooms relative to their proportion in the district by race, by class, by special education and english learner status. so there are a lot of states

that are taking up these questions in very interesting ways and looking for the equity nugget in the law, which we identified in a publication called "equity in esa." there are ways by which you can highlight the school funding differentials across districts, encourage weighted student formulas. they get more money to kids who need them the most. 50 districts are able to engage in pilots. look at assignment practices to encourage integration. all of those things are baked in the law and 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 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 they could be doing better when it comes to

high-achieving students. where do you think there is room for improvement with what you are seeing, and is there a state that you think is being particularly innovative. >> thank you, kcaitlin. if i knew c-span was coming i would have worn my flashy jacket. i look forward to the ewa. you love twitter. i love twitter. you love giving quotes, i love getting quotes. you are my favorite peeps. i hope somebody will ask linda about her son, who is the american ninja warrior superstar, who is a big name in our house. >> competing june 19th in the national -- >> thank you. >> in las vegas, which becomes my vacation.

>> especially when it comes to ratings, a few things i hope you ask when you look at your own state's plan, first is whether or not it does a good job helping parents and taxpayers, regular man and woman on the street, understand if a given school is a good school or not. this law does provide more flexibility. it does not in the end say absolutely you have to provide one final rating. there are a few states, including california, most famously, that are going to provide a ton of data. and that's good. that data is a form of transparency. you all are going to be able to get access to that data and probably do some really cool stories with those data. and those data can be very helpful when schools, teachers, parents, administrators, sit down and try to understand how they can improve what they're doing. but it doesn't provide a clear answer to the public or taxpayers, hey, is this school a

good school or not. the f ratings or five-star ratings are the most clear way to do that. if you have a rating in your state where it's some kind of language and the rating is something like, you know, this school got a sufficient improvement rating. i hope you go after the state for suff like thtuff like that. is it a good thing or a bad thing. that's number one. by the way, if there is not a clear rating, this is something your newspapers could do something about. you could take the data you're getting from the states and build your own rating. in california, hey, california report. if the state of california is not willing to do this, you could construct your own ratings using state data. come out and say, based on all this information are the schools doing a good job or not. the second thing i would look at is whether or not the ratings are differentiating between really good high poverty schools

and really bad high poverty schools. in the no child left behind era we had a problem that every high poverty school was labeled as a failing school because so many indicators were strongly correlated with demographics and prior achievement because we looked at proficiency rates, graduation rates. if you are a high poverty high school and most of the kids come in three grade levels ahead, you're going to have low proficiency rates and the graduation rate may not be great either. if that's all the state is looking at, you're going to get a low rating. when you see the ratings come out, if not a single high poverty school in your state gets a good rating, something has gone very wrong. you can model some of this right now and ask tough questions to the states. if you are a high poverty school, you do a great job, and kids make progress under your care, is it possible to get an a? is it possible to get five

stars? if not, something is wrong with that system. finally, what are the signals states are sending to the schools in terms of who matters. we have heard from liz and rightfully so, that we want to make sure the signal is that all kids matter, that we don't go back to the old days as chris said that you can do well on average and sweep others under the rug. we want to make sure kids across the achievement spectrum matter. not just kids who need to catch up but also kids at the middle and the top. we want to send the message to all schools, it's your job to help everybody in your school make as much progress as possible. we had a big problem under no child left behind that kids at the middle and at the top were not a priority. because the standards were so low and all of the incentives were about getting kids to that proficient level. as a result schools learned, kids who are going to pass the test in september -- they were

ready by the fall to pass the spring test -- you could ignore them and you would still do fine. and schools that were especially at risk of hitting these interventions had a particularly strong incentive. that meant, in high poverty schools, low income high achievers were not a priority. we see that in the data. there has not been as much progress for those kids as there should be. now states have a chance by moving especially to growth models, by looking at progress over time. by looking at progress for all kids they can send a message that the schools. everybody matters. ask those questions. what signals are they sending. who matters? do all kids matter? are they prioritizing some over others? who are the winners and losers in that system. we know that schools do tend to pay attention to those signals, we should take them seriously. we like colorado's plan, at least on the ratings, quite a

lot. they've gone out of their way to make sure the way they measure academic achievement sends the message that everybody matters. they look at average scale scores. that's a way the school has to improve for everybody to get those scale scores up. they also do a lot at looking at growth over time. so we think that's a promising start. d.c.'s is pretty good. massachusetts is pretty interesting. a little complicated. but many of the others, unfortunately, have not moved very far past no child left behind. they are still looking at proficiency ratings at high school, still put a lot of weight on graduation. i think there's a very good chance in those states you're going to have a situation where basically, if you serve a lot of poor kids you're going to get a low grade and if you serve a lot of rich kids you're going to get a high grade. that is not a good accountability system. >> i know that chris and linda would like to share their thoughts on that. >> thoughts about my jacket. i'm ready for it. >> this is kind of like your super bowl i think.

you just love this panel. but i mean i think my -- i think mike brings up some good points. one point i would push on a bit is thinking about the overall rating. so california's dashboard has gotten much, much better since it first came out. it's starting to get to a place where i could look at a one pager on a school and understand what their school performance looks like. so i don't think you have to have a single indicator to be clear with your public. i think you can do that through a variety of ways. i think the bar is correct that parents should be able to look at the report and understand how their school is doing. i don't know that it's the only way to do that. the 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, suspension data. i think is something we should be monitoring and something we should be looking at across the

country, it's clear that we have a challenge there. but, if we start putting that in to school performance, the reaction from schools could be to simply just not suspend kids and find other ways to deal with that. and i -- what i think we learned under no child left behind i was going to state in oregon right after no child left behind, and we had tests before no child left behind in oregon, they didn't have the kind of stakes they had after no child left behind so the behaviors in our schools changed about assessment after no child left behind. i'm worried we could have a similar challenge here if we aren't -- if we aren't careful about how we weight these indicators. i think that's something for you guys to be watching. >> 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 really how you give credit to schools for what they contribute to student learning, not just what the kid came in with.

new york actually has measures of both growth and progress for each of their indicators, or at least growth for the academic achievement ones and progress on all the others and i think a lot of states are trying to figure out how to do that and that's really important. also very important and i agree with that states should move away with proficient which only tells you how many kids met a score and look across the whole continuum. i think the use of the sort of single score, "a" through "f" or single number, can mask what's going on on individual indicators unless you're also very clear about having a dashboard. and if you think about it, in many states, moving, california has seven indicators altogether on its dashboard. kind of like getting your kid's report card. you want to know how they're doing in math. you want to know how they're doing in english, you want to know about social studies and science and maybe citizenship, et cetera, it's less of a need, i felt as a parent to have my kid rated on a single summit of scores, a first grader than for

me to know in which areas are they doing well and which areas are they doing poorly. what we found in studying the data is that very few schools do badly on all the indicators. most of them are low on one or two and so if you really want to address improvement, you've got to know where schools are doing well and where they're doing poorly. and then you've got to design the intervention to address those areas. you know, we can imagine states putting together, you know, math professional development for schools that are struggling in math, and actually working with them very intensely to move the needle on that rather than just saying you're in the bottom 5% or you got an "f" and then we have some generic idea of what we're going to do with or to you. so whether you have a score or not, the dashboard itself is really important. those measures that tell you which schools are struggling to move english learners forward. and what are we going to do to build a system in our state to

ensure that those schools and the teachers and principals in those schools know what to do to improve that situation? so i think that the dashboard piece of it is actually what can drive the school improvement system. in a much more productive direction. >> did you want to jump in on this? >> yeah, i think from our perspective, the central question here is whether all kids matter in the system or not. and i think that's 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 its low-income children well or a newly diverse school that's not meeting the needs of english learners or african-american students. that would be a politically hard thing to do. it is not hard to hold accountable a high profile school. those schools are in the

situation they're in because they have so little political power. when you design a system only about holding accountable the schools with the least amount of power you're undermining the ability to create behavior change. chris talked about behaviors changing when you measure and report things and that's absolutely true. they can change for the worse but goodness knows we hope they change for the better. the system we have right now is not working. it is not serving all of the children it needs to serve. 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 actions 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're 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're trying to go and then you come up with a system that

indicates where are we doing really well on that path and where are we falling short not just overall but for every group of children. and this is the thing we're seeing, these state plans are just not following the law in that regard. they are avoiding the politically hard challenge. they are focusing only on overall achievement and they are not holding schools accountable for disaggregated achievement and that's just unacceptable. we can't have that system. >> mike? >> you know, with all due respect, what i worry about is that some of the groups have not learned some of these lessons from no child left behind, which is first of all, i understand that your concern is that there are going to be schools that should be rated poorly, that get away with a high rating. and i get that. we should also be worried, though, about a system that labels every school as failing which is what we had by the end of the no child left behind process. and what we could have is we're not careful about how we design these systems again. if you have every school is rated as failing because, for example you take literally the

school of every kid college career ready and say people that ain't going to happen. not going to happen in my lifetime. we're at 30%, maybe 35% of kids right now college and career ready. we're not getting to 100% unless we start lying about what it means to be college and career ready. should we be aiming to boost those numbers? absolutely. but if you literally build a system that says you're a failing school unless you get 100% of kids college and career ready every school is going to be a failure. and what you're going to have is what we had back in the 2009, 2010 are every school is a failing school and so no school is failing. there was no accountability because nobody took the rating seriously. you've got to be able to differentiate between these schools that are making progress, aren't making progress. my own view is that 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.

if we design these systems right i think we're going to be able to address that issue. let's make sure we don't go back to the day where we say every school in america is failing because we set these utopian goals in washington and schools are not meeting them. >> when we're talking about utopian goals we're talking about the goals that every parent has for their own child right? every kid puts their baby on the bus so that they go to school and learn what they need to learn to be proficient and to graduate high school on time and to be ready for college career and life. so that is the im -- the priority and the belief of every parent and i believe every educator goes to work every day with the intention that they are going to serve all of their children. we no longer have a binary system. this is not you pass, fail, it is much more nuanced, and frankly a lot more complicated, but it is a much more nuanced system. we are unwilling to accept, we think it is infallible to argue view that achievement gaps are inevitable or natural or preordained. this is a system we have

created. we have created an inequitable system through policies and practices over the past several hundred years 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 and it didn't start with the civil rights movement. right? this work is much older than all of that. in the language that we use, this is an america as good as its ideals. we all believe in an education system which supports the success of all children. and that's the system we need to be working towards. so i think it is wrong to argue that our options are only to ignore historical differences, to sweep under the rug inequitable opportunities, and to look only at overall achievement -- >> but liz that's not what i argued. what i'm saying is watch out for the utopian goals. here in washington, d.c., look at kip. we have a fantastic network of kip schools because of universal preschool here they start at age 3. they have kids from age 3, they work with them until they go to college age 18. they spend a bazillion dollars a

year, thanks to d.c.'s funding and also private fund-raising, they do an amazing job. and they're getting great results. but we're still talking about, you know, i think at the last data was somewhere like 50% of their kids graduating college. that's five times better than the national average. that's amazing. that's the best case scenario right now, i would argue, and we're at 50%. so i'm just saying that 100%, yes, aspirationally, rhetorically, that's great to aim for that. but we cannot base that into accountability systems because i promise you that will result in virtually every school in the country failing and if that happens there is no accountability. there's no differentiation. >> let me make sure that we get -- >> the equity opportunity gap real quickly and just point out that in this law, in contrast to nclb where you would rank schools and label them and create a whole set of sanctions that could occur, there was no requirement to invest in those schools. there was a period of time when

there were school improvement grants but a lot of schools were, you know, just basically underresourced because we inequitably fund schools in this country. most states have a two or three to one ratio between their high and low funded schools. in essa, they still have the obligation when they identify a school as requiring intervention, to do a resource audit. to really look at the ways in which the sources may be inequitable or inadequate to do the work in that school. i think that's part of what has to be leveraged as we look forward. some of this is about measuring. but we can't just keep weighing over and over again. a lot of it is about making the investments that allows us to get the opportunities that they would need. the 100% of college and career ready that i was talking about, i don't know what your 30% is, maybe it's shares of people who end up with a college education, which is about 38% or 40%. but or maybe it's the percent who are proficient on -- >> from a.c.t., from s.a.t.,

we're about a third of graduating seniors. >> are hitting -- well are hitting a good score on a test. >> and right now right it's about the same as kids -- >> what i was talking about is ensuring that kids have the curriculum opportunities, and california was something that measures college preparedness, if you get a certain set of courses and 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 in to a reasonable career, or a reasonable working situation, or they're ready to go on to college and i think that is a reasonable goal, a lot of countries do it. i think we could do that. and i think states that are working towards that are going to substantially improve the opportunities they could have. so we have a lot of kids coming out, probably a third or more, who are kind of just unready for

anything. and then that is the school pipeline that creates a lot of the social dysfunction. >> okay i'm going to give chris the final word on this one because i want to make sure that we have plenty of time for questions from these guys. i want to make sure we have at least 20 minutes. so, chris? >> i'll be very quick. at first i just want to thank you for trying to moderate. sorry. and i want to just, my admiration for these three people is quite high. could you imagine being a state commissioner and having these as our stake holders? i mean, i've heard these arguments in state town halls when i've been visiting states that they've been trying to put their plans together. so mike came and spoke to our chief at our meeting in march, and you know, advocated for growth. and then we had somebody else advocate to use proficiency more heavily. so state commissioners have this

process they have to go through of trying to write a plan that satisfies all three of these folks and their stakeholders in the state. so they're not going to be able to do that. and i think -- i think a big thing we are pushing for is to not replicate the things that we have done that haven't worked. when i talk to commissioners i'm talking about holding on to making sure we don't lose kids in this process. that there are clear bench marks and clear goals for all groups of kids in your accountability system. at the same time that we set goals for those kids that are reasonable. they may be interim goals. we may have a goal of 2030 or 2040 of 100% proficiency but we can set benchmarks we know we're on the way to that. i think it's really dangerous to say, because which kids can't make proficiency? i do worry about that part of the signal. we only have to have 30% or 40% of our kids. you know which kids will be left out of that conversation. so i just think these are really

hard questions. i think they did a great job of describing differences there. i think mike is probably tweeting right now. >> why not? i have a problem. >> so have a -- but this panel shows you what your state is dealing with as a microcosm and the feedback. and they're going to get reviews of their plans and people criticizing their plans so it's important to understand states aren't off doing this randomly. they're actually engaged with people in the state having conversations. so i think that part can't be oversold and can't be talked about. some states need a push to do more. so i encourage you to think about that. >> okay. let's try and squeeze in as many questions as we can. who wants to start us off? [ inaudible question ] >> there is a microphone on either side of the room. so please use those and just identify your name, and where where you are from.

>> nick garcia from colorado. the question for mike and liz, what sort of questions do you think reporters should be asking states regarding their targeted intervention for particular subgroups? instead of schools as a whole? >> yeah so the first question that i'm at on one of the problems we have is the continued use of super sub groups which ignores the meaningful differences between african-american, latino, native american, asian american students, white students, low income students, students with disabilities and english learners so the first question is how do you plan to apply an intervention when your identification system, your accountability system does not meaningfully disaggregate among diverse students. that's the first question. is that what you need is the information about who is not being effectively served and then to linda's point earlier,

on what, right? a general knowledge that the tool is not working for that group of kids is not helpful. is it reading achievement? is it math achievement? is it a graduation rate issue? and so i think having those pieces of information, who is not getting the support 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 in the decision about what to do? because if you're talking about a school that is not effectively serving it's african-american students i bet you african-american parents in that community have a good understanding of part of the challenge. whether it is something like, you know, barriers to access in higher level courses, whether it is something like implicit bias, whether it is disciplined disparity 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 then looking at other schools that have done a great job. right? for all of the challenges we have in our system there are schools that really are excelling at serving all students and really learning from that and figuring out what it is that they did and how did

that work and how do you apply those lessons in other places. that's where i would start. >> yeah, and i would just say let's start with some humility. we don't know. we don't know what to do with low performing schools and we don't necessarily know what to do with schools that have low performing subgroups. that's one good lesson from last 10 or 15 years of this is that we really suck at turning around low performing schools, and we're not great at intervening in these others. i think in colorado, where if you got a low performing subgroup that means they are not making a lot of progress, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, then you've got to get under the hood and look at the teaching and learning. you know you've got to try to understand what is happening. are the teachers that are teaching those groups of kids not strong enough? are they using a curriculum that's not strong enough? are they, you know, what -- you know, is there issues with low expectations? this is difficult work. this gets into the very heart of the educational enterprise.

so probably need to build some capacity with people who have these kinds of skills to go into a school and get under there and figure out what's happening. i'll tell you this, we don't know how to do this in washington. don't look to d.c. for answers on this one. >> do we have any other questions? yes. i'm wondering with growth models -- my name is sarah from wbz but one of the issues that i have is it's very hard for me as a reporter to look under the hood of growth models and see like, what is their formula for determining growth. and especially as we change data accountability tests. it kind of seems like a mess and i'm very suspicious because i can't understand what they're looking at. so, even though like you might look at two scores, two like average scale scores, they could be exactly the same, but yet have different growth percentages.

and i know that it's because it's individual students, but it's a mess. >> yes. >> i agree with you. i think we should be pushing toward simpler models that people can understand. i think states have a responsibility to have the public and reporters be able to replicate their calculation. and i don't think i think we should be able to give reporters access to the data set in a way that you could check that. so i understand growth modeling is very complicated. but i think we can do better at sort of understanding if similar kids, with similar demographics, should have similar growth targets. so, that's -- i think it's something that we kind of we get into the research side, and we sometimes lose the ability to explain what we're doing and therefore we lose parents. and the general public. so i think we could be better on that front. and linda has a lot of

experience. >> i'm going to let them go to the next question. >> yes? >> we talk a little bit about those interim bench marks and setting interim benchmarks, so i know certain subgroups have lower starting points, right? and we get this oh, well we're just being realistic. how do y'all feel about that? having, you know, black kids, kids with disabilities, ells, and everybody's got this starting benchmark. what are your thoughts? >> you know, mike made the point earlier that it's important to set, you know, achievable targets. with efforts. 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 is going to be very important that they consider such things 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 school models to be put in place. we're releasing a report on monday looking at 125 studies of community school models, many of which have very strong achievement gains because they give the wrap-around services plus before and after study time and support systems. there are a variety of ways that states and schools can approach the improvement question, including strong curriculum in reading and math and professional development for

teachers well designed. another place where they will need access to the research and what works and what doesn't in that regard. but those are going to be the most important questions once the targets get set. there is a lot of measurement angst right now, but the next angst really has to be about the investments and the improvements. >> if you want to find schools that are making that break-through process for disadvantaged groups and a lot of states at least the one with the high-quality charter group that what you see is a lot of charter schools. and this can be a big start of a state plan. it is our view that the set aside money that you could use that to start up high quality charter schools in neighborhoods where you've got lots of kids in low performing schools. hope to see states doing innovative things with that as well. we know on average performance, depending ton study. but what you tend to see in

really huge quality places, it is overwhelmingly in the charter sector. >> our state has submitted our plan, but our legislature is in the process right now of recrafting our system. i'm just curious. what happens if there is sort of a dueling accountability system? you have one system on a 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 things that the reboot is allowing people to do, is to try to figure out how -- what they want to do and think is viable as a state can also meet the expectations for the federal law. so i think this is going to be less common. >> i think the word linda was

looking for was shit-show, but that's just my opinion. that's nuts, right? i'm sorry. they don't need two accountability systems. at some point these things should converge, right? >> from our perspective, part of this is the state plan other than something than a policy compliance exercise. from our view, it should be the state coming together and deciding what it's going to do to meet the needs of all children in that state. we're seeing some 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 equipment by a state to educate all the children in that state and that necessarily involves an integrated system of holding schools accountable, providing support. i think to the question about differentiated interim targets -- talk about a wonky sentence -- the question you need to be asking, we're saying in year one or two year we're

expected lower achievement for students with disabilities, but you're telling me is the long-term plan is everybody getting to the same goal. that's great. but we are going to have to move faster with kids along the way. what are the support you are providing? we are going to say as a state we have not been serving children with disabilities for way too long. talk about integrating. states also have plans how they are going to better service children with disabilities. are they integrating all of their state processes? if you have a state that's making really important state-driven progress on closing discipline gaps and ending excle exclusion, how are they achieving that? our hope really is this is an opportunity for states to come together and really make a new commitment to educating all the children in their state. >> where they have that

happening i would 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 were schools run by districts 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 in networks where they learn from each other, from those that are succeeding to help teach those that are doing less well is really part of the strategy here. it is 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. >> i just think -- well, first, my communications people are hoping i don't cuss up here, i think. 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 schools successful. so to be fair, if i was sit anything 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 the state 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 process. they're working very hard to have the same accountability system for both sectors. that's a huge step in the right direction. states should drive towards a single plan. >> let's see if we could get two more questions in over here and then over here. >> from lancing, michigan. when states are putting these plans together, how should

they -- how can they ensure that the impact of poverty -- 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 is you think about your metrics. i think it is 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 those metrics. 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 -- 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 is 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. yeah, no, the other piece of that, right, is it's not just about the metrics. you could also then remove the various opportunity that exists for children in poverty, right? you could provide greater funding for schools with greater challenges. you can provide the strongest teachers to students who need the strongest teachers. you could equalize course access so all children have meaningful access. that is really where we want to see this go. i think it is really dangerous if we play with the metrics but don't play with the opportunity that matters at the child level. the child doesn't give two -- we're not cursing anywhere, right? the child does not care about the metrics. the child cares about their experience in school. i think these are the real core questions. and this is to the point of, you know, not -- learning from the lessons of the 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. >> i was going to go in that direction and take it a step further. if you look at massachusetts, what they did in the early 1990s was first they put in a place was funding for schools so that schools serving poor kids got more money. one of the first states to do that. they then put in place useful standards and assessments. they put in place preschool education, health care for students. they have a system of wrap-around services state-wide that's been evaluated. they look at all of these components that provide opportunity and they 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 or are eligible for free and reduced priced lunch. if you compare us, somebody asked a question on the earlier panel how we compare to other countries on things like piza, one of the things that differentiates us 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 to

reduce poverty, in addition to doing everything we can in schools to address the affects on this. >> building back on that. again, mass deportation, mass incarceration, taking away children's health care, taking away access of family nutrition support, all of those are bad are student achievement. if we only care about student achievement, all of those are bad. that's also not a society any of us want to live in, but that's the proposal on the table. >> the war on poverty and the set of programs a part of the great society in the '60s and the '60s actually reduced the reading achievement gap by two-thirds by the early 1980s. had we stayed on course with those programs, we would have probably had no black/white achievement gap by 2000. but almost everything was undone, so we have never recouped the strategies we put in place that were successful. >> okay.

we have time for one more quick question. >> hi. i'm just curious. in connecticut, the overwhelming majority in our high schools or elementary middle schools are graded on test scores. there has been the explanation that in high schools it is easy to see how many people are going to college. there is a lot more measurement in high school, access to a.p. courses. do you have recommendations in almost tear middle school of alternative measures that aren't based on test scores as well as financial? there is a lot of things that go on, input into schools. have you noticed in 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 the outputs. >> you probably know that connecticut has access to the arts and 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 because the curriculum got son narrowed. some is states are looking for school climate as another part of what could be looked at at the elementary level. so folks are reaching for ways to describe students' experience. >> 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 reliability and state-wide and can be disaggregated by these subgroups and one lesson is that even though everybody loves to hate tests, there is a reason that we use them. and it is that they are valid and reliability measures. they are not perfect but better than the other things we've got. it is 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 means is let's stop providing information to the public that's transparent about school performance. so, you know, because that is at least the current state of measurement today. >> the key for us beyond that, i think, there is a demand in the u.s. for the data that comes from tests is that we improve the quality of the assessments that we give. we are alone in the world in relying heavily on multiple choice tests and 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 as well as problem solutions of various kinds in math as well as investigations in fields like science and those are scored, just like a.p. tests or i.b. tests by teachers in ways that are reliable and valid, but they are much more conducive to a

cricket lum in which kids are taking up the inquiry skills, the investigation skills, the communication skills that we really need in the 21st century. and i would refer you to look at what goes on in singapore, in australia, in the u.k. and in a number of other country if you want to see what thoughtful assessment that really supports a rich curriculum looks like. >> the other thing connecticut is doing they combine low-income students, students with disabilities and english learners. i don't know if their assumption is that all children of color are low income or students with disabilities, but they're not. so the math is wrong on that. and there is also a difference between being an english learner, a student with disability and low income. each one of those groups of students has a different experience, even while they have an experience shared among themselves. that's the other thing to

remember. not only what is being measured but for whom and whether schools are being held accountable. >> i feel a need to stand up for connecticut, so i will. i don't think that's quite true because i do have a super subgroup. but they are also -- that's part of their accountability system, disaggregating. so we could 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 could have out later. >> okay. >> will there be testing? >> i think this is a great example of what -- when you get into the details of this, there are things that really matter. and liz is very passionate about making sure that -- that we tend to every kid, and i am as well. i worry that we're relitigating some of the things that were decided in the law. so 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. >> and some of them are not complying with the text of the law. would have been great to have a regulation to clear the law. >> 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 ]

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public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. housing and urban development secretary ben carson spoke last month and challenges facing first-time home buyers and the need to assist them with the help of investors and lenders. the national housing conference hosted this event. >> we're excited to have folks watching live by c-span and through the web cast. it is my pleasure to introduce dr. ben carson, the 17th secretary of commerce in housing and urban development. his bio is in your program book. many notable accomplishs,