individual students but to families and communities and math and reading test scores, high school completion rates, college enrollment, and in addition, there is a wide variety across state in educational outcomes. but the integrity of some measurements of the achievement gaps is questionable, they show they are bearing in our public school system. according to the national sussman of educational progress symptomatic and reading, they consistently score average of 25 points lower than caucasian students at ages nine, 13, and 17. high school completion rates also demonstrate the existence of achievement gaps, not only among racial minorities, but also by gender bird almost one-

third of our high school students in the united states failed to graduate with their peers. about 1.2 million every year. nationwide, about 70% of girls and all it -- but only 65% of boys. a gender gap that is far more pronounced in racial and ethnic minorities. an average of only 59% of america -- african american girls earned a high-school diploma. among hispanics, the graduation rate has been around 58% for girls and 49% for boys in recent years. . 56% for girls and 49% for boys. the impact of this phenomenon on our community is nothing short of catastrophic. as it perpetuates the size of poverty that we all fight so hard to try to end. high school dropouts are almost twice as likely as their counterparts with high school diplomas to be unemployed and unemployment is a chronic

problem as well. high school dropouts to find employment they are much more employment they are much more likely to work at on jobs that offer little opportunity for a port mobility, promotion or stability. the median earnings of high school dropouts remains between $20,000 and $30,000 throughout their lives with little increase as they get older. we talk about the challenges of one generation providing for another generation because we are locked into this income gap. the fact that dropouts are concentrated in african-american communities means that this price is amplified in our communities. three quarters of prison inmates are dropouts as are 60% of federal inmates. of all african-american dropouts in the early 3052% have been in prison at some point in their lives. for the more statistics show that high school dropouts are more likely to be on public assistance programs such as welfare and students to complete high school diplomas. research shows that each struck

out over his lifetime costs the nation about $260,000. other indicators of the achievement keep is the college in rome. while the percentage of american college students who are minorities has been increasing we are still woefully underrepresented. while 33% of all african americans aged 18 to 24 enrolled in college in 2007 that number can be compared to 43% of caucasian americans. the bottom line is that an achievement gap exists and we can and must do much better for our children and for our society. as such for starters the naacp supports several legislative initiative aimed at closing the gap. these include h.r. 1569 s 618 the every student counts act which will bring meaningful accountability to america's high schools by requiring a consistent and accurate calculation of graduation rates across all 50 states to ensure

compatibility and transparency. under the every student counteract graduation rates and test scores are treated equally. more over the every student counts act which require high schools to have an aggressive attainable and uniform annual growth requirement. this will insure consistent increases in graduation rates for all students by meeting him annual research based benchmarks with long-term goals of reaching a 90% graduation rate. this would also require the segregation of graduation data by some groups to make certain that schools are held accountable for increasing graduation rate of all students and require the student activities focus on closing the achievement gap. h.r. 2451 is a helpful in addressing this concern. the students bill of rights would require it to provide equitable education opportunities for students in state and public schools specifically this legislation would hold states accountable for providing students with

access to fundamental educational opportunity. finally, i want to make sure that every child has an opportunity to fully participate. we recognize disparity in our schools and the challenges are far beyond what we can do politically and what we can do public policy wise. there are some fences that have to be based on our ability to capture and move forward on changes in behavior that are helpful to promulgate these changes. one of the issues the naacp works are on is to try to make the issue of addressing families and students concerns are around investment and getting the greatest equal to that of athletic. we have the axle program that moves in that direction. if we can get more parents to come out and be more helpful in a broad approach to these problems and bring an interest an emphasis on the issues of success in the classroom as we do on the basketball court or football field. we are convinced that with these

resources, a new attitude and new approach we can make changes needed in our society. and closing the achievement gap. thank you very much. >> thank you. jeffrey robinson? >> thank you congressman scott. there is an achievement gap. everybody here knows it. you have heard the statistics. i will throw a couple more at you. 48% of african-american students and only 17% of white students scored below basic on the national assessment progress. the test gap worsened as children grow older. whenever our preparation failures are, the longer our children are in school be further behind they get. that is a school problem. this achievement gap is defined it nearly as test scores and other things. it is really only a part of the fundamental failure of our schools to educate our children.

they don't achieve. they don't graduate. only 55% of african-american students graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma compared to 78% of white students. our students are nearly three times likely to be suspended, 3.5 times likely to be expelled and this racial disparity puts them on a pipeline straight to prison. our schools are not educating our children and we all know if we don't educate our children the can't survive in this world. today i am going to focus on just a small part of this fundamental failure. i am going to talk a lot today about the failure of our schools to educate minority students who are in interior, racially isolated, high poverty schools. there are way too many of our children who are in those schools and we have not done the things necessary to educate

them. 50 plus years after brown -- and we have talked a lot about brown today -- but 50 plus years after it, our public schools are more racially segregated than at any time in the past numb for decades. nearly 40% of african american students attend schools where 90% or more of the student body is non-white. then candidate, now president obama, got it right when he said segregated schools were and are inferior schools. let's be clear. schools are not inferior because they are majority and minority. we can all point to excellent examples of schools where there are a majority african-american, a majority latino, but where they fulfill their mission to educate our children. unfortunately, while schools are not inferior because african american students are there too many african-american students are in inferior schools. that is the problem we have to

address. it's not black children being the bad schools. it's that we keep putting black children into bad schools. if we are not cognizant of that, if we don't admit it and knowledge it and make our public policy solutions address that specific point, we will never succeed. now, why are the schools inferior schools? well, they are overwhelmingly high poverty schools. war than 60% of african-american students attend schools where a majority of students are low income. only 18% of white students attend such schools. they are more likely to be housed in high poverty neighborhoods with high crime rate, limited access to community resources and learning and development. it's also very difficult for predominantly minority, high poverty schools to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. we have all heard high-quality

be effective teachers are the key to a good education. but high minority, high poverty schools can't get and keep effective teachers. public schools in california with over 90% minority enrollment are six times as likely as majority white schools to have high teacher turnover. nationwide, in high schools for at least 75% of the students are low-income, there are three times as many uncertified and out of field english and science teachers. three times as many teachers who don't have the certification for the training to be teaching those critical subjects that they are being asked to teach. the data suggest that this doesn't just isn't a problem in the schools but there's a racial bias element that we have to end knowledge. it is much more difficult for schools even when you account for income

factors, it's much more difficult for high minority schools to keep and retain quality teachers. there's a study that suggests it require a 25% to 33% salary boost to get the same effective teachers in the minority -- high minority schools as are in other schools. there's an element there we have to acknowledge that is not just about the faculty of the poor schools, but there is race playing a role and we have to be aware of that. we have to deal with it. most of the majority of schools don't have the advance placement and other classes that are necessary. critically, they often lack a connection to the community that enables them to get the kind of resources they need to address these. it's other people's kids --

schools and so our larger communities don't care about them. and we have to address that and we have to be aware of that. my time is coming to an end. there is much too much i can say about what the problems are and where these gaps are. i want to talk just a little bit on the next panel and talk about some of the things that we need to do. we heard early bert supreme court and parents involved in other cases making it more difficult to deal with the racial isolation. but there is still remedies out there. there are things that can be done. and there are five of the supreme court justices at the time recognize that addressing the association with racial isolation is a compelling interest. there is still room to go there. federal educational policy, there are things we can be doing. congress should are more aggressive in targeting funding to improve the inferior racially

isolated high poverty schools. federal legislation should also provide resources to encourage integrated schools. charter schools which have much to offer but they can also contribute to racial and economic segregation and, therefore, it's crucial that the growing charter school movement not be exempt from obligations to provide racial and economic integration. i join with many of the other colleagues that i think most of the lawyers who have been here to say addressing the lack of a private right of action in schools is a critical factor. the government can be pushed to do lots of things. we hopefully have a government that will be pushed to do lots of things today. but it can't do everything. and without the power as we have seen in employment and other places where there are private rights of action, that private right, parents who care about their children being able to go out and address the disparities

are critical. finally, we have to recognize that schools are parts of communities. we have to deal with the issues in our communities, housing, employment, criminal justice system, a range of issues. but we can't let the fact that we have to deal with those issues keep us from dealing with schools because they're on the table now. that's where our children are. and we have a moral obligation to do something about it. thank you, congressman. >> thank you. >> david goldberg? >> the leadership conference has a wide array of champions and you are clearly one of them i will give you the statistics i can give you.

rather than kind of abuse you with more of them, i will limit myself to systemic issues and put it in the context of health care reform, since that is what everyone is paying attention to right now. just a couple of statistics, if you look at health care, for example, prenatal health care, african-american and latino women are twice as likely to go without prenatal care or only to get it very late. that gets much worse when you add in poverty. it gets worse in cities during washington d.c., for example, the disparity is about 3.5%. -- excuse me, three and a half times. you get a similar, a leased directly to low birthweight babies, and obviously, all of the research shows the lack of access to health care going back to prenatal care means worst child would help and if you have

worst child health you will not be in school and not do as well in school and that leads to this is this? that hillary and jeff were just giving you. -- leads to the statistics that hillary and jeff were just -- and just giving you. if you are not graduating and not going to get a good job with good health care benefits, the cycle is going to begin again. when you take that to hold community, you get the kind of entrenched party that jeff was just talking about. -- poverty that jeff was just talking about. that is not an excuse for failing schools. cycles can be broken. and we see it in every community and every city that has a failing system of schools, you see some exceptional schools where students really are excelling. so the question is what can the federal government do? what can it do in health care? what can it do in all areas? so if the health care system is failing and it's failing children, then there ought to be health care in schools and health clinics in schools.

and when we see things like vision screening in schools, you know, it's been done in massachusetts, and you find that low-income kids, minority kids are less likely to have vision care. they can't see. if you can't read the blackboard, you can't perform in school. you can't learn. we see children growing up hungary. we n hungry. we need nutritious food that isn't loaded with sugar and empty calories which, again, research shows, you know, if kids are having, you know if, kids have bad nutrition, you know and the sugar levels go up and down, they don't perform in schools. and it's absolutely clear research has shown this. children do not have the social and academic supports that exist in more affluent communities. we need out of school time programs. we need after school and summer programs. and, again, will tl are examples

everywhere of where it's working you know here in d.c. we have the higher achievement program which has just exceptional track record of getting middle school kids through not just through middle school but getting them through high school and into college. essentially 100% of them when they get rigorous after school and summer programs that eliminate sort of the regression that happens during the summer. you get -- you get performance that goes through to college graduation. no child left behind is a crucial starting point. we need to desegregate the data people are talking about. we need it in every civil rights area. it's the only way. it didn't solve the problems. we need the sea next time to do more to provide more solutions to provide not just more financial solutions that we just heard about but human capital that will work as well.

so why do we need the federal government to lead this process? because we can't trust anybody else to do it. just like we couldn't on every other civil rights issue where we need the federal government to step in not just with brown on education but wrefr else. voting rights act which we just reauthorized. so, you know, the federal government can handle these problems to some extent. 2000 drop out ve got -- we've factories as they were called. you know, we've identified the feeder schools. you can see, you know, there are markers as early as sixth grade if kids fail a math class. if they fail an english class if, they're not attending school, they're not going to graduate from high school. the rate spikes. you get as low as 20% graduation rates for minority kids who have failed a math and english class. so i'll conclude by going back to systemic issues.

you know, the federal government can push states to equalize financial resources, to equalize human capital. they're supposed to do it under the law now. they're not doing it. there are way that's some of those loopholes can be changed. federal government can do it and, again, has to do it because nobody else will. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. my pleasure to be here today. with organizations and leaders that really been pioneers in the civil rights movement, you all have led with grit and real grace. i know we've seen challenging times in the past. but i think now we are in an opportunity like we've had never before where we have the tools at our disposal.

we have the civic and public will clearly we have the problems articulated. it is hugely important, congressman scott, that you're conducting these meetings. i thank you for being here, congresswoman christianson. we look forward to working together. so you've heard a lot about the data today. we talked about the size of the achievement gap when it comes to performance on reading and math. it exists throughout every level of the system. we've talked a lot about the graduation rate gaps. we talked a little bit about discipline policies. taken together, the problem is stark. but what gives rise to the achievement gap is not the socioeconomic status of someone's parents and it's not their color of their skin. it's the opportunity gaps that in our public education system we provide students that need

the most with less of everything that research says makes a difference. this department of education is committed to doing something serious about that. as we think about brown and its legacy certainly is here in this room, the pervasive patterns of inequality of opportunity were really at the heart of the original violation in brown. certainly it was separate. but it was unequal. and we now have some unprecedent tools to do something about it. that's not to say, john, that we're not touching segregation. right? i get it. you do, too. but there are tools that we have at our disposal now like the old desegregation orders that we have resurged. we believe that in those communities that are still with undischarged obligations of

desegregation agreement if, those students have the force of law behind them and that they are entitled to as much as they were if it was a court ordered mandate. there was a white flight charter school set to open in a district that was about 45% white. the district had about 35% african-american students. the school had few of them. under the auspices of this old desegregation order written in 1971, the office for civil rights was able to go in, work with local officials and charter school community organizers and establish a resolution agreement that may it be a desegregated school. in the last two months alone, we

have seen some amazing things happening in that area that the president referred to as the corridor of shame during the campaign. my friend david just shoved me a note that says jeff. i know your name is jeff. i'm sorry. i'm a little distracted there, david. i appreciate it. so we have some tools. we have the 441-bs. we're moving them. we're looking at race guidance. we are reviewing picks and rudder and grass. i, too, can count to five. i see big hope in kennedy's opinion. but it is not the law of the land anymore that can you use race as a sole factor when determining student and faculty assignments. you can use race with much more authority under the auspices of those 441-bs. we talked a lot today about private right of action.

and you all have heard some really compelling stories about the need for private right of action, what happened in light of gone zag zzaga versus doe. the federal angencies enforcement over the regulations became the sole responsibility for -- to the federal agency, right? so the only way the zpard impact under title six can be tested, proved, measured is through the federal government now. what happens in the future? we don't know. but i'm here to tell that you this administration and we in the office for civil rights take this responsibility as a sacred trust. i'm sorry, congressman. that we are looking into all of the things that we know matter most, those things that are constitute benefits and services under title six.

where even seemingly neutral policies and practices combine together to create a discriminatory impact. we will study. we will expeditiously resolve complaints. we will launch appropriate compliance reviews. we will use our technical assistance function. we will use our outreach function so that recipients know their responsibilities so that parents know their rights. and so that everyone knows their obligations. we recently received a complaint that looked at all of these factors, everything from zpard d dp dispaired policies to ineffective teaching. the kind of theories and analysis that we are incorporate in studying those complaints feels novel to lots of folks. but i can't tell you enough the kind of sense of urgency that we feel that, this administration feels, the responsibility that

we know we have to have to use the civil rights laws to vigorously enforce and protect students from discrimination whether intentional or otherwise. this is about data collection. congressman scott has been very helpful in the civil rights data collection where we're now getting data about the discipline. we're getting data about referrals to law enforcement. we're getting data about teachers. we're getting data about access to college preparatory curriculum. we need to understand what happens to students as they journey from prekinder gart tone college and beyond and the civil rights data collection is a very important place to start. it's also about an unprecedented amount of money by this president and this bipartisan congress. i'm sure you've heard about the race to the top fund, $5 billion, $4.35 billion. senator round hugely important areas of human reform, capital,

data systems, struggling schools, those schools in the bottom of the country and moving towards real career and college ready standards and assessments. it's also about $210 million that we're proposing for what we call promise neighborhoods. those communities if we can have 20 of them around the country that build off the great work from the harlem children's zone so that we can use wraparound services, get at the health issues, use schools as the center of community as we work to reform what happens to students as they journey again from birth all the way through career. it's no longer history onics to say that at chiefment gap the a a health issue. there is data that shows that college graduates will live five years longer than their noncollege graduate piers.

that children of families without a high school education are in far worse health than children from families in the middle class. we know this is economic and economic imperative in this global and interconnected global marketplace. we're talking about the new mckenzie report that shows anywhere from 312 to over $515 billion we would have more in gdp if we were to close the achievement gap. this is a demographic imperative by 2023, over half of young people in this country will be minority. and certainly for everyone in this room, i know, it's a moral -- we are using all the tools to push this agenda. the truth is, we cannot do it alone at the department of education. we need the congress. more than that we need a social

movement. i sit on his perch at a time when both the president and the secretary of education has said that this is the most important civil-rights issue of our time. and yet, we look around and it does not look like one. i hope together we can continue to make movement, push for the social change that this country has always risen to the challenge to meet, and continue to work with the pioneers to take it to the next level. >> thank you very much. and our final panelist for this panel is marion wright edelman. you do not need much of an introduction. she is the founder and president of the children's defense fund. which is the nation's strongest voice for children and families over the years. marion, thank you for honoring us with your presence.

>> thank you, mr. chairman, for having us and thank you for your leadership. you are the only person in the world who got me over here today. but thank you. when you call, i come. i appreciate your leadership. you have probably heard all the facts that you need to hear, but for me, is very quick summary of the data. my staff did a quick summary of the data. we know the problem in many ways. we'll submit that for the record. everybody here knows it. i'm sorry i missed everybody. i want to just make three or four very basic points. i used to be a civil rights lawyer. and the children's defense fund is an outgrowth of that civil rights experience in mississippi with the naacp legal defense fund. and it was pretty clear and n. 1966, '67, '68 that when i won a deseg indication g desegregation case and the next day my plaintiffs didn't have anything to eat because they were moving over from commodities to food stam nz, didn't have any health care. you couldn't say i won my case. you had to deal with the

substantive rights. people have to have a job. they have to have food. they have to have a place to live. they have to have health care. they have to have a place to leave children when they go to work. so that was the origin of the children's defense fund in mississippi to move to that next bridge of making the civil and political rights real, by putting the food and the jobs and the housing and the childcare and the after school care and the quality of what they get in schools in place. so that is the context. and so i want to make two or three very basic points. all of which you know and are working for, mr. chair, is there needs to be and russell has already made the basic point that, you know, there is an opportunity in the achievement gap. you know that. we know so much of what happens is -- stems from -- it's devastating for children. we don't have a level playing field. our job is to get that level playing field which is the core of what america says it wants to be and it's central to your work and our work to eliminate what i

believe is an american apartheid. we need to look at our legislative context as a way of providing a continuum of care for every child from before birth until they can make it through to successful transition to adulthood. people do not come in pieces. they come in families and families need to be able to deal with their children's needs in a wholistic way. so looking at the whole child and trying to do in policy what we do in parenting for those of us that try to be good parents, this is what we should try to put as the norm for those children whose parents cannot afford it or who have not been tout to do what their children need. and so the kind of legislative priorities that you're paying attention to, you've been the leader on childcare and child health care of this year, prenatal care, trying to get this country in 2009 to write all the children prenatal care and health care. i thank you for your leadership

and the amendment to make sure that all the children get the same benefits. we're going to keep fighting until it gets to a final bill. but we've got to come into the civilized nations in this country and ensuring that first children are not born with five, six, seven strikes against them. but you know all these statistics. how do you get a system of comprehensive, affordable, accessible health care for every child before birth snt low birth weight babies, they never, ever get on the track to success or get a chance to go on to college. they're being tracked to deadened lives and prison before birth. question change that this year. i thank you for your leadership and administration and every member of congress needs to say whatever we do in health reform we're going to make sure the children don't go backwards at the moment. we're struggling to keep millions of children from being worse than better off. a health care system for every child and every pregnant mother. we're the only wealthy industrialized nation that doesn't provide. that secondly, making sure they

all had an early childhood education. i started this with home visiting while you're in the womb and make sure do you home visiting for the at risk mothers and babies and keep them out of foster care. keep them out of the child welfare system. let's fund the home visiting programs. keep that money in the budget. and then make sure every child gets a quality early childhood education from early head start to childcare to universal pre-k to universal k, kindergarten. and, again, high quality available to all so that they can get ready for school. i know this administration really is going to try to do. that and then you have to make sure you have every school ready for every child. there are high expectations and people that don't expect every child to learn. we're going to look at the re-authorization next year. i hope it will be a newly named bill. whatever you are going to call it, esa but no longer no child

he left behind. making sure that we're building an educational accountability with adequate funding. and making sure that supports are there and we're rewarding success rather than failure. i just hope that the opportunity to lead and with the new bills coming up this is a chance to revolutionize our approach to education. and we're going to close out education and opportunity gap in our schools. there is a silly argument that whether it's schools ought to do their job for children or the community and poverty all and all this. the children's school lesson is 20% of their day. as we try to make sure that every school does its job with high expectations and accountable educators that we also make sure the children are safe after school, in the summer, on saturdays. that we don't have learning laws and again the administration has got it. you have to deal with who the whole child. we need to fund before and after school programs and in the summer. is that my red light already?

i'm not so short as i thought i would be. we have to deal with child poverty and jobs. poverty really still drives an awful lot as does race. but, again, it's the solution is carrying adults and every institution that relates to children. and for too many children, too many abults, children are beside the point. and we adults need to get out of our s our silohs and we need a new paradigm. we need a paradigm of prevention and early intervention rather than -- forget about the business of getting that through the congress. i can't thank you enough for your leadership. we have to change the fiscal incentives. i would just like to mention a few of the things coming up quickly in the congress legislatively which are not the civil rights things that i'm sure the experts talked about. but what a chance we've got. you have the juvenile justice and prevention act.

i hope we keep children separate from adults. that's a thing we've been fighting. 35 years ago we did children and adult jails. you have to fight these things every few years. you have to make sure you deal with minority confinement. you just have to stop the feeder system. we should all be looking at that carefully. you have the fostering in success education act coming up. you have the stop abuse and residential program for teens act of 2009. and i just, you know, that's fantastic. and you have the student aid and responsibility act which includes a billion dollars in early morning challenge money which it will be so important to have. and you've got family tax relief act. and so we all need to get it all together and monitoring these proposals as well as esea and the childcare development block

grant, the child nutrition act re-authorizati re-authorization. and we need to be putting that in the context of work and work support that's are high quality. as you've been seeing, you know, the test of welfare reform is what happens when there is economic down turn. i just hope we can pay attention to the substantive things coming up that will effect the lives of millions and millions of our families. see that they are reauthorized. see that they are well funded. see that they are fostering prevention and early intervention and high quality protection for all of our children. and seeing that we're going to have the workforce or the people who are administering the policies and practices were committed to children. and your bottom line is right. we have to clear children's movement. children are the easiest kids to pick on. we have to provide that movement. it is the movement that follows on to civil rights movement. that's what dr. king was trying to do in his campaign. we need that campaign today and all adults need to provide that voice, the voice is children like you do, mr. chair.

i thank you very much for doing this and look forward to working with you on all of these bills, particularly the youth promise act. >> thank you very much. give our panelists a round of applause. i'd like to go right into the next panel but if there are pressing questions for this pabpab panel, we'll take those at this point. >> i taught in new york city and in oakland, california. i'm curious about the reference again and again to excellent examples of schools that work and, yet, i was appreciative of assistant secretary reference to the harlem children zone. i worked in new york in two different schools. one school that was very successful educating minority students and one school that is now phased out, closed.

and the closed school is right in the neck of the woods of children zone and i'm wondering whether there's any efforts that you know about to take these excellent schools and go right in the neighborhoods where they're at. you know, right down the street from harlem children's zone. look up the street to the south bronx and say, hey, here's a school that is really failing. instead of just closing it, maybe we can partner with the success that's going on right here locally. because those kids in wh that school closes, where are they going to go? i'm curious about whether that's been explored. i heard a lot about the promise cities and the efforts around the country. i wonder even within a district like new york city, are the efforts to take examples and breed them within themselves locally? >> let me start by suggesting that you talk to the gentleman right behind you. richard coleman is with the

achievable dream program with newport news who have children come to school i think it was 98% on free introduced lunch. overwhelming minority. and there is no achievement gap at that school. the secretary of education visited about two or three weeks ago and so we're hoping that the secretary will incorporate some of what we're doing in newport news at the achievable dream program in some of the policies that we're going to be adopting. any other -- >> i just want to make the distinction. i think that's why we're having the discussion. harlem children's zone which i think is fantastic and jeff chairs my board is not a policy. it's a program. and 22 or 23 promise zones is not a job policy or education policy make. that's why this hearing is so important and the issue is how do we incorporate the wonderful best practices all around for

all children and policy and bear those in line as we construct the next version of legislation. we should not put so much of a burden, you know, they need jobs. they need a transportation policy. get out where the jobs are. they need the things we're discussing here today. people are over, you know, we grab on to one thing as the solution. but we really need to make sure. 20 new promise neighborhoods which i think is fantastic, does not change the country. it just shows and demonstrates what we all know, churn can learn if they're adults with high expectations and well funded. you expect them to do that. this hearing is even more important. how do you incorporate that into the policy and all the things are coming up, the opportunity for all schools to build on the variety of wonderful practices going on all over this country. but all children need them. bobby? >> congressman scott, if i could just -- and i'm glad you're going on to the next panel.

i will have to leave around quarter after 4:00. i don't want to hold you up. thanks to all the panelists. i did happen to read about the schools in newport news. and they were -- the report cited what was happening. they were very promising. but what i really want to talk about is how it's all coming together and it's not schools over here and health care and this other siloh. we have come to understand in dealing with health care and the cdc in general that we have to look at all of the social determinants of health. and when we look at congressman scott's promise act and we look at our health empowerment zones and the promise neighborhoods, they're all trying to get to the same thing. we have to do all the community work. we have to help support our families if we're going to really achieve. and lastly, i'm a board member of adolescent health alliance.

and health and education is so closely tied together. and we talk about losing our children and that junior high school area i hope that at some point will be able to pay better attention to adolescent health. >> i agree with you. we have to do the whole childhood health care off. and that we have to get them for college, but the focus here is getting them to college. >> on the back of that, we will try to get the trio programs funded for the purpose of getting young people to get into college and after the graduates at the rate of those that get in -- and actually graduates. the rate of those that in and not complete is becoming an -- a challenge. access to college is one, but finishing is another new

challenge. >> for my question, a lot of the administration's focused kfar fynn education is looking at closing down schools off after decade terrific, and could just talk about this easy issue that is no big deal. i was wondering if you could speak to this issue, especially with the context in the communities that are very vested in the school. you have multiple generations and people may not have graduated. in other teachers and the principal and the data tells us that the school is not right for these kids, but we have to consider more than just -- or should we consider more than just the data? data with special kids.

>> yes, liz, you bring up a really good point. the struggle is what is the answer. and persistently failing schools that for decades in a lot of places have utterly failed those students need dramatic change. they need transformation. closing the school and reopening it with the same kids or sending kids to another place is but one option. right? there are others that work. we have evidence tied to the previous question. we have evidence about the models that work. when it comes to the community investment in those schools that is something we have to be sympathetic to and respectful of. we at the department have hired a director of community outreach who is actually in this room to begin to communicate with communities, especially on those that are doing dramatic turn around strategies. we know that this is about bridging those sometimes pretty

damaging divides between communities and schools. we also developed a technical -- are developing a technical presentation within the office for civil rights there are real civil rights issues and considerationsment. we know less than 104 complaints, many of which came from school closing in washington around five different schools. we have to have the tough conversation amongst ourselves and as advocates. we recently had a discussion about the school closures in washington. we said what is the civil rights violation? right? is it the sting that comes from the beginning of dramatic transformation. or is it the fact that these students have languished in schools that woefully prepare them for the demands of life after high school? and i think we all came to a place that said it's a little bit of both, but we're going to

work to collaborate to inform the community to make sure that they know their obligation ands to show real models for what works. because as mary said, a few pilots can't do it alone. but seeing certainly is believing. and if we can show what's possible, we believe that we can move the dial pretty aggressively. >> just to add to that, i'm sure you know that your boss has a bill that we support very well that gives us some inequities in school funding and school resources. forcing the state to actually make sure they provide an equal education opportunity for all students across the state. some states, new york is one example, used more openly. in one end of the state they're spending $11,000 a year to educate children and the other end, $4,600 to educate a child. we also know there were mistakes made here even in the nation's capitol as to whether to

consolidate more schools. we saw the issues that should be taken into consideration from our perspective were not. and that is which schools are actually worth it and which schools are we actually cutting because we're trying to save money along the way? we're seeing the problems occur in many areas across the country as well. we also have to address issues about the collapse and the interconnectedness of how we pay for schools. only 10% of school expenditures are paid for by the federal government. 90% is paid for by state and locals. what that means is when we're talk bgs hing about how we pay them, the states focus in as well. we have states that make sure it is the task underbedded to pay for the schools by a grid. that is in the certain areas we decide how much to spend on each child in a polley gridded area based on the property values. we continue the cycle we're in now. it speaks to interconnectedness.

we scrap resources to pay for schools. we have to address those real problems. >> i could just make one last comment? i just wish we could get as bron in the building rather than the closing of the building. any system that fails to teach children to kpult, 80% of black and hispanic children are not reading and not writing is not working. that's because adults are not holding ourselves accountable for seeing that children have a chance to succeed. any child that cannot read or write in this globalizing world is being sentenced to dead end lives. and that's what our adult responsibility is changing. so we've come in and they closed down the building. we slu have been in there raising heck for all these children who are not getting what they are supposed to getment i just hope that community voice can get there. it's not a fight between job security for adults who are building for adults.

it's about weather we're educating our children. that's where the community voice really needs to be heard. >> congressman, if i can say one last thing. these are manageable transformations. there are 2,000 high schools in the country that produce 50% of the drop youz. over 75% of the tropouts from african and latino communities. if we can target our energies in those places. and with a laser focus bring the community in collaborative, local, state thors together to produce the change we're talking about. the transformation and scale that we're looking for, the models that work comes to light. >> one of the problems with no child left behind is the -- after you've taken all the tests, what is the response to the tests? there's no farmer's adage you don't fatten a pig by weighing the pichlgt we've taken the test

and the response to school is failing to have let children go to that school who can figure out what the system is, sneak out the back door and go somewhere where they can get an education. or in more drastic sense, close the school. if you have most of the children left behind at the school that didn't figure out how to sneak out the back door and go somewhere else, they're getting the same poor education they were getting to begin with. a lot of schools have fail nertz back already. there is nowhere to go. what we need to do is provide assistance, whatever it takes, to improve the education of those schools that you have

determined have been failing. not just take the test and now we know they're failing. other questions? [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> all this week at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a rare glimpse into the nation's highest court. tonight, we talk with justices kennedy and alito to discuss how this -- how the supreme court works in ruling their decisions. interviews with supreme court justices of this week at 8:00 p.m. here on c-span.

for more information about the court go to c-span.org /supremecourt. you will find virtual tour of the building, a photo gallery on its construction, as well as this week's interviews with the justices. tonight on c-span2 notable books from 2009 as listed by a number of notable publications. that is at 8:00 p.m. eastern. you can see the various year-end lists at booktv.org. >> c-span thursday, a look back at tributes paid to u.s. and world leaders including the dalai lama, ted kennedy, what ronald reagan, walter cronkite, colin powell and robert byrd. and on new year's day, a look at what is ahead for the new year. vladimir putin discusses his future from its annual call-in program. presidential adviser austin goulsbee on the global economy,

the creator of segue and the founder of guitar hero on innovation and entrepreneurship. plus, the art of political cartooning. >> fox news contributor michelle malkin is our guest this began on "american perspectives" -- on "book tv" three hours with her sunday live at noon eastern on both tv -- on "book tv" part of a three day weekend starting friday. correct this panel looks at cost-effective methods to provide quality education for all american youth. it is about one hour, 50 minutes.

>> it will come back to order. we have had challenging arguments for an excellent basis for some of the challenges from a civil-rights perspective. now we will have an education specters -- experts and who will speak to us because we know how to role in the achievement gap. it has been shown in my district how you can do that. one of the things that we also know is that you spend a significant resources as a result of the consequences of our failing to properly educate our children. this hearing on this education issue is being held in the judiciary committee hearing room and not only because there are some of rights be involved but also because of a strong correlation between crime and education and the fact that if we fail to educate people we felt and that spending a lot more money -- we end up spending

a lot more money on crime that we should. a couple of charts that i want to show -- this is the chart of the incarceration rate of countries around the world perñi 100,000. and virtually all countries in the world except russia locked up between 202 hundred 50 people per 100,000. in russia lockup about 600. -- between 200 to end at 250 people per 100,000. in russia, they lock up about 600. that is just part of the story. the other part of the story is that in the african-american community, we lock up on average 2200, that is the first purple are, per 100,000. and 10 states lot of african- americans at the rate of almost 4000 per 100,000. those numbers are particularly

egregious because a few researchers told us that any rate over 500 per 100,000 is, in fact, counterproductive. you are getting no criminal justice value for locking up more people. in fact, you are injecting more social pathology in to a committee then you are hearing. if you look at -- that you are curing. -- you are injecting more social pathology into a community that you are securing. we also look at the correlation between dropping out and incarceration. this chart shows the difference citrine 1970 and 2000. the purple heart is high school dropouts and the green are as high school graduates. this is a chart for african- american males 26 to 30. you notice in 1970, with you dropped out or did not, you could probably still get a job.

a handful were in jail. but by the year 2000 because we have an inflammation based -- information based high-tech economy, if you want a job, you have to have at least a high- school diploma. and you notice that those in the first pair on the bottom, only 30% of african-american males 26 to 30 that have dropped out of school can be found on the job, a little over one-third working, and the study actually shows more in jailñr than working. a high-school dropout has put you on a trajectory toward incarceration. . . á',@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ra"@ @ @ @ @

some college not in jail. a few with the high school graduation or high school students are in jail. but the high school dropouts, you'll notice you're off the chart. you're much more likely of unemployment, education pays. the blue chart shows that those with degrees, the more education you, have the less likely you are to be unemployed. and on the yellow bars, the more education you have, obviously, the more money you're going to make. as they say, the more you learn, the more you earn. one of the problems that any incarceration over 500 per 100,000 is counterproductive,

and if we reduced the 2200 incarceration rate, average incarceration rate for african-americans to 500, which is the most that you could possibly have and still have any criminal justice benefit per 100,000, you would have 17 fewer people per 100,000 in jail at a cost of about $30,000 a year, almost $50 with 30,000 children, divide that by almost $50 million, you're talking about $1,600 per child per year in those communities, is spending on incarceration. oductive incarceration. and if you actually target it to the one-third of our most vulnerable children, you are up to almost $5,000 per child per year.

in ten states, the incarceration rate is 4,000. you would have about 3500 fewer people incarcerated. that community -- those communities are spending per 100,000 about $100 million a year in counterproductive incarceration. and if you divide that about it 30,000 children they may have in the community, that's about 33, $3400 per child per year. and if you targeted that money to the one-third of the children most in need, you could be spending -- you are spending the equivalent of over $10,000 per ad at risk child per year every year in counterproductive incarceration.

not only do we save money by educating our young people in the chiriminal justice system, y program that reduces crime, it will also reduce teen pregnancy and also increase wages so that we'll have more taxpayers and we'll have fewer, less to pay in welfare. i have introduced as mary indicated the youth promise act which will provide funding for communities to come together and develop comprehensive evidence-based plans to address juvenile crime. now obviously improvements in education and including the elimination of the achievement gap would have to be core components of any infective plan. but the plan would have to be comprehensive. including as has already been indicated, prenatal care which can reduce learning disabilities and mental retardation and other

problems. make sure you have the early childhood education opportunities. make sure the children can read by the third grade. teachers tell us up to the third grade children learn to read. after the third grade, they read to learn. if they can't read after the third grade, they can't learn after the third grade. and they're on a trajectory to dropping out and all the misery that that entails. also, the after school program and other programs that get young people on the right track and keep them on the right track. we know that those comprehensive programs work every time they put one together. the crime rate plummets. crime rates, we heard one and talking to someone in spas deana, california. they had a comprehensive program reduce dozens of murders per year down to zero for a couple years. they did the same thing in boston. same thing in my district where the murder rate was significantly reduced.

50%, 70%, 90% reduction in murders as a result of the comprehensive plans. pennsylvan that the 100 plans that they funded at the rate of a total of $60 million, in just a couple of years, that $60 million resulted in over $300 million in cost savings as a result of reducing all of the social pathology that we end up paying for. so for that -- if the youth promise act would fund prevention programs like that and, obviously, the comprehensive nature of the programs will mean that education is a significant part of it and other crime prevention activities. we know when we look at these numbers that we're spending the money already. so when we talk about eliminating the achievement gap, we should not be shy about spending some money because in the long run, we would have spent it anyway. we have with us today on the

panel roberto rodriguez who serves as the white house domestic policy counsel, as special assistant to president obama for education. he was previously chief education counsel to the united states senator ted kennedy who is the chair of the health education labor and pensions committee and prior to working on capitol hill, he served as senior educational specialist at the national council of laraza. governor bob wise is president of the alliance for excellent education. he is a former governor of west virginia and a former member of congress. under his leadership the alliance works to ensure all students graduate from high school prepared for college careers and to be contributing members of society. dr. la ruth gray is the government relations and legislative liaison for the national alliance of black school educators and is a scholar and residence at new york university. she is former superintendent of

schools for avid union free school district in new york. adelia papa is from the national council of laraza which oversees all educational programs. her work focuses on helping academic institutions understand and respond to the needs of underserved children and their teachers. dr. linda darling hammond is professor of education at stanford university, where she has launched the stanford center for opportunity policy and education or scope. the school -- and the school redesign network. she also serves on the board of directors on educating black children, research teaching and policy work focuses on issues of school reform, teacher quality and educational equity. in 2006 she, was named one of the nation's ten most influential people affecting education policy over the last decade. and she recently served as the leader of president barack obama's education policy

transition team. bron sorn is director of the cambodian association of greater philadelphia. prior to that, she was field coordinator for the southeast asia resource center successful new american project where she conducted community research assessment and provided direct services and worked on strengthening and building coalitions and cross sectors, encouraging community members to take on advocacy initiatives. dr. carol brunson day is president of the national black child development institute and she is recognized as a leader in the field of early childhood education. lilian sparks serves as the national director of the national indian education association which was founded in 1970 to give american indians, alaskan natives and native hawaiians access to improve in their educational opportunities. in october, president obama nominated her to be commissioner of administration for native americans which is part of the

department of health and human services, and she is awaiting senate confirmation. lily eccleson is the vice president of the national education association. she is one of the highest ranking labor leaders in the country and one of the most influential hispanic educators. after teaching for only nine years, she was named utah teacher of the year in 1989, and she used that title as a platform to speak out against the dismal funding of utah schools. sharon lewis is the senior disability policy adviser for the u.s. house of representatives, education and labor committee under the chairmanship of congressman george miller, which she handles issues involving disability policy. she originally came to washington, d.c., from portland, oregon, to work with senator dodd and the help committee -- help subcommittee on children and families. and she served on president obama's transition team for education. amy wilkins is vice president for governor -- government

affairs and communication at the education trust. her expertise and advocacy skills comes from her work in the children's defense fund, the democratic national committee, the peace corps and the white house office of media affairs. and our final panelist will be dan cardinelli, the president of communities and schools incorporated. the nation's largest dropout prevention programuition operations in 26 states and the district of columbia. and under his legislation, the organization has developed and appraised -- embraced an evidence-based model of integrated student services. and we're going to begin with governor wise. >> thank you very much. thank you very much, mr. chairman. and i just have to say, i spent years trying to get to this seat right here and never made it, so thank you very much, in one afternoon i've been able to get to the seat next to the chair. it is a privilege to be here and once again in a forum that

you've called -- you've been a leader on this incredible, incredibly important issue, and i just want to point out in addition to the other pieces of legislation, you reference, you are also the lead sponsor on the every student counts act, which would bring accountability to graduation rates and so that we actually find out how well our students are doing at the end. look, i am -- i feel very fortunate to be part of this and kind of distinguished panel. so let me just add a few facts to some of those that you've already mentioned. some of them may have been mentioned earlier and also a couple of suggestions. first of all, in terms of the economic gains that could be made by reducing achievement gap, we have to remember that at least 52% of all dropouts are children of color. now when that -- when you realize that that's 1.2 million students total a year, that's somewhere around 600,000 students. at the alliance for excellent education we did an analysis

several years ago that showed if we could simply bring the graduation rates for students of color to parody with those of their white counterparts, and, remember, the white graduation rate is not great either. but if we could simply bring it to parody, that would generate another $300 billion a year in salaries into our economy from those new wage earners. working with state farm, we've just released an analysis of the 50 largest cities, the payrolls that could be gained if we could cut the dropout rate in half in most of these cities. children of color comprise at least half of the student body, if not more. and so that number alone if you simply cut the dropout rate in half in our 50 largest metropolitan areas would be $4.5 billion for each graduating class. so now you make that not class of 2010 and now class of 2011 and so on. if you've heard already today about the so-called drop-out

fact reed, these are the 2,000 high schools in -- less than 2,000 high schools in the nation that have graduation rates of less than 60%. think about that. 100 ninth graders will start and four years later, 60 or less will walk across the commencement stage. we -- they are 12% of all high school -- less than 12% of all high schools in the country. they comprise two-thirds of all dropouts of color. not all -- not the dropouts in those high schools are of color. they comprise two-thirds of all dropouts of color. and so you can see that simply targeting those high schools and the feeder schools to them, and the graduation promise act does this as well as the congressman's legislation, success in the middle act, that simply those two pieces of legislation alone, estimated to cost somewhere bet

it would significantly reduce the achievement gap. it is like a precision strike. along those lines, the significance of that is that reducing and targeting those goals also means the administration's goals of targeting the lowest percentage of schools in turnaround. the graduation promise at as well. it also ought to be pointed out, another analysis that the alliance did, a few years old, if we could only reduce the mail drop out rate -- male dropout rate by 5%, that would relate into substantial cost savings. this is why it is also an

economic imperative. we strongly recommend -- we strongly urge the congress to consider and recognize this concept. mr. chairman, you just pointed out so well in your dad appeared the best economic stimulus package is a diploma. if we can achieve that, we spend $3 billion to stimulate on cash for clunkers. if we can turn around and graduate half of our students, what we will do is on lease and economic engine that is far greater than whatever benefits came from that sole initiative. what we will do instead, and these will be productive students that are making a contribution year after year after year. so the graduation promise act, the success in the middle act, your legislation, mr. chairman on the -- besides that, which you've already mentioned on the every student counts act. and then a number of the

initiatives that would improve our data systems, target the newest funding for turning around the lowest performing schools and supporting innovation and research in our secondary school systems. relatively low investment, and with incredibly high return. thank you very much. >> thank you. thank you governor. dr. gray. >> i would also -- is this on? i would also like to thank you for allowing me to be part of this panel. this is a large panel, so i'm going to be as quick as i can and go to two or three points. the national alliance of black school educators, we want to answer this question. what type of legislation do we need to pass to shape a country in which all children receive a quality education, et cetera. there's already legislation there. let me go directly to it. we have perhaps two titles that are significant. title 6 and title 1. if there were no title 1, the

federal government probably could not unleash all of the rules, recommendations, et cetera, it does because that's the engine that drives all of that. title 1 funding. and it is our view that title 1 funding has not been significantly targeted to the poorest districts with the poorest children in the poorest schools. and for us, that's the answer. are we concerned about all of the other things that have been talked about? are we concerned about the fact that the federal government has not met its promise on a 40% on idea? are we concerned about the fact that teacher quality, all of those things. but it gets down to, what does it cost, how do we pay for it and where's the money? the money is already there. it just needs to be redirected. the answer really is in poverty. and we don't use that. we talk about low income kids, children of color. but the answer -- the elephant in the room is really poverty, in our judgment. and this cuts across color, by the way.

it's appalachia. it's kentucky. it's the highlands across the south where that is predominantly white but that's where we have serious abject rural poverty. we have models for this. we did a nice job somewhere between the passing of the great society and moving on toward the '80s. and it was in the '80s that we ran into comp ra bility problems. i'll tick off four or five things we think congress can do with title 1 funding and the new reauthorization because there are so many people to talk. let me just go quickly to those. and tell you that the -- we believe the title 1 basic, you know, part "a" monies should be targeted directly as i said earlier to the poorest districts, the poorest schools of the poorest children. and we believe strongly that the strict language should look at the way that we handle both comparablity because it's gone out of the window.

the fed is paying no attention to it. the state is paying no attention to it. that's what the first two or three of maybe the first seven or eight or nine years prior to the -- i guess it would be about 1978 -- well it was 1980 when we moved from 75% school wides. the language that in the title 1 of the esea, the so-called comparablity provision was supposed to promote equality of education, but, indeed, it does not because, as i said earlier, there's been very little attention paid to it. so we would like that looked at. while the federal government distributes its title one based on poverty now, it's the formula that needs addressing. we think that county -- counting by percentage of counties presents problems. we would rather see district level. they collect that data, so they

have it. we probably believe that, like a couple of the other titles that while money should go to the states for administration, since it's the state's responsibility, that title 1 dollars should flow directly to districts and that we move away from flowing them directly to the state and then the state's formula kicks in. gordon lou has said something in the iowa law review. although the ambitious proposals about national standards, school vouchers, growth models for growth will garner headlines, it is not -- it will not necessarily that the esea act of 1965, the original precursor of nclb had much humble origins. it really did. it was that the federal government would use title 1 and title 6 as a civil rights act to see what role the feds might

play about systemic education of children and they used terms like disadvantaged then but it was really about poverty. and so that we think that we kind of misused the title 1 funding to answer all types of problems. some of the stimulus money was driven that way. we would like -- we believe that it has to be reanalyzed in this new reauthorization and that it will cause some political capital because it's not easy to take money away from states. we understand that. or to take money away from school districts. some of us had a fit, what are you talking about? 30,000 and under is probably the average size of school districts in this country. i have stats here, all of that, but i think there are too many people to talk, so that's -- i'll stop. >> thank you very much. miss pompa? >> thank you.

thank you. you know, i've been in education a very long time, and i've been in a school. i've been at the state education agency and i've been here in washington. and for all those years, there's been an achievement gap. we see the achievement gap very clearly, and we've become so used to it when we see it in those bar graphs. we see the hard numbers and we just expect when we see an analysis of any type of assessment to see an achievement gap. but, you know, those of you who visit in schools like i do find it much more dramatic when you visit a school and those bar graphs become real and you see kids and compare what kids are reading in the fifth grade in a low income neighborhood to what kids in an upper income neighborhood are reading. you see the kinds of courses kids in high poverty school are taking and you compare that to the courses your nieces or nephews or your children are taking. then those bar graphs and those numbers really do come alive. so there's no question that

there's an achievement gap. there's no question that we need to close it, and there's also no question that we can close it. you know, for centuries, afri n african-americans -- centuries, afric african-americans have endured the achievement gap. for at least a century, hispanic americans have endured the achievement gap. and we're at a point where we have the technology to close it. we have the knowledge to close it. and the question is, do we have the will to close it? i think the answer is yes. i think we see examples all over the country where ordinary teachers are doing what some would call extraordinary, and that is achieving children -- achieving and closing the gap for children of color. graduating children of color who do as well as any other child in this country. so we can do it. but we need to figure out how we begin to make that system attic. i shouldn't say need to figure it out.

we know how to do it. as we prepare for esea reauthorization this time around, we have many lessons we've learned. we have much information about what has worked, how it's worked, and we know how we can expand what is good about esea. you know, one of the things i tell folks is that as a person of color, i feel like every time i start to figure out the game, someone changes the rules. and i would hope that we don't change the rules for schools or kids this time. the rules are good rules. what we need to figure out is how we implement them fairly and how we implement them in a way where their effect is sustained. and that would mean that we would have valid assessments that would measure how well schools are preparing our children in a robust accountability system. it would mean we have information that parents could understand to play their role in the accountability system.

and that we would have teachers with the knowledge and skills that it takes to teach children no matter where they live, no matter what language they speak and no matter how much the parents earn. so those are the things we can do and that we must do. but too many kids are still waiting for this to happen. so just to give you some specifics of what nclr supports, i would point you to a couple of publications that we brought earlier that are outside for you to look at. one is our position on assessment. another is a good example on where we stand when -- on accountability and on esca in general. it's our analysis of the latest regulations on title 1. i think that tells you a lot. but specifically, i'm going to speak to english language learners because that is among all our other passions, one of our biggest passions. what we've seen over the last five years is a series of attempts to weaken accountability systems for

english language learners by saying oh, poor thing you shouldn't put this test in front of them. it's so drawmatic. they can't pass this test. and i would ask those people, do you feel that way when you put a math test in front of a child who speaks english who has never been taught math? tests are -- tests exist to tell us what we as adults need to do. we don't need to turn them into instruments of torture for children, nor are they intended to be instruments of torture. if we weaken accountability systems for english language learners, we will have opened the door and begun to change the rules all over again. so we support for english language learners keeping accountability requirements and enforcing them. we support providing appropriate assessments for english language learners and funding them to a level that all schools have access to them. and including teachers of english language learners as a priority group in looking at funding. we would also encourage pilot

programs for the small but significant number of english language learners who come into our u.s. schools without an appropriate education. so do we support only tests? no in the short period of time, i'm going to try and tell you the other things we think we need. we need course rigor. we need to look at that. we need to look at graduation rates and more and more we need to look at college completion for our kids. can we do this? we believe the technology is at a point where we can do this. we are moving toward a point in time where we have common standards that hold high, high achievement levels for all kids. we're moving to a point in time where states are improving their data systems such that they can follow their children xroos high schools, across schools, into college and across social systems. and then we also need new models of accountability and we see those popping up all over the country. in closing, i would say we have nowhere to go but up, and i think we have the directions for

that. thank you. >> thank you. dr. darliene hammond. >> thank you very much. i am here representing the national council on educating black children. and let me see if this little gadget will work because i have a power point. maybe yes. maybe no. there we go. our president claude mayberry is here and also available for follow-up, and we have a paper available because i'm going to zip through this very, very quickly and you can see more about our recommendations there. the council was set up by congressman augusta hawkins and was rooted in the work of ron

we start from that starting point. we work across the country to create and implement community action plans much like those in the youth promise act. we've identified a set of central issues that i will return to. the lack of high-quality preschool, prepared teachers, and an adequate education the parents involved in their children's schooling. our recommendation start from a perspective that education and quality in the united states require systemic response. marginal, fragmented programs will not be enough, nor will oppose this on test scores alone. we need a policy that will take a month -- a much more systemic approach to addressing the inequality that it has. we will try to look at that perspective.

the achievement gap is not only between and among children in this country but between this country and other countries around the world. achievement on piza international science tests and the socio economic status, the extent to come which is influences that. those in the bottom left quadrant where the united states lands have achievement that is below the average and inequitable. so we are falling behind other nations in many, many ways. we are, right now, 35th out of the top 40 countries in math on international assessments, 29th in science. we are falling behind in graduation rates. we're in the bottom half of industrialized countries and graduation rates. many of these nations have graduation rates above 90%. we're stuck at 70% and falling.

we're also falling behind in college going. we used to be first in the world in college going. we're now 17th and dropping about two slots per year. and that's even, of course, worse for african-american and latino children. only about 38% of young people in the united states go to college and finish with a degree. that's only about 17% for african-american students. only 11% for latino students. by comparison, most european nations are sending 50% of their kids to college. countries like korea and singapore are at above 60%. going on and finishing college. so what are they doing? that we're not doing? number one, children are well supported. they come to school with housing, health care, early childhood education. number, two they fund schools centrally and equally. they do not see any benefit in spending and underresourcing the schools that high need children attend. they build a very strong educator workforce where all

teachers and leaders are well prepared and equally distributed so that everything else they do can have a chance of working because the educators know how to work with the rest of the curriculum and reforms. and, finally, they have a teaching and learning system focused on the kinds of outcomes that we are hoping for here. so we lead the world in poverty among industrialized nations. we spend less than on the schools that those children attend. the blue bars here are the districts in california serving predominantly white students. the red bars are the district serving predominantly students of color. inequality is later on that the cross state intrastate and interdistrict levels. most of that then leads to the teaching gap that geoff robinson talked about where five times more teachers are unqualified in schools that serve minority students than in other schools.

but policy can reduce this achievement gap. so let me just point out that the policies in the 1960s and '70s cut the achievement gap in half and sharply increased educational achievement. had we stayed with the policies that were in place, where we were in 1988, we would have closed the racial achievement gap by the year 2000. in 1981, almost all of those policies were turned around. and undone. college going rates were once equal. and so we have to look back at those broad policies that actually helped us make substantial progress in the past. we've also have some states that also have made huge investments in systemic investments. i wopt point out new jersey. they've cut the achievement gap in half. the average latino or black student in new jersey outscores the average student in california now, and they are among the top states in the nation in every category of

achievement, even though half of the students are students of color. and what they did was what i think shapes an overall approach. they finally gave parody funding to the high minority/low wealth districts and spent as much money on them as the high districts. they used a whole school reform model based on jim comer's school development program which engages parents and supports child development. they created teacher education focused on urban teaching, and they focused on high quality professional development. we need a set of high leverage federal policies to close the achievement gap in america. and i won't have time to go into all of these, but i just want to paint a broad picture for us because ultimately, as marianne wright edleman said, we just can't deal with individual initiatives that come and go in small programs. we need big policy. we need to be sure there's high

quality preschool education available for every child. the returns to that are very, very high in terms of school success. we need requirements for states to make progress on resource equity under esea as well as the federal government. we need to get a high quality teacher and leadership workforce in every single school. you could do that for about $2 billion among the hundreds of billions that are being spent and solve much of the problem that occurs. and then we need to support good learning environments in the schools that we're worried about that engage parents. i'm not going to say anything about preschool, but i want to say one other thing about this equity issue. la ruth already talked about the need to strengthen and enforce the comerablity provisions. we also need to create incentives for state equalization. by tying progress on resource equity to the receipt of federal funds. we're asking states to make progress on achievement. they need to make progress on

these huge inequalities. the fatadad student bill of rights speaks to that. we need to have states develop opportunity indicators alongside reports of achievement. we need to show whether students have adequately qualified teachers, the curriculum that is needed to address the standards, the materials, books, computers and resources to learn to standards. and we need to require that when schools are identified as failing, states have to meet opportunity to learn standards for those schools because right now, we show that they are failing and we do not require that the resources are put in place for them to be able to improve. and then we have to look at how students are treated and access curriculum opportunities when we look at schools. teacher quality matters greatly and can account for more than the effects of race in parent education combined. and now we have a federal policy that encourages a race to the

bottom in terms of teacher quality. we're encouraging and left over from the bush administration, the proliferation of low course work, alternative certification programs that reduce the training teachers get and reduce the student teaching they are likely to get and the mathematical study here shows that, in fact, students lost achievement between fall and spring when they had teachers with that kind of training. whereas when they had teachers with greater training, they gained in achievement. and a set prove posals that would strengthen teaching across the country and in high-need communities that are doable for which we have good evidence base. we need to invest in leadership development because you cannot turn around a school without good loaders. we're the only school among industrialed nations that has no major federal policy for investing in the quality of teachers and leaders in our country. and then we need a set of community investments in high-need schools, and i simply

want to point out that community school models that have been very successful that offer both high quality instruction and wrap around services are part of that initiative. and we cannot forget the need to involve parents in meaningful ways, including providing time for them to work in and meet with teachers at the school, which employers could be incentivized to do and which teachers can be provided time to do. i'll leave those with the words of martin luther king. there comes a time when one must take a position that's neither safe, politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it's right. we'll have to remember this if we're going to make any progress on this agenda. >> thank you very much. thank you. that gives us an outline of what we need to do. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, everyone. as you all hear in the discussion throughout the day, key words are equity,

accountability, responsibility, lack of resource. all these issues that affect our education system have been the issue of meeting the achievement gap. and i can't emphasize enough about the equity. whether all students have access to quality education and the support they need to reach the fullest potential, it is about social justice. so it is our responsibility to make sure that we all have the responsibility to make sure our children get the quality of education that they need so that they can become productive and responsible adult. and as we hear throughout the day, the investment on education

will pay off. so those are the keyword. one issue that i wanted to bring up today is racism and violence in the school that are really affecting the education system. living in philadelphia, we have lived for the past 22 years when i land in the u.s. recently last week, there's a huge racial motivated violence in the school district of philadelphia. that create so much controversy that affects so 15 students. the students start to boycott not going to school because the administrator responded slow and is not being receptive or not give the student the voice of what they've been through. and this is not just an incident that's happening last week. but it's an ongoing that is

happening throughout any school that the responsibility or accountability of such issues keep coming up. the racism and also the not taking the full responsibility and accountability of the adult and those who really supposed to protect and secure and provide a quality education of the student. so the issue -- what i wanted to say is that i feel that they fail to protect the student. therefore, they don't feel secure and safe to go back to school and, therefore, they can't get education they need. the place that they are supposed to feel welcome and secure and get the support they need to succeed in their life. so that's one of the reasons

that maybe the issue of not achieving the gap. and i agree with ms. pampa about provide equal access to every student, especially the english learn learner. cambodian and other southeast asian among the lowest college achievement, lowest rate. although asian consider the minority model, but if you look at the subgroup, the southeast asian whose majority are the survivor of the vietnam war who have been affected, southeast asia, most of us came as refugee and survived the genocide for the cambodian population. survived the genocide. we are the majority of the educated people were killed. those who survived who came to the u.s. who have limited education, who have limited --

skill, who live in a poverty area where a lot of already high crime rate and all this issues already manifest already. so for these to really reach their full potential is to get the full support they need. not just in the it is all about equity. responsibility in and accountability. accountability. and i just want to give -- i heard this a i wanted to bring up one more. to ensure that all of these kids had equal access to education -- a quality education, in each district will address the need of the worst student and parents regardless of that this city or background. including more bilingual staff at different levels, not just

the low paid staff, but the real skilled staff who can work with the diverse students. provide ongoing resources to support bilingual staff, to provide adequate support to students and hold them accountable. provide adequate safety security for all students. and when there is an incident, students and parents are treated equally and ensure that they receive proper support and follow up. and one other issue that i came across in philadelphia is that the incident reports are not properly filed and are missing and depending on who is affected by the violence, the report --

some of the victims were sent home were sent out without really proper reports. further investigation. so that's one of the issue. also, to continue to work with different -- across the sector, regardless of emgs system, the government and the community based organization. for us, we wanted to reach out to different group -- different level. so that we can help our community succeed, not just educationally but socially and also economically so that they can really help themselves become self-sufficient. so that is our goal. again, just to close, if you are thinking about investing in education, it will pay off. it is about prevention, intervention, rather than treatment when it's already --

it's a big issue when it is cheaper to spend on education rather than put people in prison. so that's my last thought and thank you so much. >> thank you very much. our next panel cyst dr. carol brunson day. >> thank you, representative scott. nice to be here. i appreciate the invitation. dr. darling-hammond mentioned, and essentially described early education for all children as a major factor in working to eliminate the achievement gap. it actually is a way to prevent the dramatic consequences that we see at the end of twelfth grade. in fact, at least half of the black/white achievement gap at

exists at the end of 12th grade can be attributed to a gap that already existed at the beginning of the first grade. so when we look -- when we think about early childhood education, it is a preventative measure in terms of children's achievement. and we can create programs with the right kind of policy that encourages high -- investments in early education and care experiences. and when we do that we can ensure that all children, regardless of economic status, of ability status, of race or ethnicity enter school equally ready to learn. there's a great deal of evidence supporting this and it comes from a variety of domains. hard science has made a contribution to our understanding early brain development. we've heard a lot about that recently. the critical importance of children's very early

experiences. economists have also helped us understand the cost benefits of investing early. we know that the estimated return is about 7-1, but we know that there are some long-term studies that show particularly at children living in poverty, something that dr. gray mentioned. the benefit cost ratios can be as high as 17-1 with most of these benefits accruing to the general public within education but also outside of education and the domains of criminal justice and in the economic and the job market. from educators, we have a great deal as well of evidence.

studies have shown one after another that early education has vast benefits. we're beginning to see professional groups -- police officers, business leaders and just recently retired military officers supporting early -- investments in early education. with the military arguing that or supporting a campaign that promotes early education as a means of supporting our future national security. we know that the greatest returns on these investments come for children from families with low incomes. and, therefore, children who are often the farthest behind in school accrue the greatest benefits from these investments in early education. we have seen systems within states work. all states are really taking a

look at their investment in early education but some have taken really some leadership in demonstrating models that promote early education and comprehensive ways. linda mentioned new jersey as a state as one of the states. pennsylvania is one. washington state, as well as kansas. we also applaud the policies of the obama administration which are paying for close attention to early education and manifesting their policy initiatives through programs like the early learning challenge grants and the race of the top programs. but we really can do more. we must have policy to focus on access and affordability for all families. we need policies that focus on quality programs. it's not enough to simply offer early education programs. they must be high quality, and there's a lot of data

demonstrating and pointing to the elements that constitute high quality one of those mejsed systems of professional development that will strengthen the early childhood work force. we are talking about systems that not only help professionals learn to apply the knowledge but we need to make substantial investments in systems of recruiting, compensating and retaining the high quality workforce for young children and families. we also need policies that support families with infants and toddlers. parental leave policies have an impact on how children have access to high quality environments in their earliest years. effective home visiting and policies that promote supportive and rich environments in the home as well as the classroom. we need policy that allows a mixed delivery system and that

helps simplify the complexities of the early childhood funding streams, and there are many. and finally, we need -- we must think about how we are protecting these investments in the early years by aligning early childhood programs with public school programs and providing continuity of experiences for young children from birth really through the end of third grade. if we can get a solid impact have a solid impact on children's learning trajectories, they have much better chance of being successful later in life. in conclusion, the national black child development institute believes that all children are born learners. and we would like to think that every child has genius potential at birth. and, thus, it is a birth right to have that genius be allowed to unfold. so when we see what we see, the

consequences in our school systems of children under achieving, losing ground and failing, more and more with each subsequent year they atend, what we are witnessing, we think, is neglect and failure on our part to provide them with the opportunities and support to make their innate genius manifest. the most fundamental approach to correcting this is to start early. >> thank you very much. we are looking for lilian sparks, executive director of the national indication education association. however, she could not get out of jury duty and so she is, in her stead, carrie venegas, the house school policy director for the national indian education policy association. >> thank you very much for having us here and lilian sparks does apologize, but she's doing

her civic duty. one thing i would just like to open with on behalf of native communities is to, first of all, say thank you for the opportunity to speak for native communities here and also to thank everyone sitting on this panel who we consider a native communities to be all of our relatives because all kids are our kids in our communities, and we have an skwl responsibility for ensuring every child has a good education, a good future and is healthy. and with that being said, iing one of the most important points from a native community standpoint is that our students experience some of the highest rates of poverty, suicide, incarceration, learning challenges and the lowest of graduation rates. the most recent numbers place native students at 50% or less for graduating on an annual basis. and this is actually an improvement from the last five years. we also have the lowest college going rates, 13%, compared to a national average of around

24.4%. native communities are unique in the fact they're one of the only communities in the united states that the federal government has a unique trust responsibility for that's guaranteed in the u.s. constitution. meaning that the education and welfare for native students is a federal responsibility. and involves nation to nation treaties and trust relationships. so this is a very unique kind of picture. however, most people don't recognize or understand native students in schools, and this is one of the problems. i'd like to recognize my colleague to the right because i think this happens to many students in the southeast asian community. we're invis nibble the data. when you are an invisible student, when the data doesn't exist for your communities, it's hard and difficult to educate these children appropriately. so i would say that one of the best policy approaches to eliminating the achievement gap is making sure that our data systems fully account for every student. in particular, those students who may not be the larger percentages or may not be the most vis nibble any discussion

but certainly suffer from the biggest despaisparities. in addition to that, effective teachers are something that is always a consideration for us. the majority of teachers in native communities are recruited outside of the communities. as noted by our low graduation rates, it's sometimes hard to find highly qualified candidates or simply the educational avenues don't exist in rural areas in alaska, montana, new mexico, northern california. and there are challenges to making sure that native teachers exist. when we talk about effective teachers, we also have to raise the issue of what is an effective teacher? but what is an effective teacher of a native student or a southeast asian student or an african-american student? are there unique things that can be addressed? and we think that there are. for us, and i give full credit to several of the tribal schools running their own programs. it's a 200% education. that academic achievement and closing the academic gap does not just begin and end in academics. it's a wholistic approach.

100% rigorous academics combined with 100% rigorous ability to be a healthy successful person in your own community and to understand what it means to be a part of who you are. in relation to this, we also believe that it's very important for rural and urban differences to be recognized. a lot of times there are educational reform models that take into consideration urban models. places where the differences and challenges may be similar, but may be incredibly important in the distinctions that they have. for example, on the navajo reservation in the four corners region of new mexico, a student can travel 2 1/2 to 3 hours one way each day in order to attend school. when you double that each day and then you times it times five and then you times it times the amount of days that student goes to school, you understand some of the challenges to even running enrichment programs or to getting your homework done. when the roads are impassable in areas like montana during the

winter, students often are unable to attend school at all. we also believe that early childhood education to echo a lot of my colleagues on this panel is incredibly important. a child needs to start with a foundation of learning and reading, not only in the language that will allow them to access curriculum but also in their own language that gives them a sense of grounding and a firm commitment to their own communities. a piece that's been missing in indian education we feel it is important to direct research toward the community that you seek to serve. for example, reading first is a program that has been widely endorsed. but none of the datasets have taken into consideration native students. others -- but they were all required to use the program. how do you decide at the start effective program and an effective use of dollars without

that kind of research and data? one of the biggest pieces for us is the effective collaboration and working together of the federal agencies and the public school systems. 90% of native students are in public schools. but they moved throughout students -- school systems -- tribal and public schools under state, local, and department of education. this means that is of primary importance that all agencies and federal and -- federal and local entities work hard to collaborate on this to meet the needs of native students. and without co-op -- and without collaboration, it becomes virtually impossible for students to work together to make sure that our students remain healthy, successful, and able to achieve a life that we all dream that they would have. . thank you.

>> thank you. ms. eccleson. >> good afternoon. okay. i am so honored to be here. thank you so much. i have so much to say to you and they've given up 5 to 7 minutes to be profound. luckily i'm a little hyperactive. i'm going to talk really fast. i'm not a researcher. i'm not a statistician. i am an excellent professional, highly qualified, obviously humble, sixth grade teacher from the great state of utah where people still think diversity means you found a presbyterian. and i have taught in the suburbs of salt lake city and i've taught homeless children who live at the homeless shelter. we are a state of great diversity as is every state in this country. and what i have to say to you comes from the perspective of a practitioner. i am honored that the folks that put this together thought that the voice of a teacher was

important. i will tell you for myself and for my colleagues, we are confused. we are depressed. we are discouraged. and we've never been so hopeful that things will get better, that things will improve. they have to. they can't get worse. well -- maybe. but we are going to make things better because of conversations like this. where people who love children, who love the entire community's children are coming together to say closing those achievement gaps is important. what's an achievement gap? what are we measuring? what is the proper measurement to find out if we're going in the right direction? i will tell you for myself ihave stop, stop, stopped calling a stop, stop, stopped calling a test score gap an vement gap. if you are limiting achievement to the difference in a standardized commercial test score, you have limited what you are expecting from me as a

teacher when you focus on a narrow multiple choice test score to design something as mind blowingly complex as the achievement of a human-type child, you narrow what it means to teach. and you narrow what it means to learn. i was on a talk radio show in florida, and the reporter said you know, don't you think you are a little hypocritical that as a teacher you are against tests? so i spoke very slowly so he would understand and told him i am a teacher. we invented tests. i gave my sixth graders lots and lots of stefts. essay tests and spelling tests. you got a point if you put the comma in the right place and you got a point if you gave me a good answer. but you got two points if you gave me a good question. we'd have our science fair and the kids would do all their experiments and you got point if your experiment worked. you got extra points if your

experiment didn't work and you could tell me why it didn't work. you want kids to be thinkers and problem-solvers and always being creative. for all my kids, the gifted, the talented, the kids with disabilities, and sometimes that was all the same kid. it was a gifted and talented english language learner with a disability. all of my kids fully participated as part of a team. i designed my curriculum to make sure all kids had multiple ways of showing me they got it, of showing me that they could be successful and we would design and we would execute our class projects that had real world impact. i told that reporter that i think about what kind of teacher i've been, but what kind of teacher would i be if i limited the experiences i wanted my kids to have so that i could maximize the time i spent drilling and

drilling on a standardized test. what kind of teacher would i be if i limited myself to only what was in a scripted textbook so that it was aligned to the scripted standardized test, and i stopped letting my students teach me what they needed me to teach them. and what kind of teacher would i be if i focused on the bubble kids. you know, the bubble kids? i have a friend who e-mailed me from utah and she said i want to stop teaching. she is an excellent teacher. she's the best i know. and she said i just came out of a faculty meeting where the principal explained that we were going to make adequate yearly progress by any means necessary. and so we were to ignore the top academic achievers. they're going to pass the test and we're going to ignore the lowest academic achievers. they're not going to make it, and you're going to focus on the kid on the bubble who just

barely made it last year or who just barely didn't make it. and you are going to drill and drill barely didn't make it. and you are going to drill and drill and drill them. this principal was telling her be a bad teacher. what kind of teacher would i be if i didn't take the time to design my instruction so that i challenged the most advanced students and found multiple ways for the most disadvantaged students to learn something important. i would very likely be the kind of teacher whose test scores would go through the roof. but i would no longer be a good teacher. there are sinister ways to close a test score gap. i want to talk about real achievement. the best thing to come out of no child left is disaggregation of data. now i want that data to be

measuring something meaningful. to me achievement means they are growing, advancing in a dozen different ways to meeting their life's goals, meeting something to their teacher. when you hold me accountable to a test score you have doomed my students to the most mediocre yardstick you have devised. this is what we should do, to take the notes. you should set the goal of a school system, preschool to 12th grade to be responsible for making sure every single blessed child is prepared for higher education. every one of our kids is going to be more successful if they have higher education. community college, barber college, harvard, whatever it is to meet their goals. so make me work hard enough for

what comes after high school. don't even let it enter my mind that not 100% of my kids will graduate. let's do what we do based on the best research. i'm not a resempler but i use it. the best research says the most disadvantaged kids need a good quality early childhood education teacher. so high school teachers should care there is a good preschool teacher in their system, because whether or not those kids can count to 100 will affect that high school math teacher's ability to do his or her job. research shows that class size matters, especially dramatically in those early grades. so if you want to do something like universal design for learning where every child is constantly assessed with good measurements on whether or not they are advancing in the proper way, you are able to personally design instruction for your

students. measure what counts towards higher education. why can't the gaps be showing up, participating, articulating their career goals, understanding the plans to get them to their career goals, so they are prepared and qualified for every step of the continuum towards their career goals. there should be a high course pass rate. there should be a high graduation rate. there should be a high rate of higher education applications and acceptance before they graduate. you can measure all of those things. there should be a high satisfaction rate among parents and students themselves that their school was high quality and it was relevant to their lives. never before has a generation been so well prepared for the previous century. we're not doing it right. we're in the 21st century and the skills we need our kids to

know are not easily measured on a commercial standardized test, design, analysis, creation, problem solving, leadership, teamwork. those are the things i want us to move towards. those are the policies that will make a difference for my students. thank you. >> thank you. thank you. sharon lewis. >> thank you. i appreciate your comments, lilly, and a critical component from here is our conversation about what happens with teachers and ultimately what that means for students. early on in the panel presentations today, nancy jones mentioned the story of judy human. for those of that you don't know judy, judy has been a pioneer in terms of students with disabilities. when you look at what her life

has become and what education looked like for her several decades ago versus what it looks like for students now, i think there's some very interesting lessons. recently i was asked to take a look at an iep of a young african-american student who is in the public schools. and i was shocked by what i was provided. i was provided by a couple of pages that talked about very little of what this student couldn't do, very few pages on why she had the educational level she did. the goals and expectations of this child were nominal at best. she had been written off in second grade. and i was appalled. i contrast that to another family i supported recently

through a series of iep meetings in a suburban district in which the family was engaged in over seven iep meetings, over 90 hours of staff time expended again talking about this student. and the main difference between these two kids were where they went to school. where we've done a lot for students with disabilities, many of the achievement gaps we've talked about affect groups of kids who have multiple labels and often, as lilly talked about, we're talking about the same group of kids who wear all these labels simultaneously. on the first panel there was conversation about data. when we talked about idea data, we see the same kinds of trends. this is one of the places instead of looking at assessment data, we have tremendous amount of data around kids eligible

under idea, yet achievement gap continues to grow. dropout dropped from 249% to 31%. increase in diplomas 63 to 64%. increase in certificates of completion from 7% to 13%. however, african-american students saw their drop out go from 50% to 32%, only saw diplomas from 34 to 42% and certificates of completion rise from 15% to 24%. latino students much the same story. dropout rate from 51% to 32%, certificates of completion 32 to 21. we need a conversation whether

or not access to certificate of completion and having access to education for 0 to 21 years depending on what state you're in and what that means for you is a meaningful outcome for students as opposed to access to a diploma and the ability to access post secondary education. i think it's a conversation we don't talk enough about. as we move forward what are the things that make the difference, access to effective instruction. we know this. we know something nclb has done for students with disabilities despite 30 careers of trying in other ways, access to the general education curriculum for many students who had not been able to access it previously. we need to keep moving forward and ensure policies don't affect students with disabilities disproportionately in terms of having disin accessing general education curricula. not parallel curricula, the same

curricula. we need conversations on@@@e@@å trying to align esea and ida in the last two reauthorizations of those laws we continue to have sill os between the two systems and two sets of expectations for stun. it's a conversation we need to continue to have as we move towards reauthorization. at the end of the day we're talking about all kids. many of these kids are one in the same.

thank you. >> thank you. amy, welcome. can you hear me? >> one of the nice things going towards the end, people have said a lot of what i might have said. also, you guys have been sitting for more than an hour listening and that's just bad pedagoguey. if we are supposed to be educators, we should recognize we should get you to the q&a part as quickly as possible. i just want to make a couple of points. first, thanks for having me today. the second thing is i am so grateful to you for raising the point about higher ed. i was getting very distressed sitting here listening to a conversation about what it takes to get doids a high school diploma. a high school diploma is not what our kids need anymore. we're having a conversationing we should have had 50 years ago.

the number of jobs with a high school education is dwindling. the jobs growing are the jobs that require education beyond high school. what we have to do is close the achievement gap not just in high school graduation, in college but in college conclusion. the way we do that is by ensuring kids have strong preparation all the way up. from pre-k on. i want to talk just for second about the power of education to do that. we have seen and you all know planning a pretty mediocre white people who achieved great success because of great schools. that's because education is terribly powerful. what we've done in this country, which is outrageous. we organized upside down. we take the kids that need the most and give them the very least we have to offer as a nation. then we turn around and we blame

their families, we blame their communities. we say these kids can't learn, families are disorganized, communities are violent. we, who could change their schools, turn around their schools much more easily than we could turn around their communities look at their families instead of them looking at us. i think when you think about what the federal government can do, we need humility about the federal role. as i was walking in, the previous panel was talk about the limit of the investment. the federal government has to be very clear about what it expects on that $0.08 on the dollar. it has to not come with piecemeal initiatives as well intentioned as they are. it has to uses those $0.08 on the dollar to leverage big change for kids that need it the most. big systemic change that says we're going to turn the system

on its head again and ensure those who need it the most get it. not with little programs but with big systemic changes. that starts with funding. we know most of the funding comes from state and local government. we also know state and local governments aren't fair with their money. the kids who need the most get the least. as a condition of receipt of federal funds, the federal government should demand school districts give poor kids at least their fair share of local funds and that states give poor kids at least their fair share of funds. as a condition of receipt of federal funds, the federal government should be cheer and unequivocal that the expectation of schools is to raise achievement overall and close the achievement gap. the assessments we might have might not be the best assessments. what i tell people, i could have a timex, a rolex, but the timex will tell me i'm late for the meeting. we know our kids are late. the current assessments we have

do a good enough job to know we have a huge problem and we need to begin to solve them. so the federal government should expect big progress and know it doesn't measure everything, they need to be successful beyond high school. just because they don't measure everything doesn't mean the things they do measure does not matter. we expect them to raise the standards and close the gaps. when i was walking in, congressman scott was saying, and he was so right, that a big problem with nclb, enormous problem with nclb, what it did was identify schools in trouble and pretty much said fix it yourself. that is wrong. that is just wrong. what nclb did not do was put pressure on the school districts. the school districts are the appropriate first responders to schools. when we've looked at the data,

what we've seen is struggling schools tend to cluster. there are school districts that can't or won't improve their schools and pay the attention that's needed to pay to struggling schools. in this next iteration of esea, we have to figure out a way not just to hold schools accountable but school districts accountable for supports for those schools. finally and most importantly i'm going to echo what everybody else on this panel has said and what common sense tells us. the most important thing we can does ensure every child, most particularly low income kids and kids of color get their fair share of strong teachers. we know from research teaching matters more than anything else. matters more than class size. a strong teacher will get you where you need to go. we give those kids the least opportunity to have them. low income and kids of color are twice as likely as other kids to

be taught by teachers without the qualifications to teach. if we can do nothing else in this reauthorization putting the federal government on the side of those kids to ensure they have access to most important educational resource of all, we'll have made a great stride for the countrien general and these kids in particular. thank you. >> thank you. thank you. mr. cardinali. >> i'm hoping the power point comes up. you've teed up a great conversation. the one thing i want folks to walk out the door with my remarks, you've had terrific recommendation. it's not surprising you've heard these strategies by highly qualified teachers with incredible ability to be with kids under siege.

you've heard lots of funding and the way schools run and leadership. we often hear in a passing remark, wrap around services or school as the center of the community but we don't often to dive into what that means. i'd like you today to understand we believe there's actually a pretty -- good gap in a global. our challenges as we show up for school, we always say taking full advantage of other investments. what do we mean by integrated school services?

there's a technical definition. the notion is you place an individual in the school whose job it is to partner with the teachers and principals and parents and assess the needs from a whole school perspective and build an intervention strategy that uses community resources strategically to mitigate early warning indicators and keep them on task, in attendance and target them with sustained interventions. so every child that walks through that door every day, that cool system, that school building is set up to say does this child have everything he or she needs to be successful. it's easier to fix schools than communities. this is a great example of what we're talking about. so the question is does it work. so five years ago community schools offered its monologue of integrated student services to say does it, in fact, make a difference in kids' lives. we used icf international,

department of education, clearing house as the standard and launched a five-year longitudinal evaluation. at the end of the day in the last year of it, we can say three concrete things right now. one, when integrated student services are provided, we have a particular model, i'll talk to you later on, you can lower dropout rates and improve graduation rates with a real diploma in four years. secondly when you're faithful to this model of in grated service division, you can improve math and reading. finally, this is an incredible important point. you can take two match comparison scores, and one getting the same sets of services. one that has integrated services statistically outperforms the one that doesn't. it simply not enough to blanket resources at schools. it is an intentional alignment

with the overall school improvement strategy that is critical. similarly, we recognize the importance of teacher quality. we surveyed and asked questions, does integrated service provision make a difference in the quality of your ability to do your job and your assessment of the readiness of your student to come to school. 90% said integrated student services are important in helping me effective in helping my students learn. how does this relate to the student achievement gap. cis helps 1.2, 1.4 million people. majority are kids of color and free reduced price lunch. we see that student achievement is available to them by providing integrated student service provision. we see it as a critical component, not a silver bullet. and i would never want to say teacher quality is not important. it's critically important,

equitable distribution of funding. those are all critical. without integrated services provision we see those other strategies as hampered. in terms of policy recommendations, three recommendations. first integrated student services division become a critical component of education reform strategies, particularly for turning around low performing schools, school and redesign. finally as strategies for helping close the achievement gap. then there would be three, actually four key pieces of legislation we would very much encourage folks to support because they include integrated student provision as critical components. first keeping parents and communities engaged. a call to rodriguez who was critical to helping support this and congressman scott has been a cosinor on this. so as i said at the beginning, the only thing i would like for you to know, along with these other sets of policy

recommendations, an area that is often not recognized. there is a science and evidence behind integrated student services provision. cis, communities in schools is just a model. marion said something important. programs don't make good policy. when you can point to scaled examples of a strategy, translated, you have a good combination. they are great examples across the country how they work closing the achievement gap and improving student achievement. thanks. >> thank you. you've heard a lot, special assistant to the president for education, roberto rodriguez. >> thank you, mr. chairman. it's a real pleasure to join you. i appreciate the invitation. it's also a great honor to join wonderful friends, colleagues and leaders in this work on the panel. i will try to be brief. i think the audience has heard a great deal of good

recommendations in terms of how we can advance this charge of closing the achievement gap. first the question of whether that's still our imperative. it must be our imperative nationally to narrow and eventually close the achievement gap. it must be our economic imperative given the new demands of a new workforce in this new century and the fact that high quality education today is no longer just a predictor of future success. it really is a prerequisite. we're in an era that demands we prepare young folks for workforce in the future. it's a moral imperative and continues to be a moral imperative of our test of a strong democracy, our ability to deliver equity, fairness, and ton to all our citizens. really hinges on our ability to provide a high-quality public

education for all of our young people certainlyt@@@@@@@r'@

>> the quality of the relationship between the child and the relationship between the adults is really what drives better outcomes. we know that high-quality early childhood education the payoff not only economically as a greek the data but also in terms of the student advancement. the reduced need for special education. increased in gaugement, academic achievement all attributed to high-quality early plerng 0 to 5. really think we need to begin the work there and launch a race to the top in early learning to challenge our states, challenge our communities to do better in terms of the scope of services they provide our young people before they reach kindergarten, to do better in terms of the

standards as well as outcomes and results we're looking for for our youngest children 0 to 5 and do better around access, particularly for disadvantaged children. we've done that work through the launch of the challenge fund across our administration and interagency effort across department of education and health and human services to challenge states to join in a federal partnership around advancing opportunity for our youngest kids 0 to 5. and certainly in k to 12 education, we really should begin this real quick with standards, which are the foundational element around reform acrossoury where we know we need to do better and we need to ensure we have higher, clearer, more relevant and more meaningful standards for learning for all our students that really shape

curricula, shape the experience students have in our schools. and we know really we have a lot of work to do there. we've had a race to the bottom in terms of the quality of standards across the country. the most recent work out of the national center for education statistics really quantitifies this gap we see between our highest performing states around what's expected of our children in terms of what they should know and do. lowest performing states we have gaps that amount to 60, 70 points in 4th grade reading, 8th grade math in terms of expectations. that has to change. we also need a more meaningful assessment program that's aligned to those standards. so much of our ability to move forward on reform hinges on high-quality assessments that are real measures of success and

real measures of progress and growth of our young people. that must come with the standards of work as well. second we need to focus on teachers. you've heard a great deal of great recommendations across the panel on this work and here in particular we need to focus on equity as well as effectiveness. we need to level distribution and make sure that our young people that need our most talented teachers most have access to them. we also need to do more around teacher effectiveness and acknowledging that teaching is a critical profession and improvement of teaching, the ongoing learning of our teachers is something we must at the federal level and state level support. so that means new mechanisms to improve the knowledge and skills of our existing teaching workforce, new mechanisms to

them them differentiate, no mechanisms that lend to coupes so when the door closes, a teacher isn't left alone and without any support in terms of improving achievement for their students. the third point i'd like to make is on using data to drive and improve instruction. here we've taken a strong look at the existing state of data systems across the country. data is not always the most exciting part of education reform, but it's also critically important to our ability to move forward. providing feedback and ability to improve instruction and make important decisions about responding to students' learning and their needs but also

important decisions to inform decision making at the local level and state level around how we're supporting this work of closing the achievement gap. and then finally the fourth point on really intervening and improving achievement in our struggling schools. amy put it well. we have 13,000 schools that have been identified under no child's left behind's rubric needing improvement. our work does not end with labeling, identifying a school. it begins with that identification of the need to address the problem, then we need real coherent strategy and an all hands on deck approach to approve achievement in those schools. that's more meaningful school improvement plans, doing more to transform teaching and learning in those schools, doubling down on our investment in terms of resources and support for educators in those schools and

also looking at new and effective strategies to improve student learning, looking how we use time and reorganize time in those schools, so students have more time on task, more time for enrichment activities, applied learning, learning outside of the classroom, so the teachers have more time to collaborate and strategize around how to best meet those students needs. certainly we need to address the dropout challenge. you've heard a number of good comments on that as well. we will not be competitive moving into the future when we're losing nearly half of our students of color before they reach graduation in four years. and we have only two-third of our students that are walking across that gymnasium stage and reaching their diploma in four years. that certainly needs to change. then moving into college, we really are focused on doing more

not only to open the doors of access to higher education but also to focus on the challenge of persistence and completion. and the president has challenged us all by the end of the next decade to again lead the world in the proportion of college graduates that requires a real change in how we do business at the federal level in terms of supporting college completion, providing more meaningful advising, more meaningful individualized support for our students even into higher education and ensuring our systems are structured to really track individual student progress throughout higher education and help get us all to the goal of ensuring our completing competitive education for all of our young people. so with that thank you. look forward to any q&a. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. please give our panelists a round of applause.

this is just great information. [ applause ] do we have any questions? do we have any questions of our panelists? yes, sir. >> whenever there is a hurricane or brush fire or disaster, the president has the opportunity to declare an disaster area and pump money into the repairs. why is it not possible to declare an education disaster? >> the question, when i had the privilege of serving in the congress, i actually sat on the

committee of fema, that oversaw fema, disaster relief, you're absolutely right. what we have here, perhaps the tragedy has been this has not been the kind of disaster that has swept in a dramatic way one night and knocked over and wiped thousands of people out of their homes. this has been more like a disease that has crept along and steadily consumed large numbers. but the reality is that it has both morally, equitably and economically and i might add from a national security standpoint every aspect of a disaster like you mentioned. i have been encouraged, the president in his initiative, the first time in a major stimulus package going all the way back to the depression, the first time i've ever seen the amount of effort and intensity put into the education, $100 billion out of almost $800 billion stimulus

package. it actually exceeds what goes into some of the traditional means. so to me obama administration and congress, in an education economy education is the main currency and must be treated in a massive way. points out his predecessor secretary had $17 million of discretionary money. secretary duncan has 10 billion. the key is to make sure it's in line with what's been talked about on this panel that's used strategically and effectively. other questions? yes, sir. >> want to say how grateful we are for your leadership and the outstanding panel. congressman working with you steadily to advance this issue, of course to continue to be concerned about this.

one of the issues we had asked, whether or not violence as we see it play out on our streets may have anything to do with veeence played out on the television screens and the radio stations and video game cartridges and video game screens. we want to find out whether your panel may agree we need to perhaps study this issue as well as the issue of the lack of males in our household that may have been an unintended consequence of the reforms. wonder whether or not there might be ways in which we can create intervention in that respect that addresses the issues of confidence in the home without the removal of men from the households. i understand that's particularly an issue with native americans. but if your panelists could address those points, we

appreciate it. again, chairman scott, we appreciate your leadership. >> thank you. >> who wants to go first? >> i'm not sure that the -- let me back up on your question a little bit. there's no that the cultural carriers in the united states have profound affects on the communities. let me spin ahead on your question and show where we see beacons of hope. one of the most community resources are the faith-based communities where you have extraordinarily storm ethics about community values transmitted across families and they spilled over to communities. you see mentoring programs,

folks helping each other out when a fire definite states a family. in there lies an important element to me, there are institutions across the united states which can be vehicles for weaving communities together. so instead of looking for the symptoms of the problems, i think an asset approach with kids is a terrific opportunity. we have a program in community schools in austin, not far from your congresswoman's district called the xy zone where we intentionally use successful young men of color as peer mentors. they partner with the school system to bring on other young men of color and it's a great gang prevention strategy. instead of video games and violence in the community, which seems to be distracting, there are enormous centers of opportunity to build off of. it seems a less distracting way

to really drive sets of models and transformation forward. that's how we would approach that, i think. just kind of off the top of my head. >> i'd jt@%@@@ á@ "'@ @ r >> we put social learning programs and to the place where kids and teachers all done the same strategies and how to manage conflict, how to work together, how to interact and putting that across the school.

this created a safer environment and the school and in the home. some strategies that can spread and the committed, as well. there is evidence from a number of studies that you get to post strong increases in student achievement andç changes and te couple's of violence and vandalism and schools when you conduced was -- schoolwide interventions. the point of view that we're going to teach everyone how to work with strategies for managing their attention, their interactions and so on rather than going into a punitive zero tolerance approach, which is ending up pushing more kids out of school into the streets, into the arms of the gangs and then into another cycle of violence. i think we have to think about that carefully. there is a bill that's been introduced in the house by the congressman to support those kinds of programs and that's a

small piece of the puzzle. >> we have worked with different school also who have adopt successful programs to reduce violence in the school. one of the programs, it's a pilot program in philadelphia. the high school was one of the school that considered a dangerous school a few years ago. the good thing is that the principal and assistant principal reach out to different community organizations and community leader and also parent and student themselves. so to give the voice to the students for them to speak up about what's happening and for them to create, to have a dialogue among themselves. what are the issues, what can they do, what other adults do to help support them and really addressing those issues. sometimes not having the opportunity to discuss about

differences and understanding of different culture background and languages, students tend to pick on each other. so the understand of the difference is, where they are coming from, different values students have, now they formed a welcoming squad, meet regularly, discuss about the issue with the support of our community organization in the school and school administrator and parent and student themselves. they work together to kind of address the issue and promote peace within the school. so that's just one example that i think we can take into consideration. >> i think your question suggested if there's violence going on in the school, it's going to be hard to get much going on. that's why education on youth violence is important. we're fortunate to work together to get the bill out of judiciary committee, now is considered to be in the education and labor

committee. we're optimistic about the youth progress act. it's co-sponsors more than half the house. if we can get it, keep it progressing along, i'm sure we can get it out of the house, but the senate is a totally different question. but i think the youth violence is an area that we focused on with a comprehensive approach. we're looking forward to making a great deal of difference on that. yes, ma'am. >> i wanted to thank you also for recognizing native american communities do struggle with this issue. it is a large one. i'd also like to point out for anyone interested, "the new york times" ran an article today about the rise of gangs on reservation, particularly pine ridge reservation, which is actually in some ways has a higher homicide rate than most urban cities but most people don't recognize that for us i'd like to echo what's been said by

my colleagues. strength comes from communities. values that held our communities together for centuries are the things that also help prevent violence and help give hope. but education is a critical piece to any of this. without those access points on a reservation with 63% unemployment your options are extremely limited even when you try to walk a good and healthy path. it takes a variety and combination of programs of the community finding your way as the identity of who you are. i'd like to acknowledge there are really incredible models, national indian leadership project that operates out of new mexico has done incredible work for the past 30 years starting in middle school with students teaching them good decision making skills, empowering them in experiencial education. as they move through high school and college they have a core

foundation of knowing what it looks like to be a healthy person and what it looks like to be academically successful and they are trained as they go through this program to become peers that support each other. so if their families are not necessarily able to give them the support that they need, they know they belong to a larger community, that grandmother's and grandfather's may not be the people you're by logically related to but they are the people that care about you in any of the communities you walk through. i do see a lot of points of hope. we do need to recognize violence is an issue but something that can't be solved by one approach or one resemple. thank you. >> thank you. and i want to again thank our panel is for the great presentation. this panel and other panels. give another round of applause. [ applause ] >> i also want to thank my staff for putting together this great panel that i didn't do any of the work.

peter, david, elana, and a couple of others who put a lot of work into this. i think it was well worth the effort. we know from the first panel there's a legal basis for challenging the achievement gap. we talked about a private right of action but certainly the federal government can take action on dealing with the achievement gap from a legal perspective. we heard from civil rights leaders that say there's civil rights implications in allowing achievement gap to persist. we heard from this panel, we know a lot of things we can do that are cost effective in achieving !!!!!!!a

>> the number of publications have listed their books in the past year. be looked at a number them. tonight, but ron paul and linda gordon. tonight at 8:00 on c-span-2. you concede the full listç on e web site. i]>> a look back to be paid to u.s. and world leaders including ted kennedy, ronald reagan, walter cronkite, and colin powell. on new year's day, a look at what is ahead for the new year. vladimir prudent discussestmok -

vladimir putin discusses the future. >> fáçto inventors on innovatin and entrepreneurship. there is less than one month to enter the student contest. ççprocess for high-schoolç ss with a top prize of $5,000. ççççcreate a 528 minute vide of theç country potts greatest strengths. it must incorporate c-span programming and show various points of view. to not wait another minute. president obama outlined some of the missteps that led to an attempted airline bombing on christmas day. this is about five minutes.

>> good morning.. yesterday, i updated the american people and the immediate steps we took, the increase screening and security in air travel, to keep our country safe in theç wake of te attempted terrorist attack. i announced to reduce. a review of the watchlist system and a review of the air travel screening so we can find out what went wrong and fix it. those reviews began on sunday. there are now under way. earlier today, i issued formal guidelines for those refused and directed the preliminary findings provided to the white house by this thursday. it is essential that weç diagne problems quickly and deal with them immediately. the more comprehensive formal reviews and recommendations for improvement will beçw3 completn t coming weeks.

i am committed to working with çcongress,qt( intelligence, hod xdsecurity communities to make l necessary stepsç to secure our people. some of disciplinary information qthat has surfaced in the past 4 concerns. it has been widely reported that the father of the subject warned u.s. officials in africa about his son's extremist views. it now appears that weeks ago, this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community who was -- and it was not effectively distributed to get the suspect's name on a no- flight list. there appeared to be other deficiencies, as well. there were bits of information available within the intelligence community which should have and could have been pieced together. we have achieved much since 9/11.

it is becoming clear, though, that the system that has been in place for years is not sufficiently up to date to take full advantage of the intermission we collect and the knowledge we have. had this information be shared, it could of been compiled with other intelligence and a more clear picture of the suspect would have emerged. the corning sons would have triggered red flags. the subject would not have been allowed to board the plane for america. the professionalism and our men and women and law enforcement and homeland security committee case is extraordinary. they're hard-working, and dedicate it. in pursuit of our security at home, the risk of their lives day in and day out around the country and -- around the world and in our country. all americans are safer because of their success. they have taken up extremists, disrupted plots, and saved

countless -- and saved countless american lives. they are making will plot -- they are making will progress in eliminating al qaeda and other americans owe them a profound and lasting debt of gratitude. once the suspect attempted to take down the flight, it is clear that passengers and crewç took appropriate actions. what is also clear is this, when our government has information on in known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should be, so that an extremist boards a plane with explosives that could cost nearly 300 lots, a systemic failure has occurred. i consider that unacceptable. the reviews i ordered will be followed through, but it is

apparent there was a mix of failures that contributed to this potentially catastrophic breach of security. we need tot( learn from this episode and work quickly to fix the flaws in the system. our security is at stake and so are our blood. even when every system -- this should only compel us to work even harder. to be more independent and relentless andç our efforts. as president, i will support the men and women and intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security to makeç sure they hae the tools and resources needed to keep america safe. it is also our job to insure that intelligence, and security systems and the people in them, are working effectively and held accountable. i intend to fulth