>> stanley crouch on president obama, and health care.

our public affairs content is available on television, radio, and online. he can also connect with us on twitter, facebook and youtube and sign up for scheduled alert emails that c-span.org. a hearing on the elementary and secondary education act, also known as "no child left behind." the lot is up for reauthorization this year. thank you all for being here today as we continue to discuss the authorization bill.

and are to the previous hearings, which gained valuable insight to education reform in order for our country to remain globally competitive, heard from arne duncan about the obama administration views on how to best meet this challenge. we will hear from experts on turning around underperforming schools. turning around chronically underperforming schools, schools is one of the great moral imperative of our day. the department of education estimates there are approximately 5000 of these chronically underperforming schools across the country. that is about 5%. one of our witnesses has identified almost 2000 high- school with restoration rates of less than 60%. -- graduation rates of less than

60%. turning around chronically low performing schools is a daunting challenge for states, school districts, administrators, teachers and schools are often the most under resource and as a consequence, often lack the capacity to implement reform strategies. they're often filled with students to face major challenges to success including poverty, limited english proficiency. these schools seem more resources than the average school yet typically have fewer resources. despite these challenges, the number of schools in some cases entire school districts have had remarkable success in improving student achievement. we need to learn from his powerful turnaround examples. for example, in 2006, the harvard school of excellence in chicago rank among the 10 worst

elementary schools in the state of illinois. after implementing reform strategy focused on strong leadership, highly trained and effective teachers come curriculum changes come improved accountability majors, school transformation, the number of the students' meeting state testing standards increased by 25% in just two years. this is just but one example. we need to scale these up and implement this all over the country and it will be a priority focus and our reauthorization. our witnesses today will share their experiences in implementing school improvement strategies that have resulted in sustainable student achievement. their testimony will be extremely valuable to us as we were together on a bipartisan basis. to craft a realization designed to get america's lowest performing schools back on

track. i will turn to my very capable partner in this perhapfor his og statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for your diligent work in moving this along on fixing "no child left behind." it is an old version and i'm sure we will have a new version here before long. we for to created thea diverse witness list and i look for to learning more from each of you this afternoon. the knowledge of practice to bring to the table will help us as we move forward to develop legislation that builds upon what we have learned from "no child left behind" and fixes what has not been working. two issues i will focus on as we read author is a -- we authorize this. first, the man didn't turn

around models could have on a roll and frontier schools and school districts. the second is the research base used to determine whether these models have proven to be effective at turning around a performing schools. roll and frontier schools and school districts are unique and often need unique solutions to their unique problems. to illustrate the size of wyoming, i often tell people it is one of the big states but we only have 14 cities in the state of wyoming with a population exceeds the elevation. this means we have a lot of families and students spread out over a very large area and wyoming is lucky to have many teachers and principals and superintendents like dr. mitchell for dedicated to the students in these areas. where the so spread out? the towns are a long way apart and we do about policy in wyoming that grade schools should not have to-grade school students should not have to travel more than 40 miles by bus and junior high should not have to travel more than 60 miles

each way and that means we have schools with as few as one student. some as big as 15 students in the very frontier areas. i am concerned requiring school districts to use one of the four school turnaround models for schools and did the fight for school improvement will adversely affect rural frontier schools and support accountability and believe it is support to identify the poorest performing title one schools and require specific actions to spur a dramatic improvement in the schools. that said, some flexibility needs to be given to rural and frontier schools that cannot meet the strict federal requirements the need to identify and adopt turnaround strategies that will have a dramatic impact an increased student achievement and i do not believe all of these strategies can be a dignified or mandated from washington. many schools in washington do not have access to turn around partners. such as the divisions for public schools. they do not have charter operators such as green dot.

they're willing or able to open them in remote areas. it is often difficult to recruit principals and teachers to the rural areas that will stay for extended period of time. i am not proposing to give rural and frontier schools a free pass. strategy's mandated from washington will simply not solve the problems facing the schools. i believe we need to work with state and locals to find options that would work when balance without a proper amount of flexibility from the federal level. i believe it is support for congress to understand the research behind each of the turnaround models. it is my understanding from the research community that the knowledge base for how to run low performing schools is pretty shallow. the scientific evidence or research for the quarter intervention's proposed by school improvement grants is that best -- is at best sketchy. this causes me concern because there's no research on turnaround efforts in rural

schools and school districts. if you're quick to mandate interventions for the federal level, we need to be clear why we are mandating such reforms and what evidence we have for our actions. otherwise, i worry will not be weren't -- will not be learning from "no top left behind closed and just repeating mistakes. thank you to all of our witnesses. i look forward to learning more from each of you today and the effort to have undertaken to improve academic achievement outcomes for children across the country. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator enzi. we will leave the record open for any statements by any other senators. i will introduce our witnesses so we can get going. first, joel klein, the chancellor of the new york city public schools, the largest school district in the entire united states.

he oversees over 1600 schools with 1.1 million students, one had a 36,000 employees, $21 billion operating budget. mr. klein will share the turner approach to provide lessons learned at the district level. next, beverly donoghue, vice president of policy and research at new visions for public schools in new york city. she is extensive experience in new york city government or she held several positions. she will discuss the work she is done with new visions, a school turnaround partner for more than 76 public schools serving more than 34,000 students in new york city. next, robert balfance.

his call operator of baltimore talent develop high school. an innovation high school operated in partnership with the baltimore city public schools. he is published what and secondary school reform, high school dropouts with early warning systems and instructional interventions and high poverty schools. he will share his expertise on implementing reform and high poverty schools. and on addressing the problems of dropouts in middle and high schools. next, timothy mitchell, superintendent of schools and chairman school district's 71 located in chamberlain, south dakota. dr. mitchell has both research and practice innovative leadership in rural school districts and one of nine superintendents and elected by the american association of school administrators to meet with secretary duncan to provide feedback on a proven strategies in rural areas.

dr. mitchell will speak to any challenges faced by rural schools. not to be outdone by my friend from wyoming, i went to a grade school where in one room we had the first -- kindergarten, first and second, and in the next room, third and fourth and fifth in the next trend, the big room as we call it, was sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade. in my eighth grade class, there were six of us. that is pretty darn rural. marco petraeus it will wrap up the testimony, ceo of green dot public schools in los angeles, california. green dot has opened 18 successful schools in the area of los angeles including eight as part of his turnaround what high school in watts. he was a partner or he led a pro bono consorting project to develop a model with the

transformation of overcrowded, underperforming public schools. he will speak about district improvement models that a ball charter schools and the conditions that are necessary for such efforts to be successful. thank you to you all for your history of involvement in education thank you offer being here today from long distances away and for your being willing to be involved in this most important bill that we're doing and that is the reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education act. again, let me start with my longtime friend and the chancellor of the new york city schools, mr. joel klein. welcome back. >> thank you. it is a privilege to be here. thank you offered the opportunity to discuss the reauthorization of the education act and talk about new york

city's approach to school turnaround, something we a been engaged in. >> first, would you reset that for 7:00. -- said that for seven minutes. if you could sum it up in five or six or seven or eight -- if you go over eight or nine minutes, i will get a little nervous. >> it will not be the first time you have done this to me, so go right ahead. in new york city, we have no school that is where the people are higher than the altitude. anyway, over the past eight years, we have been engaged in new york city in a very rigorous turnaround strategy and i commend the president for setting out this challenge. no child of behind brought long overdue accountability to public education and cast a spotlight on the shapely achievement gap

between the african-american and latino students on the one hand and a white nation students on the other. it really has gone unaddressed for generations. the law rightfully demand that all children regardless of background and demographics have access to high-quality education. i believe the senate as well as the other elected officials who brought us together in a bipartisan fashion to get this done -- nclb done. widespread consensus that it can and must be improved. its focus on absolute achievement instead of on student progress level many schools as failing even when students were making significant gains. moreover, it takes years before interventions are mandated and struggling schools. and even longer before real restructuring is required. sometimes as many as six or seven years can go by with missing annual yearly progress coming years when a student's future is on the line.

nclb requires very little to be done about it. this has allowed districts like mine to implement so-called restructuring initiatives that have to green around the edges while our students are falling through the cracks. your estimate of education's addresses some of these shortcomings and i commend secretary arne duncan the proposed changes would require schools to show they're helping students gain ground rather than holding all schools to the same uniform expectations. we use a system like that in new york city for the past several years and it has allowed us to compare apples to apples and recognize schools doing excellent work while serving challenging populations. i am happy to say a work closely with senator bennett when he was in denver superintendent to implement a similar system and he was an extraordinary national leader a superintendent in denver. also enables us to identify when

we compare apples and apples those schools that are persistently low performing and requires us to make the difficult decision to replace those failing schools with better options. as part of our overall strategy, replacing failing schools has helped us get real results in new york city. in 2009, our graduation rate was still too low reached in historic high of 63%. after a decade of stagnation when it was flat, the graduation rate has increased for eight consecutive years under mayor bloomberg and in the past four years from 2005-2009, it has gone up by 12.5 points. in new york city when you're talking about that, you're really talking about thousands and thousands of kids. during that same four years, our dropout rate has gone from over 22% down to just under 12%. these gains have been achieved

across all of our demographic groups with our african-american and latino students making the greatest progress. much of the progress reflects the efforts of tilted educators who share our belief that the status quo is not good enough for public education. it demonstrates a commitment of our students and their families who know when it comes to education, hard work brings great reward. some of the progress reflects effective initiatives to turn around failing schools. i want to be candid, those are always more controversial. when we see the disclosed -- schools not meeting standards, we intervened to support outcomes. we have used a variety of strategies well known to my colleagues including putting in a newly-a new highly trained principal organizing a large school into small learning communities, providing extensive professional development for our teachers and introducing mentoring and tutoring services. yet sometimes some schools, the

outcomes do not change or sometimes, unfortunately, conditions deteriorated as a city in a country, we must then ask, and this is a question i want to ask the committee, which we stop children to a place unlike the to prepare them for life beyond high school? when is it simply to immoral to consign students to the prospective failure by sending them to schools where none of us would ever send our own children? those of the questions i have asked myself as chancellor over the past eight years. when our best efforts are not working to turnaround these failing schools, we must take more dramatic steps even though they will prove controversial. in new york with a solid track record and there is evidence and research to support our work of replacing low performing schools with better options. we work with new visions you'll hear from surely and with other groups as well. -- hear from shortly and with other groups as well. we do not have a lot buildings

were immediately transfer current students elsewhere. instead, we gradually place or phase out school organizations without adding new students until the final class graduates. simultaneously, we began to introduce replacement school organizations into the building. that strategy is fundamentally improved the opportunities for our kids. since 2002, we face at 91 schools and replace them with 400 new schools that are outperforming other school city- wide. our new schools have an average graduation rate of 75% even though they serve some of the city's highest need students. that is better than our city average. we often have new leaders, many new teachers and so forth. let me give a concrete example. in september 2003, we began to phase out the bushwick high school in brooklyn which had a historic underperforming an abysmal 23% graduation rate. today, >> to new schools

thriving in the same building with an average graduation rate of 72%. as i said, they were always be resistance to change at this scale. sometimes when a school is experiencing sustained the year, the only way to transform it is to -- is through real and fundamental transformational change. we believe esea must include explicit consequences for consistently low performing schools. real reform will not occur without this committee's leaders to. there are powerful groups that advocate for the status quo despite abundant evidence the current system is not getting the job done for too many students. thank you, mr. chairman, for the opportunity to present to you today. >> thank you very much mr. klein. i will know right now that twice he mentioned in the least summarizing and in your statements about the smaller -- took bigger schools and made

them smaller. i want to come back to that at the end of this panel. welcome, miss donoghue. please, proceed. >> thank you for this opportunity to appear before you. at new visions for public schools, we have focused on school reform work and new york city for the past 20 years. for the last 10, we've been closely engaged in turnaround work of a variety of different kinds that i will go into in a little bit of detail. most of our work has been at the high-school level and i will focus on that in my remarks as well. our experience has led us to think in terms of a continuum of school transformation possibilities with different leaders for change viable at schools with different levels of student performance and different levels of human capacity. for the persistently low

performing high schools in new york, the only approach to turn around that has been successful is as the chancellor described, school closure through phase out over time. this approach was pioneered in the chancellor's district in the late 1990's and has been continued under a mural control since then. new visions in about 2002-2003 tried to reform two large failing high schools without closing down and restructuring them and found that turnaround effort ended in failure. it is important to note the history of turnaround efforts nationally has a lot of failures and their to be learned from. what happened in this instance was that without a strong group of leaders and teachers within

the school, they were unable to create a viable plan for turnaround and there were defunded as a result. in a few years later than that, about 2005, we undertook began a turnaround effort with large schools that were in a little bit better shape. they had graduation rates between 50%-60%, strong principals and a number of committed teachers to the turnaround model. we divided those schools into small learning communities and a sense that point in time, they have been immensely successful. we credit the turnaround in these two schools not the division into small learning communities, but in implementation of an inquiry team model called the prapprente

imodel. the work together to identify small creek a struggling student to become the focus of on growing action research aimed at addressing specific skill gaps and moving the students into the schools success. through this work, teachers change their classroom practices to make it more effective and share the results. our experience confirmed our sense that reform that is structural only installed to the classroom door has no continued impact on student performance. the two schools i have mentioned have now got about 60 inquiry teams between them and teachers who are doing this work and giving the school for forward. this model has been extended to other schools and currently being piloted in boston and oakland as well. low performing schools need to

focus their efforts on a few critical problems at any one time in order to make headway. schools with higher capacity or start schools without a culture that has the friction against the status quo can take advantage of broader based perform malt -- performing models. the 99 small schools that new visions help create to the new century high school initiative that replace large failing schools as the chancellor's testimony, outlined in our conclusion, the new century high schools were required to appear to 10 principles of effective schools that were built into their initial design. the design was carried out in a competitive nature by school teams vying for limited numbers of school approvals. it became a rigorous process, a

learning experience for those who participated in it and it helped build capacity across new york city for folks interested in new school creation. each new century high school signed on for a target of 80% graduation rate and 92% of average daily attendance. and that target, we believe, helped to focus on schools or focus the team on student data and gave an urgency to the work they were doing. each school received support from a variety of partners in the new century initiative, which included unions, the department of education in new york, and the various funders who supported the initiative. parents and community groups were involved in the planning and each school had one community-based partner at a minimum to provide their own

unique experience and opportunities for young people. new century is a young initiative. its first schools open in 2002. evaluations of it are still forthcoming. we have no long-term view on how successful these schools will be, but the 99 schools we were involved with have a 10% higher graduation rate as of last spring than other schools on average in new york city. with the limited body of research on effective strategies for low performing schools, particularly at the high-school level, i would urge the committee to support an approach foster continued local innovation and close evaluation of turnaround programs. assessing school capacity to implement change is critical to guide the choice of an effective strategy. finally, focusing exclusively on the school level neglect important role that networks committed organizations and

other external supports play in greeting sustaining commission for success. in new york, the department to its office of small schools, was immensely supportive of this work in addition, the great wealth of nonprofit organizations that exist in new york city lent their expertise, other social capital, and knowledge community throughout the city. thank you for this opportunity to testify. a >thank you. >> thank you economist on he. >> thank you for inviting me to testify here today. turning around our low performing secondary schools. i will focus on middle and high schools. and the 21st century, we provide all of our students pathways from secondary school to a second their success, college,

military through job training. the reason is simple. there is no work to support a family if you do not graduate high school and have the ability to receive further training. we cannot have a society which whole communities are essentially cut off from the 21st century because they do not have the opportunity to attend school and prepare them for success. the reason we find ourselves in this troubling situation is far too many middle and high schools that serve high poverty populations, if we're honest about it, are designed and operated to fail. as chairman harkin as pointed out, 2000 high schools for graduation rate is not the norm and it needs to be a necessity. these high schools are found in every state in all areas. they educate primarily low and income and minority students. each of these high schools are fed by one or to the middle schools where as many as half or more the students who drop out

become disengaged from schooling. it is the middle grades that they make the independent, it is school for me? this is something something to be endured? when we lose the students in middle school, they stopped attending regularly come and get in trouble, failed courses. by the time they get to high school, they have half a foot out the door. this creates a challenge we do not fully understand. let me paint this picture based on the 15 years of experience working with these goals. in high challenge high school, you might have -- this is an urban schools -- you might have 1200 students and he might have 400 or 500 in the ninth grade. of those, one or -- 100 or 200 are repeating the ninth grade for the second or third time. many of them are of the age they can drop out. of the student center, only about one-quarter are within grade level, not even on grade level, but close. 50% are reading or doing math at

the fifth or sixth grade level. one-quarter are still below that level. maybe one-third of these kids missed a month or more of schooling in the eighth grade and the already have a habit of missing lots of school. 50%-20% might need special education -- 15%-20%-special education. do we need the equivalent of the marine corps? no. often this is approving training ground for the young and inexperienced. principal turnover almost every year, teachers every five years. we have the high speed and often the weakest answer. that is how i see if we are on it, that is teacher failure. it does not have to be this way. we've had many examples in the past decade that only educate high students the achievements. our baltimore high school is located in west baltimore in spite of the open-air drug market shown on hbo market, our

students are multiple years below grade level, declining attendance, yet we graduate over 80% and everyone has some pose secondary pageand placement. recently wrote be put together a new product which is our national service corps members which lets us put a team of 10- 15 idealistic 18-24-year-old in the building and each one has basically a group of 15-20 students to shepherd who have early warning indicators of thing off track, of having a low attendance the middle grades, of having failed in middle grades. quietly come every day, are you in school? to do the homework done? but still it at lunch. -- let's do it at lunch. sarcasm does not work. the continuing nagging and nurturing is felt by hundreds of students to stay on track. teachers cannot do that alone.

they cannot do hundreds. we add on community schools, a case managed social workers. there's also highest need kids were the effects of poverty are so strong if you have an answer, he cannot educate them. a student in raised by his grandmother is staying home to give her an insulin shot because they trust no one else. until we stop that, no haranguing is going to get the kid in school. when it closes all reforms, the present power to reach every kid that needs nagging and nurturing, and the solving the toughest cases of poverty. the real answer to all of this is the teacher tina. it is not a structural change, not getting high quality teachers, but that team of four teachers working with 75 kids so they can know them well and other stories where then supported by good instructional material, by second shift of adults who can help them get motivated in schools.

by a leadership team which supports them. -to be the final unit we built everything up from. to bring this to scale and how the elementary secondary education act can help, we need to think about two things. first of all, it is not to simply hwo, but how. i've seen it work well and worked poorly. i've seen charter schools operators take the sutter disgrace and make a success story. i seen charter schools that should be closed down. i've seen schools or knowledgeable people said, that school has no hope, and we recruited them. it is possible for all of these different ways of who to succeed or not, but what really matters is the how, this strategy is to turn the school around. i think we have to have three key points. first, you really needed accurate diagnosis of with the educational challenge is. too often we say, i know the

answer, it is a field school so nothing must have worked in anything new is better. but that does not karen t big improvement. we have to say, what is your educational challenge? how many kids are below grade level? do you have 100 kids that is a month or more of middle school or no kids? those are different stories. do you have any kids impacted by poverty or only a handful? each would need a different strategy to figure out. want to have a design to be your challenge, then the question is, do i have the know-how to put it in place? do i have a good strategy for students that are three years behind? do i reach those 200 kids? do i have the capacity to implement it? do i have people trained and do they have the time to do it? third, do we have the will? do we really believe if we work hard this will work or we just try to get through a tough

situation? finally, i we protected from turbulence? if we do not give started one day, a new district policy the next day or federal policy the third day and we have to stop? once we put this together, we have a design that meets the challenge, the know-how, the welcome of the capacity and protection from turbulence, now we have a recipe for success i just want to say in closing that the help committee has limited the forefront of secondary school improvement and many of the things that need to help us out or in the legislation that members have proposed from chairman harkin's graduation rate act to senator biden's graduation for all to senator reid's success in the middle, keeping pace i consider friends effectiveness bill. -- senator franken's effectiveness bill. i look forward to working with you to make sure we can find the solution to improve the nation for the better.

>> thank you. that was very enlightening. lots of questions i have to ask now based on that. now we turn to dr. mitchell. welcome and please proceed. >> good afternoon. it certainly is an honor to come forward today to share thoughts about school turnaround. specifically, the need to end religious based by rural and implementing strategies as well as some of the conditions that occur necessary so rural reform can be successful. let me tell you about chamberlain school district. this fall we had 858 students. we are 30 out of 161 in enrollment in south dakota. we are a large school in south dakota. of the 160 or 131 smaller than us, many have fewer than 300 students in kindergarten through 12th in their entire

facility and many still run one- ring schoolhouses just as senator harkin made reference to in his opening remarks. and chamberlain, 46% of economically disadvantaged events are part of the student body. 36% are native american, come from thand have the will enroll- dual enrollment choice. with 17% of the students qualify for special education come at 59% identified as title i and we employ about 140 full and part- time staff. where were we? before no child up behind when i took over the reins of the channel in school district, with three school sites, two were identified as 13 in the state that had not met federal standards under federali and we went into no tell the behind and were immediately put on alert because of not making it with

the economically disadvantaged kids and students with disabilities. in the spring of 2008, the native american and economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities and all schools and all subgroups made ayp and we had our first clean nclb report card. the students continue to exceed the state average for proficiency in both reading and math. what did we do? if i have to identify it, if we look hour turnaround process, we had to become a school district that has a relentless focus on instruction and professional development. we had to cultivate teacher and principal support. we to implement and use research based instructional practices and strategies and then make a conscious effort and encourage all staff to act legally and cleverly among the staff members. the major theme of our story is i talked to other districts that ask how we did it, it is about

capacity building. the best way to build capacity is to transform them into a true professional learning committee which we have seen in the literature. those fundamentals are first to make learning the purpose of your organization. he must establish a focus on learning, not just teaching. it is not good enough to just teach in my district. you must promote high levels of learning. second, you will not achieve the true focus on learning when teachers are working in isolation. you can have a teacher of the year working right next to a first-year teacher in the same school and if they're not allowed to share back and forth, you'll definitely affect the quality in negative ways. make sure the isolation is brought into collaboration. then he must carry systems and structures to build those collaborative structures on a regular basis. finally, third major focus is you must know if students are learning or not. you must have a system to monitor student learning and to

be governed by results. the most pressing issues we see in rural schools, isolation, the amount of capacity, the minister of teaching staff, lack of quality preschools, the punitive consequences designed more for urban schools and the adequate financial resources here in these troubled times. lack of parental involvement, low graduation rates to the impact of drugs, gangs, poverty on many of the low performing rural reservation schools, and we have some real issues. with all of the issues, there is a terrible stigma about being a failed school and a small, rural, an isolated community. many have administrators and teachers or dedicated, working hard every day to try to improve that learning situation. many of these schools currently have trouble holding onto administrators for more than one or two years and many rural schools, the superintendent is the coach, janitor, a bus driver

and prince about. the entire administration is lost in the simpson moved ashore district to another -- short distance to another district. the principles and staff need to stay. training to fight and is not make any common sense. -- threatening to fire them is not making any common-sense. we hope he would look at making sure we provide adequate resources, support operating conditions, and we support administrator and teacher trying to bring about that cultural change that has been or is needed. we promoted our school turnaround process and a mixture of local, state, and federal revenue sources. we utilize those effectively to build capacity so we could implement research based instructional strategies. most schools like chamberlain have a limited capacity so make sure to understand that if you're going to shift new federal dollars to competitive grants, it would be unfair for

us to compete with other districts because of our lack of capacity. we certainly want to make sure we see the increase in funding for title i because the current proposal is for federal funding. as you look at accountability, we know it is not helping our schools in rural areas and measures are too narrow and in precise and consequences are too severe. the turnaround models are not appropriate for the rural areas. i propose a fifth option to implement a research base intervention model that is reserved in the blueprint for simply rural districts. consider the distinction between positive accountability where low scores trigger an effort to help schools and punitive accountability will refocus on firing staff and closing schools and a strategy a positive accountability, consistent research based proven steps can be taken to improve low performing schools.

thank you for your time today. i would be happy to answer questions. >> thank you very much, dr. mitchell. now return to close out the panel with mr. petruzzi. >> thank you. i will go to the other extreme in los angeles, here to testify on behalf of our work to turn around locke high school in watts, one of the most chronically underperforming schools in the state of california and in the nation. this is a school that had only 25% graduation rate of its entering freshman class four years later and we're on the path to moving that graduation rate to 60%-80% by the end of the four years. i will start with the history of green dot and where we started. we operate in a district that is the second-largest in the nation, second only to new york. it is larger than 25 states in

the nation. it is larger than most or many european nations in terms of number of students. the size of ours high school's average 3500 students just three years ago. there actually are -- it is probably larger than most districts in the nation. the problems are tremendous. green dot started with a mission to reform education in los angeles to the very ambitious mission and to make sure and ensure all students have access to an education that insures some success in college leadership and life. we started at many charter organizations by building independent charter schools and we built 10 at first and the most poverty-stricken areas of los angeles. we had great success. these are areas where students were having 60%-7% drop out rate

and we were sending 60%-80% of our students to college. we had a five-eight times affect on the student populations. having said that, when we looked at the magnitude of the problem in los angeles, in spite of the issue -- and size of the issue, we realized we needed to get into the world of turnarounds of this chronic low performing schools. with 700,000 students, 700 schools and los angeles of which 250 were failing, we felt that was imperative, jackson intervene in those large and failing schools. -- we needed to intervene in those large and failing schools. the lowest performing school, this is a school that is in a very difficult neighborhood, 100% minority, 35 percent african-americans, 65% latino

come and get to committee for recent immigrants. there's a lot of gang tension. basically, a very toxic school in every possible way you can imagine. gangs for control in classrooms, race riots. you could not tell if it was a passing period or class time. the basic infrastructure of the school had failed. the teachers signed for green got to take over. we had a core group of teachers, young teachers who were idealistic and wanted to change the school. frankly, many teachers had given up and felt they could not be done. they were happy to leave us the school. we asked everybody to reapply to the school. we are two years into a and our

basic tenet was to use the learning's we had from the independent charter schools, make small school's first. we guarantee our students and every adult knows every student's name. we do not believe anybody can learn more than 500 names, so we capped the schools around 500. we broke down locke which is 3200 students into eight schools. we started with ninth grade academies the capture the incoming ninth graders and we kept them very separate from the 10th-12th graders to create a new culture at the school. lots of personalization in the student plans and also brought in a lot of a feeling of safety at the school. we brought in adults and turning the adults to have respect to conversations with the students

and actually really turning the student into a haven from the altar of violence that was around them in the community. -- ultra balance that was a run in the committee. students are attending class. the tenants has gone up 12%. and just the first year, we basically stopped the dropout rate. -- attended has gone up 12%. in just the first year, we basically stop the drop out rate. we had a huge cultural shift or the students are thinking now about college compared to a statistic were only 5% of the kids went to college. clearly, we're humbled by the difficulty of this task. these are students that come into ninth grade reading and doing math at about third and

fourth grade level. we absolutely put everybody on the college track. we do not believe that adults should be making decisions for students about one a college. -- going to college. we offer a lot of intervention for the students that are furthest behind, but we believe everybody should be there. we think this is good work. i appreciate that the committee's work on a turnarounds. we need to create the conditions for more turnaround's like this to happen. which are not easy, but absolutely essential. i do not think there is a choice of not doing turnarounds. some of them will fail, but even if we have a 50% failure rate, what is the other option? not try to do something for those kids is impossible. i would ask and recommend to the committee we create the

conditions for the flexibility that we enjoyed as a charter conversion in terms of staffing. every staff member had to reapply for the school. for the ability we have to move funds around across schools. we created a different schools with a different principles with different budgets. it was extremely important for ownership and accountability by the adults on the campus and, frankly, the students regarding where they belong. this is important work we would love to repeat and we hope the conditions are set with this committee so it can be repeated across the nation. thank you so much. >> thank you, mr. petruzzi. thank you for all of the testimonies both verbal and written. we will start the round of 5 minute questions. if any of you have time

restraints, please, let us know. from my reading of your testimony last evening and just listening to you today, it is becoming clear to me that's there is no one thing, no single silver bullet. it is a lot of different things. one thing that keeps coming through in almost all of your testimony is -- testimonies, but for yours, dr. mitchell, we need more manageable school sizes. you mention that mr. klein, miss donoghue, petruzzi mention that. you kind of touched on it a little bit, dr. balfanz. at our first meeting here, the european union testified about some of his findings and research and as in the question

about smaller sizes and he said there was no correlation between doing well and sizes of classes. i did not ask about sizes of schools, but class size. which sort of went against everything i have ever thought or believed or observed and that is that if your kids you have to teach, the better off they're going to learn all the things being equal. teachers who are leaving now come elementary school teachers who are leaving after two or three years, i've spoken to many of them. the ones that have 12 or 13 kids, they loved it those that have 20 and 25 kids, they cannot stand it. you're talking about smaller schools, but what about class size? is that an important factor which should consider? what is the size of the class that the teacher is teaching,

mr. klein, is that an important factor? >> as you said, mr. chairman, you have to hold all of the other factors equal. the most important factor, and i'm convinced of this, is the effectiveness of the teacher. i've never met the parents would not rather have your kid in a class of 25 with a great teacher than a class of 20 with an ordinary teacher. that is why yet to control all of the variables. the reason school size matters, certainly in a city like mine, is because the things that marked just testified to. we have lots of kids that it's a high school woefully unprepared. when they get to high school, if you do not have personalization, if you do not know who those children are, do not have the ability to commit to them, -- i run schools in new york. those schools have thousands and thousands of kids in them. there are a different set of challenges. what we need to do is understand

there is no uniform solution to the problem. but in fact, if you can lower class size while preserving the effectiveness and quality of your teachers, that is a great solution. in the course of trying to do things, for example in new york, we raised teacher salaries 43% and now we have six or seven candidates for every vacancy in our city. it has attracted people to come there. now, we could get the seller the same and hired more teachers, but i think we would pay the price for that, mr. chairman. >> mm-hmm. which raises the whole issue of cost. all of these changes being made at new visions, for example, how heavy factored in the cost of these changes and how are these absorbed by the city of new york? >> that is a great question for us.

week took out $250 million from our bureaucracy two years ago, just downsized it. what was said to all of our schools, instead of having -- mandatory bureaucracy, we created five internally and six including divisions partnered with us. the schools pay new visions somewhere around $40,000 or $50,000 a year to partner with them. our 1600's schools, each one took that money that we return to them and traded partnerships. soak new visions, city university, other groups as well as internal groups that we have created, one thing we have to stop thinking, mr. chairman, is that inside the school district or inside the school system that we have the solutions. it is people like new visions, green dot and others who want to creep in new york. i invited green got to new york, i'm proud to say they opened up

a school with us in new york city, and they're doing extraordinary work. new visions partners with us and some 90 different schools. i want to expand their role. we have to stop thinking of this as somehow hermetically sealed and cover and bring all of the hands together. how we fund them? i can hire the people internally or partner with her. i would rather partner with her. >> what time it is the same amount of money? why not internally? >> there are organizations out there who have a longstanding commitment and operate under very different rules and to bring talent and passion to an enterprise that is oftentimes passionless and talent was. it is not new visions. i have our bound, the college board, community groups. they're all partnering with our schools. i cannot hire all of those people inside the system, but

there is no system not to partner with them. take these guys from green dot. i happen to know them quite well. what they're doing at locke is nationally historic. it is the steepest hill to climb that you can find a public education. they do not want to come work for me inside the school system. they would feel that they were smothered by the rules. what they want to do is go take a school, let me hold them accountable until their teeth hurt, go take the school and do what they're doing at locke high school. if they wanted to it that way, i know how to dance with people like that. >> very good. >> thank you, mr. chairman, this has been extremely helpful. i see some common thread among all of them. i'm going to concentrate a little bit on the aspect rural and begin with dr. mitchell.

you mentioned a fifth option that might worked and is being researched based. could you give me more information on that? he went over that pretty fast. >> i think in the small rural situations, what we're looking at is try to take a look at some other options in the turnaround in transformation models we have been talking about. for example, in south dakota, there's a very low performing reservation school and the superintendent and staff is working very hard. we partnered with them and have done some staff exchanges and some professional development together and they're very interested in taking a look at a least replicating something that another school that has had success is doing. .

>> we've seen some work with mid continental educational laboratory, with school district leadership, and school leadership that works. so we are starting to flesh out some research here that i think could be applied if we at least would allow in the federal law to have some flexibility in these rural areas to offer the positive instead of the punitive type of accountability. >> thank you. and i hope you'll keep us posted

on that. in fact, i want to thank all the members of the panel for being willing to do this. i do have some rather specific accounting-type questions that probably mrs. donahue can answer the best. but i appreciate answers from all of you in your area. and we'll submit those to you. dr. mitchell, i want to thank you for your comments about how these rural schools are rather isolated, so a lot of those options are not available, and yet there's that same stigma on the school that creates a problem. i have some other questions, too, but, again, i'll submit those to you in writing. little of the federal funding. makes it to the high schools. turnaround efforts are lift and rarely successful. are there elements that should be required by school districts if federal funding were provided specifically to high school reform activities? or should the school districts be allowed flexibility to do

what they want? >> i think there's a middle ground. i think if you look at organizations that handle complexity better like the military, medicine, even business, they do two things. they invest more and solve problems with practice. once they do that, they turn those into standards of practice with protocol which you're expected to use. i think we need to think about a system where we can start learning key things that matter, that are fundamentally necessary to turn these schools around. as we do, say this becomes part of our emerging part of standards and practices. it's behooving on you to show that you're using a standard and practice. we'll ask you to show evidence that you're using an evidence-based standards of practice. that yufle really analyzed, what's my academic challenge, what's my engagement challenge,

what's my poverty challenge. that level of requirement i think is important. i would say we don't know enough yet to be able to say you should do this specific reform in this situation. >> i appreciate that. and i appreciated the outline you gave of the different size problems that require different solutions. that was very helpful. and your phrase "protection from turbulence," this legislative rule and if it's worth reacting to it's worth overreacting to. i'm sure that provides a lot of turbulence. if i can get a quick answer on this one, it will be my final question. i'm almost out of time. ms. donahue, mr. cline mentioned you can operate under some different rules and operations so you're not smothered by the rules. what kind of rules would those be? >> as a non-profit, we're not bound by the rules around hiring

and other issues that the school system would face working in the public sector. so we work for the people who work with us. we work with retirees who have been educators who are available on a part-time basis. we find talent where we can. i think it's the human talent, the commitment that people have and the flexibility that we can give them around their work that attracts them to continue to work with us. >> thank you. my time's up. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, senator. i know chancellor klein has to leave. does anyone have questions before he has to leave? i'd be willing to recognize anyone who has a specific question. >> i have just one little question. just for chancellor klein. >> yes. >> this is a short one, i think.

you don't do -- you stopped social promotion in new york, right? and so this is just -- i think this is a really probably an obvious answer to a simple question. if you stop social promotion, why do kids in higher grades still have these gaps? >> the answer is because it hasn't been in effect long enough. so as the assistant works his way through, we start it at the third grade, but over time, they won't have the gaps. the second reason is even as we stop social promotion, increasingly, we're raising standards, because we're finding that our students need to be really college-ready, not just simply high school graduates. >> ok. i knew it would be a simple matter. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. klein, your comment says powerful interest groups continually advocate for the status quo. our blueprint that we're working on says we would basically be

giving you, for example, four choices about how to turn around schools. my question is why should we be telling you how to do it? i mean, you know more about how to do it than we do. i mean, you're on the spot. why wouldn't it be better for us -- and for a former governor, this is a very strange thing to say. why don't we just empower you to do it by overriding all the union rules, local rules, federal rules, and state rules that keep you from doing what you need to do in these failing schools? >> well, if you can get a majority for that, i think we should move toward that. but i think fundamentally, the answer to your question is, if you hold cities, states, and school districts accountable for results and make sure that federal funding follows those rults, then i think you'll get what you want. but it's very hard to close down schools. it's very hard to change in a dramatic way the way a school

operates. the kind of thing that you see with green dot is very rare in america. so i believe that the federal government can take a leadership role. that's why i think that secretary duncan, basically learning from his experience in chicago, that if the federal government puts its finger on the scale here and says these are the fundamental models and then holds you accountable, it helps you get done some of the tough political work locally. and as far as i'm concerned, i think that's a positive thing. if this committee or the country were prepared to go further in empowering us, i'm all for it, as long as it's tied to rigorous accountabilities and performance. i think for too long, federal moneys flowed without real accountability in the system. and i think when you don't have good accountability, you don't get a good return on your investment. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. anyone else? >> let me follow up on lamar's question. because it's a good question. as a chancellor of a system-wide

program, who should make that decision within your system about which turnaround model they work with? what we decide in a bill here, should that be the decision you make? should the school district make it? should the individual school decide? how do you make -- how does that really work? where do you get down to the point where that school and the people in it know the families, know the whole culture of that community? are they in a better position to make that choice? >> my preference is to make it at the district level, because i think we're accountable to the entire community, and so basically, it's very hard. and i want to be -- i've known you a long time. the closing down schools is like very tough stuff. there's enormous pushback. i can see from the corner of my eye senator bennett smiling because he and i have had this discussion. people have a deep attachment to

a school. the people who are there at the time obviously are very emotionally affected, both the faculty and students. however, i am convinced, and i've now seen it and i gave an example, but there are many others, where my mother went to school and my father went to school. these places were broken. the people who were there worked hard. but they didn't succeed. and sometimes you need to be -- as someone accountable for running the school district, you need to do the tough medicine. that's why i think secretary duncan proposed what he did because i think he saw it firsthand in chicago. what you're likely to see, which is understandable, if people are unhappy about it, will push back. naturally. but i've often said to people in a private conversation, would you send your own child to that school? >> i'm not disagreeing with your point, except a lot of cases, they don't know what the options are. people are under this illusion that it's around the corner where everyone's going to go to school because ps 150 closed

down. it's not just the attachment to the school that closes. it's what are the options for that family and that child? that's got to be as large a preoccupation as the choice of losing the old neighborhood school. >> absolutely. but in every one of these instance, we have closed down some 90 schools and opened up some 400 schools. about 20% charter schools, the rest public schools. we worked with new vision, college board. so if you shut down a 2000-person school, you put in four 500-kid schools. you give them a new partner, new visions. you create option. and all of our datas show that we're getting 10, 12, 15-point better graduation rates as a result of that. but you can't turn it down if you don't have an alternative. >> too often, that's what we're dealing with. jack reed went through a

dreadful experience. >> i recall. >> but again, the sort of cursory information sharing with people about what was likely to happen or going to happen caused as much of a problem as the fact that they were closing down the school. how it's handled can have a huge impact. >> absolutely. >> joel, good to see you. i'll defer for a minute. michael, anybody else, you want to raise anything? nice to see you again. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> let me jump in on this question, just to finish up. i guess all of us have this experience. i come from a family of educators, of public schoolteachers. my father taught for 40 years at three separate schools. my sister just finished 41 years, the last 20 of which were near the city of hartford as an early childhood development teacher. 41 years was enough anyway. she began to see -- just the job

being a teacher, taking on so many different roles. it was just overwhelming. these kids showing up. this were early childhood programs. with so many problems. just staggering the number of problems they were walking to that school with, way beyond her capacity as a teacher to deal with as well as being educated. i know that -- i'm just curious in looking at these issues. mr. tom cruise -- there truzzdale, let me start with you. are there support staff with teachers? what are the pieces and part of that? it isn't just a teacher. that's critically important. what mr. mitchell said, it isn't just a question of how teachers teach. but teachers have an obligation to learn how children learn. and too often, it's more focused on teachers' teaching capacity than understanding how each child learns.

but the capacity to learn is affected by so many outside influences before that class day begins. to what extent do you involve these external elements in helping you turn that school around? >> yeah, a lot has to do with the level of issues of the population we had. probably about 20% of our kids in foster care. it's amazing. i think 20% of our kids don't have eyeglasses and they can't see the blackboard, but they've never had a vision check. 40% of our kids have cavities and they've never been to a dentist. they were wedge issues -- overwhelming issues. we have agree free dental and

vision care, because you can't teach a kid who's in pain. we are trying to build with a district a health facility right next door, so it can serve the entire school community. also teaching around pregnancy and gang-related issues, we brought in a team of mental health care workers. so when you were asking before about the cost of doing this turnaround, these costs are real. we spend a lot of money that is beyond -- the little money we get this california this stage of the game, we have to raise and fundraise a lot of money for these issues. as we looked at the problem, it was so beyond just affected teachers, as you pointed out. it is important that those funds are available for this. we also have to build two new buildings, because when we looked at the capacity in terms

of classrooms, that capacity worked with 40 kids per class and a 60% dropout rate. it doesn't work with 25 kids in class and less than 10% retention. we have to build. so when you look at the factors that affect the cost of this turnaround, they're very specific to the area, very specific to the conditions. and frankly, you know, the issues around what the students need to just get them in class and be able to be in a learning environment. >> we see a lot of discrepancy of what comes in as our product. in kindergarten, you have those who have had a couple years of parents supported preschool. you have those that have had head start. you have some that have had no

former preschool training. they just show up on your door in kindergarten, and what are you going to do? think about this. the first day of school, you take your kindergarten class down to the gym, you tell them i want you to run from one end of the gym to the other end of the gym. one rule. you run as fast as you can, but you all have to get there at the same time. a kindergartener will raise their hand and wonder what you're talking about. sometimes you have to get that engrained into your teachers what that aspect of their product is. there are different things we can do to try to approach that. but we certainly as part of that, we have to find within the day and outside of the day. and we used a lot of resources that we thank you for. stimulus resources. a 21st century learning communities grant. so we do have a before school program, an after school program, we have a saturday school program, we have a summer school program.

so we're doing lots of different things because not everybody can learn at the same time based upon we don't have all the same product. as soon as i gave that analogy to my teach es in our district, -- teachers in our district, we started to understand at a higher level what we needed to do. it is important that they have the opportunities to do some different sorts of things that allow for that extended learning time, because not everybody learns in the same amount of time. >> really quick, i think a point to add is we really have to think about strategically how we can create a second shift of adults, which begins with parents but needs to extend beyond them. there's ways of leveraging federal investment, things like the serve america act, and national service volunteers, service corps, which brings in young adults. also, college work study students. and national non-profits really develop their ability to give

high quality support groups, like the boys and girls club have actually all recently rebuilt themselves to focus on keeping kids in school on track. we need to integrate those efforts to providing schools with a second shift of adults, so every student can get these range of services and support, not just all in a teacher. if you ask a high school teacher -- you have 125 kids you share with no one. there's no way you can give additional support beyond a handful of kids, which leads to triage, which leads to burnout, which leads to frustration. we have to empower teachers with a second shift of adults helping them. >> great concept. thanks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'd like to go back -- mr. petruzzi, i'd like to go back to the question that i asked, and get a little perspective on it. 1991 -- i mean, this whole question about how to help schools isn't so new.

the first president bush came up with the idea of new american schools. charter schools were just getting started. a rt of excitement about it. david kearns and i helped him raise $50 million. we talked about new models for new american schools start from scratch schools. albert shanker said you can have a master -- well, he supported the idea of design teams. there was the idea of $1 million of start-up money recognizing extra moneys needed for a start-up and flexibility. now, the -- that wasn't sustained. but the question i have -- i'm coming to for you is i support the secretary's notion that we really ought to focus on the 5% of schools that are the worst. and we all from our own experience know that even in the areas where those schools are, there are some enormously successful schools. we have failing schools in memphis. there's a math and science charter school where the ninth

graders are taking a.p. biology. we all have these stories about what people are able to do in their own communities. so my question is, what can we do here to help you succeed there. and my advice over the years is that not by telling you what to do, but by empowering you to do it. as governor, i didn't know many people in the state department of education who could be of any help at all in helping memphis turn around failing schools. as education secretary, i didn't know many people in the u.s. department of education who could go help you do anything much about lockes school, and i don't think we could do much to help you turn around lockes school by saying here are four things we thought of, now pick one of them. so it looks to me like the most important thing we could do is if we wanted to be really radical is just override the union rules, override the local

rules, override the state rules, override the federal rules and hand it to you with some bit of accountability and say take it and report to us and we hope you succeed. now, that is, as mr. klein said, may be fanciful to think of, but isn't that the real problem? don't you run into too many rules, too many regulations from all directions, too many interest groups who are in your way in keeping you from doing the things you need to do to help succeed? and if that is or isn't, what can we do to help you and others succeed in your own school districts rather than say here are four ways to turn around loches school, pick one and we'll watch and make sure you follow the ideas that we come up with. >> first of all, i would say the fatal flaw in my opinion of no child left behind was this loophole around failing schools. in california, a failing school after five years, you either close it down, reconstitute it, turn it into audio charter, or

"other." 99% of others chose other, which was a plan that gave them a check and they just continued to fail forever. the one thing this community can do is put teeth on accountability. you only get to fail for so many years. and then it's over. >> but what happens when it's over? >> you need to do one of the things. i agree with you, it needs to create a -- you need to close that entity and start a new one, whether that is with a charter. i actually don't think charters have the capacity to take on 5,000 students anyway. i think we should be part of the solution. you need to throw the kitchen sink at this. i also don't think we have the capacity to do 5,000 turnarounds anyway. i think those schools that are closed and restarted need to start with a level of flexibility around budget

allocation, money, people they hire, how they hire. we got abolished seniority rules around that. so it needs to be -- >> they would require closing the school period, but by a federal law. >> or reconstitution or some way of starting over that allows you full flexibility of rethinking that school. i think we need to put an end to failure at a certain point. >> but flexibility means freedom from union rules, freedom from local rules, freedom from state and federal rules and sometimes freedom from court orders. is that the kind of flexibility you mean? >> we're unionized. >> i'm not -- >> i'm just pointing out that it's about good union rules. >> union, federal, local -- >> that's right. budget flexibility, number one on my list. right now, there's so many

categoricals that kill schools. schools that have $1 million for school uniforms. >> would you think about that and send to us exactly what you think the teachers should be? >> i sent it to secretary duncan, i'll send it to you. >> i appreciate it. >> thank you so very much to all of our panelists today. it's been very interesting. dr. mitchell, i wanted to single you out personally because i wanted you to share your experience as a rural district superintendent. i know the rural districts in my home state of washington -- in many schools, student achievement has not improved in a long time. tough decisions have to be made. there's not just one right way to do this. and i wanted you to talk to us a little bit about what some of the options are in rural

districts and what some of the challenges are that you have. >> as i talked earlier about some of those challenges, one of the things that i firmly believe in, and i did some research in south dakota, and for south dakota, we found very specifically that those school districts that were able to have the resources and prioritize building capacity of their own organization and have done that in aligned and focused waying which looked at the things i talked about, focusing on collaboration and being governed by results. those were the districts in rural areas that were being very successful. we have tried to, at least in the central part of the united states, we've talked a lot about that. and as i did mention earlier, we are trying to share with other districts our story about, you know, i want to be very care. , because sometimes a lot of people come in and say, well, could you give me a copy of your school improvement plan? it's like, well, our plan worked for us because of the specifics

of our particular unique situation. in that unique situation, because of population that we serve, we went out and we basically looked at specific strategies that we needed to be in that had a research base to them, and also took a look at our curriculum to make sure we were aligned and focused in the right directions to make sure that when students went from one grade to the next grade, they knew what they were sposed to do. we started building capacity organization. we had to start making a stop doing list. in public schools we don't do that. you have to take a look very drastically at things that you're doing in the organization to stop doing that. so there certainly is a struggle in rural america because of the isolation to build capacity and build the networks. if we can share stories and we can share research and we can work with one another, you know, that's our only option. we're talking about south dakota. if you've got a rural school of 200 students and it's the only school in 100 miles radius of anybody, there's got to be some

way that we can provide some sort of positive -- >> can't exactly fire all your teachers. >> absolutely. it would be disastrous and no one would go there. we have to be careful about making sure in those particular situations, is there an option, you know, that is positive, that built the capacity of organization that we found in rural schools, there is some research that we're starting to flesh out, is very successful in helping to build the capacity to make that organization be more successful. >> ok. thank you. i wanted to ask anybody who wanted to comment about our low-performing high schools. i think we all know our kids need a strong high school degree to get a job in tomorrow's market. and i think an important part of preparing a student high school that has been neglected is giving students a chance to really experience what it's like in some of the career fields and a career pathways program, to help them connect what they're

doing in the classroom to something real when they get out. can any of you comment in your experience what roles it's played in your success? >> sure. actually, it's actually called high schools with career academy. we organize high schools who create a ninth grade academy to create high intensity introduction to high school, where they give you lots of support and personalization. in the ninth grade, we have a classicaled freshman seminar, where part of that is career awareness. you actually do an inventory, people, data, things, what interests you? and we actually select one or two or three or four upper grade career academies, which are broad themes. it's like engineering or -- >> health care. >> health care. or public service. and the whole theory is that aids the kids to make a choice. i feel an affiliation to that. i'm choosing my upper grades'

experience. those academies and market the kids. help change the world. and within those academies, then they take career electives. 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade. it's not just scatter shots. the actual evidence shows the kids that do best are kids that graduate high school with a college preparatory curriculum and a c.t.e. concentration. those are the kids that have the absolutely best outcome. only about 5% of our students nationwide have that combination. and so i think it is a very -- for both engaging kids -- >> do you engage with your business community about the careers they? >> yes. you look at local labor markets. all those things are factored in. >> anybody else want to comment on that? >> we experimented with this over time with just a mild

flavor. ates right now, it's architecture and engineering. it is a full career tech and college prep academy with algebra 1 is taught with an emphasis on architectural issues and construction issues. same for geometry. you are actually building a house, from designing it and building it. >> your academics -- >> too early to say. we see the engagement of it. we'll get back the you in two or three years. we hope we are very successful with that. >> ms. donohue? >> the last four schools that we've created have been c.t.e. schools in an effort to revitalize the c.t.e. model for high schools. and they're in somewhat

non-traditional areas, such as advertising media, careers and tv and film, medical careers and so forth. and the notion is that each such school will have industry counsel representation, internships for students, and move students to a clear understanding of what that particular career may offer at a variety of different entry points. so it's not just the sort of junior college aspects of having a medical career as an e.m.t., but perhaps the nursing or doctors degree down the road. we find that multientry point kinds of careers make very good themes. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and this has been a terrific panel. and everybody's been great. i really want to focus on dr. mitchell for a second. i'm sitting here just marveling at the consistency between your responses coming from two totally different environments.

one heavily populated population, one a very rule population. the magic word was flexibility. you gave the answer, well, it worked for us, meaning it might not work for you. and what you did with the academies by taking a big school and make it a small school within the confines of the samente environment you were in, i think is a real testimony to one of the things we need to look to. i know senator harkin and senator enzi and i were all on the conference committee on no child left behind. when you're talking about the fatal flaw, mr. petruzzi, was that it didn't have any teeth. the reason is we couldn't have passed it with teeth. by that, i mean there was a lot of pressure of giving too much flexibility. you talked about the two keys being flexibility and budgeting and flexibility in hiring. and i would echo that. when i was chairman of the state board of education in georgia, we gave flexibility of systems

that were our top systems. those that weren't our best systems, we didn't let it give them any flexibility, which was backwards from what both of your testimony really has been. i did want to ask one question about a special interest i have, and that's special education, and special needs children. what's your experience with the disaggregation of special needs children in los angeles and your charter schools? >> we have full inclusion, so we serve an entire needs from moderate, mild, moderate severity to high serverty issues. it's very expensive and difficult, but it's a must have in those districts. right now those students, in my opinion, are being

overidentified. what we've noticed taking over locke is that we probably easily 40% to 50% of those students have been put into a restrictive environment and we've shifted to serving them in a more classroom environment, which we think will better serve those kids over time. you tend to see that a lot in poor communities. there tends to be an overidentification of african-american males, which is sad, and frankly takes away from the actual issue. it's poor classroom management sometimes. it's translated into a special ed rating. i think that's a fact. >> also happens in rural system. dr. mitchell said 17% of chamberlain was identified as special needs. is that correct? >> just going back to the first comment about flexibility here quickly. the rubber is going to hit the road for me here pretty soon. i just accepted a position in

south dakota at our second largest school district and they have 13,000 students. one of the things they're banking on is what i did in chamberlain is going to work for 13,000 students. and i feel very confident that it is, because i've seen it also work in larger school districts than that. so to focus on instruction, collaboration, and so forth, i think is something that's not limited just to rural schools. but i run a $1.5 million special ed program with $1 million of revenue. a very difficult issue for us, in no child left behind, we used to identify some students as triple threat. they're economically disadvantaged, native american and special ed. see a large number of our native american students -- >> counted against three times. >> we've had to really focus on that. they're a major part of what we do when it comes to hiding extended learning opportunities. a thing that was high priced and wasn't a big bang for buck was a lot of out of district placements and seeing a lot of

kids being farmed out to special institutions. we've tried to decide to train our people in house, bring them bark and try to provide high quality instruction. and that has been very successful for us. but it does continue to be a certain difficult task for us in rural communities to provide what is needed for special education students to achieve what they need to achieve. >> is it also difficult in meeting a.y.p.? is that the most difficult group of all for you? >> i would say yeah, it is probably one of the most difficult groups, trying to make sure that there's certainly -- for example, right now, i have a special education opening. i've had the same opening for five years. i can't get an applicant. i mean, it's a very difficult position to find people that are qualified and want to do the job. so that becomes part of it. make sure you have a high qualitied teacher. but certainly those students' needs are simply severe at times. >> mr. chairman, at the risk of

taking too much time, could i have one -- could i get to my punch line? here's my punch line. you both testified that the value of flexibility in budgeting, flexibility in hiring, flexibility in policymaking, the rigidity of the assessment model in special education appears to me to be a particular problem, because there's a diversity of special needs, but with the exception of 1% waiver for cognitive disability, you got to have the same paper and pencil examination for all. i proposed for a long time what what we ought to do is let the special needs assessment be determined by the i.e.p. i'd like your response to that, with a you think about that. >> i'm not an educator, so i don't think i would actually probably serve the panel right by offering an opinion on that. so i'll just leave it up to you. >> yeah, because i have an opinion. [laughter] it is inherently unfair what

we're doing to special education students right now. everybody knows it. we go in and we have an i.e.p. meeting. when those i.e.p. get conflict, they want to bring me in, and i go i don't know what's going on here. you have the caring people involved, you have the parents involved, the providers involved, the teachers involved, working to determine what should be the adequate educational plan for that student. why shouldn't that group also decide what is adequate for progress for that particular student? so i would fully support based upon what we see now as failing our special education kids by holding accountable for this type of testing situation, the flexibility is not there for us. we have some highly cognitive kids that we have to force to take standardized testing. if you watched it happen, it's inherently unfair. we need to move forward to hold those students accountable. they can be held accountable for their learning. we just need to find the

appropriate method to do that. >> thank you very much to all of you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. chairman, for this hearing. thank you to all the panelists. one of the themes i've heard today among others is leadership. and whether it's about teaching or collaboration or results, as dr. mitchell laid out. or dr. balfanz, you were kind enough to mention the school principal recruitment and training act that i've authored with senator hatch. i want to ask you about principals. to what extent is -- what is the role of the principal in a turnaround?

>> it's a multifaceted role. i think we often still even saying that, we put too much of the burden on them. we just find the right principal, they can heroically come in and turn the school around, and if they don't do it in a year, we'll get rid of them and try somebody else. but the truth is especially in a big middle and high school, you're talking about a staff of 100 people easily. for one person to be able to come in and say i'm going to mold you to my vision or the vision of the school without any help doesn't work. we often put a gung-ho principal on top of a dysfunctional leadership team. it's often the people who scheduled the high school, those are the operators of the school day-to-day. >> i see doctor. mitchell going, oh, i wish we had an assistant principal. >> yes. so i really think we need to think about especially middle

and high school developing leadership teams and having them be the leaders. and putting time so they have time to train together. one mistake we make is we try to do turnaround over the summer. you're the new principal that's going to take the school over, but it's actually still running. it's actually not a hospitable place to you. you're off site and you got to pull a team together enwe need to say let's have a leadership team, let's give them six months to plan and train and prep and have a design and be up and ready to go. >> well, mr. petruzzi, in blue dot, i'm sorry -- >> green dot. >> green dot. blue, green. anyway. [laughter] you do a residential thing where basically a principal is with a mentor for a year, is that correct? >> we have a principal residency program where we trained

principals on under thearounds for a year before we do it. they spend time with people that are doing it already. so right now we're traying principals based on locke experience. basically shad e doing some of the best principals. also the assistant principal job for a month and a half. so they're learning the job. >> i want to get back to money with you in a second. dr. mitchell, you said that in rural school, the superintendent can be the principal, the bus driver, teacher, a coach, and more. i was just in minnesota at the end of last week and i had a round table of principals, teachers, school bus drivers, coaches, they were the same

person in many cases. and it really is a different deal for rural schools. and you don't have the flexibility at all to fire teachers. you talk about building capacity. how do you build capacity when you really don't have the resources, when you don't have the teachers around there, when you don't have those resources? >> building capacity is resource intensive. not only in dollars, but in time. and in lots of different things. there's lots of ways you got to look at doing it. just like i'd have a discussion with my school board the other day. i'm leaving the district, what's going to happen next? well, it's not the tim mitchell show. it's the fact that one of things that i learned in my career very early is you have to be a leader of leaders.

so i've tried to make sure that we built a capacity of all the leaders, not just principals, but also teachers, so that there's a leadership amongst -- there's many efforts if our district that are very successful because i finally got smart enough to quit being the dictator of the district and put groups of teachers together and put a teacher leadership team in charge of it. i just facilitated for them to do the things that needed to be done. but i also have seen that the most important thing that i want in a principal today is someone who's good and trained in instructional leadership. we have some stuff at the north dakota league that's going through the central part of the united states, which is good practice to get principals so they understand and can prioritize the instruction of what they need to do. and the second thing we're looking at now is a lot of research with morzano, with school leadership that works and district leadership that works. there's about 26 or 27 things that a principal has to do effectively, but only six that a

superintendent has to do. i can do those six. that's why i don't want to be a principal anymore. >> i want to pull an isakson and ask one real short question. i was sitting there in yao of -- in awe of what you've done, mr. petruzzi. i heard you talk about research and fundraising. i know you're from bane. and i know you know people. right? and so i'm thinking, how scaleable is this? and then you spoke to that. so i just want to make sure that -- i've seen successful charter schools that have wonderful fundraising arms. >> so our model is actually to break even on public dollars after the first four years. the reason we needed to fundraise is we actually have to build two extra school buildings to support extra -- the student retention that we're achieving.

we also have -- the first three years, we were basically building ninth grade academies that are growing and we have an overstaffed model in the first year to connect with the kids. >> so you had the flexibility to do that -- >> because we fundraise. absolutely. not from people i know but from the bill and linda gates foundation. >> ok. thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator mruczkowski? >> i'm sorry i missed the testimony. i was at another hearing. but i did have a chance to read all of your submitted testimony, and i appreciate your advocacy. i appreciate your work. in trying to understand how we can really be making a difference with some of our schools. mr. mitchell, i was interested in hearing some of the comments that you had in response to senator franken. we've got some very serious

challenges, as you know in the state of alaska as we try to reach out to our students in our very, very remote and very rural communities. i'd be curious -- you kind of joked about -- that's why i don't want to be a principal anymore. one of the challenges that we face in our state is we just can't get the administrators. we're doing a little bit better with our teacher recruitment and retention, although that's a serious challenge in some areas. but if all of these turnaround models really revolve around getting a new principal, what do we do many finding these new principals, particularly if they're looking at it and saying, ok, well, i'm going to be the first one on the boat out of here. how difficult is this going to be in rural states? >> well, as you probably know,

it was difficult before we started this process. >> true. >> and now you've got people who can certainly check report cards and see where a school is at before they'd even apply for the job. in south dakota, we'll do a national search for a superintendent of a very large school district and maybe get six people that are interested in even attempting the position. so certainly, you could be creating, you know, some sort of a problem area here that's just going to get worse and worse. we were talking this morning about -- i started as a superintendent when i was 35 years old in south dakota, for a period of time, threw all the rules out and anybody could be a superintendent. and so that's how i got the job. i since went on and got my full certification and degrees to back up, because i thought that was important. the problem is getting people to do the hard work. getting people to understand even once they get those particular jobs, once they put the models in place, there's still a possibility that even

though they're supporting growth, they're not going to be able to reach the bar. so they're going to force some sort of transformation, which is going to send them down the road and put a blip on their record. so the recruitment and the retaining of people right now is getting to be at a very critical age, especially as many of the administrators are aging and leaving the profession. >> i appreciate that. mr. balfanz, you had noted in your testimony that the research and being focused primarily on the middle and high school students when you're talking about those dropout indicators, but we all recognize that there are factors that come in to play that certainly are contributors, whether it's poor vocabulary development, or social indicators that are out there. should we be looking earlier and

if so, how early? i looked at kids that get so frustrated so early on, and that level of frustration never abates at anything. it just gets worse. i think that inhibits their ability. are we waiting too late on this? >> i think the answer is we need to have a continuum of support through all the key transitions. >> what are the key transitions? >> pre-k to second grade. two things. basically learning the basic reading schools. and also math. math gap is the smallest in kindergarten. it gets bigger over time. staying on top of that and making sure it doesn't grow. also socializing into the joy of schooling. early on, schooling is joyful. socializing is a chore, there's so much tension, we all have to pass our tests. that builds over time. the next key transition is in the middle school. this is why focusing on one at a time is not enough. there's kids who do really well in middle schooling but in early

adolescence they're making early decision. their relationship so their neighborhood and school is changing. you have have a great elementary experience and still get tripped up then. and the transition into high school, the same thing. 20% of kids struggle in the ninth grade, did fine in eighth grade. had good test scores, did fine every day, on nobody's radar screen. finally, a transition out of high school. we have to have pathways to post-secondary success. we put tons of structures in high school. three levels of extra help, and that's necessary. but that doesn't leave you prepared for a community college where suddenly you've got to figure out everything for yourself. i think really those four points, we need those. >> is any one more important than the other, would you say? >> i don't think so. i think that's where we get into trouble. we want to pick and choose. you miss one of them, you're not good to go. >> i'm not sure that we're

focused on the initial one yet. >> right. >> the pre-k to two. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator bennett? >> thank you for holding this hearing and thank you for your testimony. it's been fascinating. on the flexibility question we were talking about earlier, i think maybe one way -- there's a difference between giving people the flexibility to do something and giving people the flexibility to do nothing. which has been the outcome in too many places, i think. but having said that, i'd say the most turbulent thing i ever did when i was superintendent of schools was close schools and turn around schools. i learned a lot of lessons and learned how to do it better. but there are always ways of doing it better. i think one of the things that keeps people from doing this work is that turbulence. and the problem with that is that kids end up in institutions

where they're not learning anything year after year after year. and they just pull further and further behind. i know new visions has done a lot of work in this area. i wonder if you would share a little bit about what you -- about how to diminish the level of turbulence that this kind of change comes with. and then the other panelists maybe also, when they see the new versus the old. >> it's a very great question. i think what we have tried to do as a non-profit with lot of connections into neighborhood groups into the city is to work very closely with community, to help them understand why things are happening, what options are out there for individual students as we start new schools

and new neighborhoods, bus parents, to see schools that are functioning well, is they can understand the vision of what it was that we were talking about, and to create an atmosphere where that dialogue had a place in the community, and that we're going to be impacted. i think that was a hugely important thing. and it's something that you need to -- if you're engaged in turnaround work, spend a lot on the many districts. >> this may be an unfair question to ask you instead of the chancellor, but do you have a sense that new is beginning to replace defensive old? are you seeing that tip at all in new york? or baltimore or los angeles?

>> the small schools that were created by new visions and a number of other non-profit intermediaries are heavily in the main heavily oversubscribed. the choice that new york goes through to select a high school is one of computer matches. and we see that the number of students who are actually positively desirous of getting into these schools exceeds the number of seats that doesn't help a situation where in a school that is being closed and as the chancellor mentioned, the philosophy you simply stop taking students in and you sort of as best you can, the students who are there usually with extra and additional resources to help blunt the sense of have and have not. but for a parent whose student is in one of those closing

schools, it's still very traumatic. and there's really i think no way to sugar coat that. >> baltimore is an interesting example, because it's one of the few places where it's actually getting to scale. there's more high school kids or schools that were started in the past decade or so than schools that have been around for a long time. people are now -- the enrollments are going down and going up in the newer starts or the restarts. so think you do see that tide turning. the census is there's enough good spaces for a lot of people, not just a few. from a kid's point of view, no one understands better that the school is going nowhere than the kids. they react according toly. if -- they ea act accordingly. not much is going on? i can miss a few days. nothing's going to happen.

the kids will respond to an improved environment. they will come and put forth effort because they see it's now an engaging place to be that's organized and going somewhere. i think that keeping the kid's point of view is important. they can vote with their feet and with their effort. >> did you have anything on this, mr. petruzzi? >> i was going to say you can't undercommunicate this with the students in the community. you have to engage them really early on and particularly in that turnaround swaying. i think most kids actually recognize that their school needed better. they had been told that they were not college material. we have to actually take them to some of our schools and show them that. we assisted on uniforms. that was the number one student cry, was to wear uniforms. so the student body actually did a fashion show with uniforms. and that kind of broke a little bit the ice around uniforms.

9 % of students showed up with uniforms the first day. >> i had a principal say to me once that they had a rule about no gum chewing. and he would catch kids every now and then chewing gum. he said, do i really care? am i really worried about it? and he said, no. but the fact that they're worrying about actually following the rules is important step forward. i just have one last question for mr. mitchell. mr. superintendent, i used to hate it when people asked me these questions, but on the human capital question that you were raising at the end about finding administrators, finding teachers in rural areas, we faced this in my state of colorado as well, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you change that you think might have an impact on your ability to be able to fill these positions that you were talking about? >> i think sometimes inadvertently, we do a tremendous disservice to our

profession. my wife is a teacher. she's a great teacher. but with her experience over the last 28 years, the things she told our three daughters was go get a degree and do something other than teaching because of the frustrations in there. so hopefully -- right now, one of the things that i just saw some latest research is that what teachers want most is supported leadership. so if we could put supported leadership in there and leaders like myself who go out and help people and champion, it is great to be a superintendent of schools. yes, it is hard work. it's great to be a principal. you know, there is a calling here. it is something you can be passionate about. i think sometimes we do our own profession a disservice by talking that way. and not being good role models for students that we can ignite that passion in if we really put our minds to it. our minds to it. .no carrierringconnect 2400

can you give this sort of a perspective? >> the honest answer is right now we have mixed evidence. you can point to success and failure for everyone of those models. in truth, we have not done them enough place to know how the average breaks out. one average maybe generally successful or not. we really need to analyze each school's challenges and get a design that fits that. in some places in this capacity. you need fresh capacity.

and other places, they have not been exposed to the right now how to know what is good, for example, adding two years behind in reading the one size fits all is a struggle. >> i wonder from your perspective, do we have an ongoing research plan to try to validate these models rather than you have three items on the menu, pick one? it is your choice? >> i do not think there is yet the need to have that. part of the challenge is it is big scale research. how'd you know you're doing -- you're doing a purse change, which parts matter? it is a big scale project. >> would anyone like to comment? >> we have a lot of people

studying this. i think the be about the locke high school is that we basically took over an entire attendance area so there was a before and after the were clearly not a will. the committee has not changed. -- the community has not changed. if anything, there are tougher issues than before. i think we will likely have really good evidence by external by waiters in the next two or three years that will validate all of this. >> but in the interim, we are pushing schools very hard to pick one and do it. a lot of it is just going on that rather than -- going on gut rather than prove. picking out a percentage of teachers of vibration based on performance of students, i think

we all understand outcomes are important. he could have the best intentions in the world, but if the class is not performing, we have to make changes. but there's also consequences of people thinking through this. the consequences in terms of cleaning -- gain in the classroom of the best teachers and in some cases, taking the children of the most challenging and saying, wait a second rid of my faith depends on getting the best grades of the kids come up with the best kids. just this whole consequence, has anyone thought to through that? >> i think people are struggling with that. we do want to have some evidence or making an impact in your classroom that matters. when you get down to the practicalities of measuring it, many problems come up. even at the tactical level, there are problems with the growth modeling. you have to validate -- you have

to evaluate over years. teachers change assignments. how many teachers will you have to route the same class for three years? there is a lot of technical challenges that still need to be weighed out. >> superintendent, you are right at the point of this peers as they say and the military context, your impressions about the potential and any sort of human endeavor to try to play the roles and in some of these rules, taking teachers or every teacher out and giving them basically a year to make the grade or less, what is said to in terms of unintended consequences? i know this is a question that has -- but in response, i would appreciate. >> i just recently got an e-mail from back home that said, the day but will come congratulations because today is testing day. this weekend in south dakota, where during staff test that will determine our accountability.

my wife is a teacher. i have seen all the tension building as we get to this high- stakes test that everybody understands that have worked very hard but everything can be determined in the next couple of weeks so that is a major concern. one thing i think is really a key block to our success in chamberlain is a collaboration. if you start putting in the competitiveness of the pay program, i have looked at the possibility of maybe looking at some group compensation so that collaboration continues, but to take it and make it a single -- i am sure i confined -- we know some of the measurements, the metrics are a little may be unreliable and not a valid, that i might have a great teacher this year and next year, but for some reason she was not a great teacher the third year. what happened? >> i was in the classroom. [laughter]

>> what is that going to do to the system? new research out about motivation. motivation is not always carrots and sticks. it is the economy, mastery, and other things. as i mentioned earlier, the most important thing for some teachers for staying in a school is supportive leadership, not the amount of money they are being paid. >> esteem, a sense of purpose, very difficult things to find. thank you all for your testimony today in your leadership for many, many years. thank you. >> thank you. senator hagan? >> thank you, chairman, for holding the hearing and for the witnesses for your testimony. it has certainly been excellent. i think as the committee moves ahead in our efforts to reauthorize the elementary and secondary education, i think it is critical we understand and that the persistence the of helping to turn around our low performing schools.

i think we can no longer continue to allow the chronically underperforming schools to get away with improperly serving our students. we have got to do better. as we strive to ensure our students are career and college ready, i think we can all agree this effort is not going to be an easy one. but we can certainly agree that we can no longer afford to wait and the time is now. dr. balfanz come in your testimony you talked about the nation's 2000 drop out factories. you note each of these drop out factories are linked with one or more middle schools where a least half of the eventual drop outs began the process of disengaging from school. i believe our middle school students are overlooked and to that end, i've introduced legislation titled the student attendance and success act. it is acknowledges that truancy at the middle school grade levels is one of the biggest indicators that students were on their way to being a high-school

dropout. i strongly believe we need to do a better job and acknowledging that while our students are in the sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grades, we need to of knowledge that before it is too late. i addressed in research has demonstrated by states learning environment and better in beijing parents and their communities and schools and helping students get back on track academically that students are much more likely to succeed. can you share your thoughts on the contribution of problems at the middle school level? >> yes. it is on two levels. one, students are disengaged in middle grades. there had three level -- 3 years of developing those bad habits. it is that much more challenging in the ninth grade to turn it around. chronic absenteeism in the middle grades is a problem. any place that has the dropout problem has unembellished chronic absentees problems in the general level.

we follow the city and found 40% of the kids between six great going five years out missed a year or more of schooling. there is -- that is not surprising. if he missed two out of five years, how are you now ready for high school? teachers have a no-win situation. i can say, let me remind you what we did yesterday and is the kids that were there or forge ahead and lose the kids that were not. the chronic absenteeism affects the kid and the whole school which affects the amount of learning that happens. the achievement gap in the engagement that in the middle grades really do present overwhelming problems in high school and that is why i really disagree with the idea it is the 6-14 we have to focus on. high school, a feeder middle schools and pathway to collagen career as a block as well as the elementary -- college and career

as a block as well as the elementary. >> at the scene the problem solved? >> yes, because many are 12 year olds. you can work with a 12-year-old to get to school. ya better chance than with a 16- year-old. part of it is lack of attention. there are positive recognition programs. >> thank you. i understand and year three of a school that does not meet annual yearly progress that those schools are required to use title i funds to help with tutoring and hire private tutoring companies. maybe dr. mitchell, talked- about the quality of those private tutors? >> we have a difficult time getting anyone to provide that service in the rural isolated areas. there are no providers. i sit in the middle of a state

where it is it two or three hour drive to any of the face-to-face providers and we have played around with and had mixed results with some of the on-line providers. so it has been a mixed bag for us, but technically, we put more stock in our own work and our own school working with extended learning opportunities to saturday school, before school and after-school, summer school with certified people, hopefully, to provide mediation as necessary for the students. >> i have heard mixed statements depending on where you are, the quality and expertise in some of the private tutoring. i know we talked a lot about the rural schools. in north carolina, we have quite a few rural schools and it is always a problem finding the teachers who are qualified and committed. i think in many cases the teach

for america students are doing great jobs, and i know senator bennett asked about waving a magic one, but when we're talking about rural areas, not only do we need teachers, the school psychologists and school's social workers. how to restructure this so that we make a great attempt at figuring out how we will solve this problem? >> it is a difficult issue to find these people. one thing we have tried to do is we took a look at some of the research in chamberlain and the building of capacity in providing the skill training and mastery and some different things like tuition credits for the recertification, the chance to go to a national convention and network with their peers. we put all of that out there and allow us to provide as they know they're coming to a supportive environment that will build capacity we felt teachers become nationally board certified, use

federal resources to let them get their master's degree. we have tried to provide building capacity once we get them there. getting them there is difficult. two things going on right now we're having success with. i think it is a federal grand called project select. if you have a degree in anything, you can come in and will be put with a teacher and for the whole year, you'll teach under the tutelage of a certified staff member while taking all of your class is to become a certified teacher. at the end of that one year, you will be a certified teacher and be able to go in the classroom. we've been looking at the traditional route. three people in that right now. the people that retain the best, we grow them locally. we have some people in our community -- we're doing it now also with the foundation for health care.

rural healthcare 7 the same problem. finding the kids in our community that are interested, invest in them, the other capacity in continue to make them understand this is where their family is, where they have a connection so why don't -- if we give you some support, we stay in a community? we have had some success. >> one last question, and i believe the green dot, he said the school uniforms. how did you pay for those? do the students pay for those? >> yes, we purchased about 1000 extras and washing and drying machines so everyone who shows up without a uniform has to change and take a uniform. yes, it is a much cheaper way -- we spoke with parents and kids and this is -- this should save money for the weekend and not for buying.

basically, our uniforms are khaki pants, the cheapest and you can buy. anything with a collar and the school colors, so black or blue or white, which would never neutral -- gain-neutral colors. it is very cheap for families. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> merkley. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you all for your testimony. i just came back from doing six town hall meetings, traveling around oregon, rural or again, and as i went to each community, either spoke to teachers of the town hall or held a special meeting with educators. the most concern that came up the most often was that the revision for rewriting this program misses the mark in terms of its emphasis on grant applications. just rural schools saying, i am

the superintendent and principal and the only administrator and i am writing some grants now, but only a small chance of getting them and i can only afford to do that once or twice. we know we will be out competed by professional grant writers administrators, administrative teams at larger school districts. we will just have to give up, if you will. they talked about an alternative model where each -- is essentially a goal is laid out, for example, maybe it is better data management of testing so you can track a student's progress year to year to year and a school wants to sign up to do it, they get a formula funds to do it. they have to lay out their plan, but it is not a question of getting turned down after writing grant after grand come a time after time. i just wanted to share that with the committee. second, to see if that makes sense and if anyone wants to

comment on that challenge. >> as i mentioned in my testimony, it is a row concerned for us in the competitive nature. there's a lot of great opportunities in our district we miss out on because we do not have the a capacity to apply for and we have to weigh what we're going to get out of it versus the capacity. it is to give or take in that particular situation. i very -- i agree with the formula grant, but i want to understand that i am a for accountability to. if we continue with formula grants, i hope we will attach accountability with that. we still have an education service agency that had a grant writer. tough economic times, what is the first in the state had to cut? the state has cut those agencies and they brought it a lot of our major grants.

now our grant writer is gone. it is a huge concern for us if large parts of the educational dollars are competitive in the rural situation. >> go ahead. >> one thought i have come i want to present middle ground which is the dissipation and alerting network. -- participation in a learning network. if you get this money and agree to do this, you participate in the sharing network. he is doing great in south dakota. if you're linked together and a learning network, sharing what he is learning, as part of his grand he has to help organize a technical system and that might create a way we can learn and not just compete or just give money and not have to do anything. >> my aunt gresham was the school districts would be happy to share what -- my understanding is the school districts would be happy to share.

but it is the notion of a few grants are available so we would it out competed and filling up the system is not designed to help small rural schools. i think being able to go to a website or other schools are reporting on their results, that is incredibly powerful learning forum, if you will, for schools to share their strategies and their experiences. i think is a good idea. dr. mitchell, because of your experience in more rural areas, it seems like some of the features in the blueprint are based on an urban school model, the turnaround strategies, the idea of firing the principal and 50% of the teachers, try making that work in a place for the next school is 60 minutes away. do we need to have -- are their strategies that make sense in an urban setting we have to be careful to recognize the rural

setting is different? >> i would agree with what you're saying. we're concerned in the rural setting with the blueprint and a turnaround models and do not see any options viable for us. i want to make sure you understand there is no one out in the rural setting that does not want to be held accountable or things that's rural schools that are persistently performing, something needs to be done. hopefully, we're looking for some sort of option. as we spoke earlier, maybe not all the research is there but there is research coming forward and do have pockets of success. one thing we found is performing and my little school district, with a learning community helping to build up capacity. can we do that at the state level or national level? one thing i found my research is one thing about a leader that is more successful, they have more networks. they collaborate more, work with others, share experiences and so forth.

we would hope when you come down to route rising esea and get to the point of the turnaround, that there is some sort of way that we're not closing the door that certain districts that it to a certain point do not have any option that is viable for them. we need to figure out that option that still hold people accountable, does not allow persistent failure in schools, but there is something that that allows them to reconstitute themselves and do something more than firing the principal and staff and starting over because it is just not doable. >> thank you. >> thank you senator murphy. i want to thank the panel for all of your testimony and for being here today, more than that, just for your total involvement in education.

first of all, let me just say at had more and more hearings and sat on this committee now for 22 years. it just seems what we're involved in -- we are trying to fix a problem. all we're talking about are fixing problems here. why do we try to answer the question that is causing the problem? it reminds me of the story of the community one time that was situated on the shores of a lake which had a beautiful beach, recreational facilities. one time they noticed the beach was filling up with all kinds of junk and refuse and things like that so they cut down on the

people visiting the beach and the lake and so the city council met and passed an ordinance and raised the levy and raised some money to clean it up. the clean it all up and made a beautiful again. people came back to the beach come back to the lake. a couple of years went by and the beach got dirty again. people stopped coming. so the town council raise another levee, raise the money, clean it all up and fixed it up and people came back again. this happened three or four times. finally, one of these meeting somebody said, where is all that stuff coming from? the lake is fed by a river, by one river bridge where is the stuff coming from? down the river. what is up the river? they found out where it was all coming from and stop it there.

they prevented it from coming down. it seems to me many times we do this and education. we're always patching and fixing and try to clean up a problem and we're not quite getting to the essence of it. in 1991, this book came out. i remembered that back in the mid-1980s's about the first time i came on this committee, then president reagan wanted to have a study done on education and why we were not having a better education system meeting the challenges of the future. he did not want any of the soft headed, pointy headed liberals and things like that in school administrators involved in all of this. so he wanted the business community. he wanted the business community. he wanted them to do a study on

education and what we needed for the future. so that was established. some years went by. it is now 1991. i find myself not as the chair of this committee, but the sub appropriations committee at that time. a man came to see me, the then president of honeywell. he wanted to see me. fine. he delivered this book to me. he was the chair of that committee. chair of the committee. if you read the board here, people like sun co., pacific mutual pacificarco chemical, texas instruments -- you get the idea, right? so they did all of the study

over a few times -- two years time a few years' time and i thint lasted through the reagan and bush administration. they came out with this finding. he wanted to deliver this to me. you know with the executive summary was? the nation must redefine education as a process that begins at birth. and recognizes that the potential for learning begins even earlier. encompasses the physical, social, and conative development of children. ridiculous summary. education begins at birth and preparation begins before birth. this is the hard-headed business community of america. they said we of to pay more attention to early childhood development. with a bit more emphasis on

early childhood learning. he was so far as to say we have to put more emphasis on maternal and child health care programs to the children are born healthy with good minds. that is what this is all about, about preschool. because they said by the time, as we all know, the brain development during early years is the best time for brain development. but the time these kids get to kindergarten and first grade, they're so far behind we're always tried to play catch up. talking about middle school? they have been behind since before that. yes, you can do some things and change structures and to structural changes and to all kinds of things like that and you will make some progress. but it seems to me if we really want to get to the crux of the problem, we have got to focus on early childhood education. so you're all in elementary and

secondary education and that is what we're talking about. well, maybe we have to change the way we think about things. i challenge you to think about this. you are all thinkers and brilliant and bright people. your thinking is way above mine. it seems to me maybe we just need to think that elementary education does not started kindergarten. maybe we need to redefine elementary education as starting at birth. and therefore come at elementary education encompasses preschool. that might change a whole different way that we look at things. if we redefine that. so ask you to consider that kind of change. also, i ask you to consider structural changes. society in general, our society, society in general on a broad scope has changed immeasurably

in the last 400 years. think about that. think about how our society and the structures come everything we do, how much it has changed in 400 years, let alone the last 50. there seems to be one structure that has not changed in almost 400 years. the structure of school. think about it. the of a classroom come a teacher in front of the class. the of one teacher and have the class. that is the instructional methodology and has been that way forever. is that the right structure for teaching? what am i getting at here? some of you talked about this. and that is and senator dodd touched on it, many of these kids in school have a lot of problems that have nothing to do with their brain power, but their emotional structure, home

structure. he spoke about that. these kids come from homes that is that this place they have in the day is the school and may even be law school before he got a hold of them. . a locke school before you got a hold of them. they see violence, bad diet, bad health, lucky if they even have a single parent around. many do not even have that. so they bring a lot of baggage with them to school. they see violence, drugs, all kinds of things like that and at that out. they may want a been truant, absent, disciplined and yet there is no counselor. yet a teacher who has learned how to teach. they go to school to learn how to teach and become teachers or they come to teach for america and things like that.

but they aren't trained to educate, hopefully, to provide learning and -- but they are trying to educate, hopefully to provide learning and not just educate. but they're not trained psychologists. they do not understand child development. some may a little bit, but that is not why they are there. they are there to in part learning, to get kids to learn. maybe we should think about, maybe we do not need the structure of a classroom and a teacher, but a classroom and a teacher and a good child development/toxicologis child pt also in the classroom to help the emotional problems of these children. we had a project i was involved in 20-some years ago. mcdonald's corp. put up some money and i got some money through appropriations. a project in which we reduced the ratio of trained psychologists, people at least with a master's degree, down to

about -- i'm a little hazy, i could be off, 100-200 kids. the national average is 1-3000. elementary school kids. there's one child psychologist and each school system for every 3000 kids in america. i could be off a little, but not that much i don't think. we got it down to a couple hundred. which means we had a trained psychologist at a school every day, all they come interacting with the classrooms, interacting with the teachers and the kids. they make home visits with the kids. found out with their family situation was about, what their health situation was like, getting them the kind of dental assistants they need or eyeglasses, things like that. in three years' time, i mean, teachers were amazed.

kids were not fighting anymore. there were not acting out or truant. there were starting to behave and and differently because they had that. that was just a little pilot program and we cannot continue it. why don't we do this all over america? it costs money, lots of money. but it seems to me we ought to start thinking about the structural entity of a classroom. it should be the same way as it was for the last 300 or 400 years? well, those are just some of my thoughts on this. i guess as chairman i get to say those things. [laughter] at the end, since i sat here the longest. well, you sat here a long time, too. do you have any things you like to say or in part for the record before we and the hearing? i will open it up. anything that spark to, no,

you're on the wrong track with us do something else, is there anything else you like to bring up? going once -- if not, again, the record will remain open. i am supposed to say this. we will leave the record open for 10 days for people to submit other testimony and also ask you, and i'm not just pandering to you, i mean, you are the experts, people who know this so much better than those of us here. please, following are developments here. follow as closely as you can what we're doing here. we're going to have more hearings on this. i don't know how many more come of it quite a few more hearings. we will develop the legislation then on how we go forward on this. i would invite you had any time to get a hold of our staff, to submit emails to us, follow-up

on what you saw here today. if you think we're headed in the wrong direction, let us know. let us know if you think we're headed in the right direction, also. this is an ongoing process and we will do the best job we can and trying to reauthorize the elementary and secondary education act. i am hopeful we're not going to just reauthorize something that is going to be making the same mistakes we have made in the past. surely, we have had to learn something by what went wrong in the past and try to do something a little bit differently. not to do something different for different say, but something different where we have tested it, try things out, and i think he said, mr. balfanz, all kinds of different things out there that work. try to find the best of those out there. i interest and the idea of flexibility. i appreciate was senator bennett

said, the flexibility to do nothing, but moved in a certain direction. it also seems to me there is -- superintendents' out there, dr. mitchell, around the country, principles around the country that would like to do something but they do not know. they do not know what to do. they are busy people, busy in the day, have their own families and school board to deal with. parents and things like that. so what we might be able to do is provide bad kind of -- provide that kind of menu, many were something that they can draw from but with a certain limit in their of what they might draw from to do. i agree and i think most of the said the four items we had in the past does not cut it for every school. there have to be other things they can do also. i do not me to digress any further in getting how to measure yearly progress.

if there's one thing i am convinced of connie cannot measure progress against some unattainable goal. he must measure from where he had been and how you grow from where you are and that is how you measure progress, not in china meet some, as i think, unattainable-type goal. well, that is enough for me. thank you again and i invite you to continue to keep in touch with us as we develop this legislation. the committee will stand adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> coming up on c-span, the future of nasa and u.s. leadership in human space flight. first remarks from president obama followed by republican senator kay bailey hutcheson. >> sunday, author and new york daily news columnist stanley crouch. that is at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. this weekend, the first of three british election debates for the first time, prime minister gordon brown conservative party leader david cameron, a liberal democrat leader nick clegg face- off in debates.

watch them in their entirety for three consecutive weekends. >> remarks from president obama on the future of nasa and u.s. leadership in human space flight. first-come introductory comments from the chair of the science and space subcommittee senator bill nelson of florida. this is about 35 minutes. >> >> the man i am about to introduce is a patriot, leader, and a visionary. he is also someone who knows the importance of america being the leader in science and technology through space exploration. he has been there, done that. he is a marine general, aviator, a test pilot who flew more than

100 missions in vietnam. he is an astronauts and a veteran of four space shuttle flights. i have known him the better part of a quarter-century. on our space flight, i trusted him with my life and i would do so again. ladies and donovan, the administrator of nasa -- ladies and gentlemen, the administrator of nasa. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you very much and thank you offer coming out today as difficult as it may have been to get here. it is good to see a lot of you and i want to welcome all of the to the kennedy space center. this is a place that is quite close to my heart in a place like no other place on the planet to be quite honest.

it is a place that has storied history, being the launch site of some of humanity's most ambitious and even audacious endeavors. but also a place that has, i can assure you, a storied future. i'm here today to introduce a man who more than anyone i've met in my career as an officer at the marines and a nasa astronaut is committed to the arrival of that vibrant future. as the space community knows very well, dreams do not become a reality through wishful thinking alone. much less, through high fluting talk. and even though a steady flow of federal funding may help, that does not make things happen. to come through, dreams into be tested in the crucible of practicality, trial, an error. they need to be calibrated and thought through in painstaking detail so that all the pieces are certain to work together. in this case, to lift us

physically and, i dare say emotionally and even spiritually into the frontier, the star- studded universe that all of us are so anxious to explore. the thing that has me so excited about the path forward today is that the man i'm about to introduce understand how critical it is to get that process right. to put it into place and inspire a methodical plan that can really work for america and for the thousands of workers to every day are straining at the bit and giving their best to stretch the boundaries of what humanity can call home. i am talking about a president who has even in these tough economic times has recognized the value of science, engineering, and innovation to this nation's future. to its economy, its help, it's national security and who in his short tenure has already through his budgets and recovery act lifted the federal investment in civilian research and

development to unprecedented heights. a president who has declared it is essential for students to get better science and engineering education and who has not just said so, but has put into place and obtained generous funding for programs to get them there. a president who was brought hundreds of students into the white house lawn to look through telescopes and the astronauts like buzz aldrin and sally ride. and you better believe from the looks on those kids' faces, they recognized the power of space to inspire. ladies and gentlemen, it is my greatest honor to introduce to a man for whom i have the greatest personal respect and admiration, a man who absolutely has the right stuff to lead us into a new era of exploration and discovery. please come and join me in welcoming the president of the nine states, president barack obama. [applause]

>> thank you, everybody, thank you. thank you so much. please, have a seat. thank you. i want to thank senator bill nelson and as administrator for their short and their leadership. i want to recognize dr. buzz aldrin as well who is in the house. [applause] four decades ago, buzz aldrin became a legend that he is also been one of america's leading visionaries and authorities on human space flight.

a few people, present company excluded, can claim the expertise of buzz and bill and charlie when it comes to space exploration. i have to say that few people are as singularly unimpressed by air force one as those three. [laughter] sure, it is comfortable, but it cannot even reach -- that is in striking contrast to the stock and nine rocket we just saw the launch pad which will be tested for the very first time in the coming weeks. a couple of other acknowledgments to make. with congresswoman sheila leave from texas visiting us. a big supporter of the space program. [applause] my director -- by chief science

adviser, john holliman is here. [applause] most of all, i want to of knowledge your congresswoman susan and cosmos because every time i meet with her, including the flight down here, she reminds me of how important are nasa programs are and how important is facility is and she is fighting for every single one of you and for her district and for the jobs in a district. you should know you've got a great champion and her. please come and give her a big round of applause. [applause] i also want to thank everyone for participating in today's congress and gathering here are scientists, engineers, business leaders, public servants, and a few more astronauts as well. last but not least, i want to thank the men and women of nasa

for welcoming me to the kennedy space center and through contributions not only to america, but the world. here at the kennedy space center, we are surrounded by monuments and milestones of those contributions. it was from here that nasa launched the missions of mercury, gemini and apollo. it was from here the space shuttle discovery piloted by a charlie bolden carried the hubble telescope into orbit allowing us to plumb the deepest recesses of our galaxy. and my private office just off the oval office, at a picture of jupiter from the hubble. thank you for helping to decorate my office, charlie. it was from here the men and women propelled by talent and nerve said about humanity's reach. that is the story of nasa. it is the story that started a

little more than half a century ago. far from the space coast in remote and desolate region of what is now called cause extended it was from the of the soviet union launched sputnik. the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. it was a little more than a few pieces of metal the transmitter and a battery strapped to the top of the missile. the world was stunned. americans were dumbfounded. the soviets, or perceived as taking the lead in the race for which we were not yet fully prepared. but we caught up very quickly. president eisenhower signed legislation to create nasa and invest in science and math education from grade school to graduate school. in 1961, president kennedy boldly declared before a joint session of congress that the united states was in a man to the moon and return them safely to the earth within a decade.

as the a nation, we set about meeting that goal. reaping rewards that have in the decade since it touched every facet of our lives. nasa was at the forefront. many gave their careers to the effort. some have given far more. in the years that have followed, the space race inspired a generation of scientists and innovators including, i am sure, many of you. contributing to the measure will technological advances that have improved our health and well- being, satellite navigation to water purification, from aerospace manufacturing to medical imaging. all i have to say during a meeting before i came onstage, someone said, it is more than just tang. i had to point out, i really liked tang. i thought that was very cool. and leading the world to space helped america achieve new heights of prosperity here on

earth while demonstrating the power of a free and open society to harness the ingenuity of its people. on a personal note, i have been part of that generation so inspired by the space program. in 1961, that was the year of my birth, the year kennedy made his announcement. one of my earliest memories is sitting on my grandfather's shoulders, waving a flag as astronauts arrived. for me, these this program has always captured in central part of what it means to be in american, reaching for new heights, stretching beyond what previously was not seen as possible. and so as president, i believe space exploration is not a luxury or afterthoughts and america's quest for a brighter future. it is an essential part of that quest. today, i would like to talk

about the next chapter in the story. the challenges facing our space program are different and are imperative for this program is different than in decades past. we're no longer racing against an adversary, no longer competing to achieve a singular goal like reaching the moon. in fact, what was once a global competition has long since become a global collaboration. while the measure of our achievements has changed a great deal over the past 50 years, what we do or fail to do in seeking new frontiers is no less consequential for our future in space than here on earth. let me start by being extremely clear. i am 100% committed to the mission of nasa and its future because -- [applause]

because of running our capabilities in space will continue to serve our society in ways that we scarce the can imagine. -- because broadening our capabilities in space will continue to serve our society in ways that we scarce can imagine. ultimately, if we fail to press for in this to the press coverage, we are sitting at a central element of the american culture. i know many questions have been raised about my administration's plan for space exploration, especially as part of ford or someone rely on as as a source of income as well as pride in the community. and these questions come at a time of transition as the space shuttle nears its scheduled retirement after almost 30 years of service. and understandably, it adds to the worries of those concerned not only about their own future but that of the space program to which they have devoted their lives. but i also know underline these

concerns is a deeper worry, one that proceeds not only this plan, but this administration. it stems from the sense that people in washington, driven sometimes less by vision and politics, for years have neglected nasa's mission and undermine the work of the professionals to fulfill it. we have seen that in nasa's budget, which has risen and fallen to the political whims. we see it in other ways also come in the reluctance of those who hold office to set clear, achievable productive to provide the resources to meet those objectives and justify not just these plans, but the larger purpose of space exploration in the 21st century. all of that has to change. and with the strategy i'm outlining today, it will. we start by increasing nasa's budget by $6 billion over the next five years. [applause]

i want people to understand the context of this. this is happening even as we of instituted a freeze on discretionary spending and sought to make cuts elsewhere in the budget. . several months ago when i issued my budget, nasa was not just a freeze, but we increased funding by $6 billion. by doing that, we will ramp up robotic exploration of the solar system including a probe of the sun's atmosphere, new scamming missions to mars and other destinations and an advanced telescope to follow hubble. we will increase earth based observations and improve our understanding of our climate and our world. scientists will garner tangible benefits in helping us to protect our environment for future generations.

and we will extend the life of the international space station, likely by more than five years while actually using its for its intended purpose, conducting advanced research to help improve the daily lives of people here on earth as well as testing and approving upon our capabilities in space. this includes technology but more efficient life-support systems that will help reduce the cost of future missions. and in order to reach the space station, we will work with a growing array of private companies competing to make getting to space easier and more affordable. [applause] i recognize some have said is unfeasible or unwise to work with the private sector in this way. i disagree. the truth is, nasa has always relied on private industry to help design and build the vehicles that carry astronauts

to space from the mercury capsule the carry john glenn into orbit nearly 50 years ago, to the space shuttle discovery curly or birdin-- currently orbg overhead. we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met, but we will also accelerate the pace of innovation as companies from young startups to established leaders compete to design and build up and launch a new means of caring people and materials out of our atmosphere. in addition, as part of this effort, we will build on the good work already done on the orion crew capsule. director charlie bolden the newly developing a rescue vehicle using this technology so we are not forced to rely on foreign providers if it becomes necessary to quickly bring our people home from the international space station.

and this effort will be part of the technological foundation for advanced spacecraft to be used in future deep space missions. in fact, o'brien will be ready for flight right here in this room. -- orion will be ready for flight right here in this room. [applause] next, we will invest more than $3 billion to conduct research on an advanced vehicle to send into orbit the crew capsules, propulsion systems, and large quantities of supplies needed to reach deep space. and developing this new vehicle, we will not only look at revising or modifying older models, we want to look at new designs, new materials, you technologies that will transform not just where we can go, but what we can do when we get there. and we will finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and

then began to build it. [applause] that is at least two years earlier than previously planned. and that is conservative given that the previous program was behind schedule and over budget. at the same time, after decades of neglect, we will increase investment right away and other groundbreaking technologies that will allow astronauts to reach space sooner and more often. to travel farther and faster for less cost and to live and work in space for longer periods of time more safely. that means tackling major scientific and technological challenges. how we shield astronauts from radiation on longer missions? how do we harness resources? how do is apply spacecraft with

energy needed for these far- reaching journeys? these are questions that we can answer and will answer and these are the questions whose answers no doubt will reap untold benefits right here on earth. .

and despite, this some had harsh words for the decisions we've made, including some individuals whom i've got enormous respect and admiration for. what i'm hoping is everybody will take a look at what we're planning and see the merits ads i've described them. the bottom line is nobody is more committed to man space flight, the human exploration of space than i am, but we've got to do it in a smart way. [applause] and we can't just keep on doing the same old things we've been doing and thinking somehow it's going to get us to where we want to go. >> some have said, for instance that, this plan gives up our leadership in space by failing to produce plans within nasa to reach lower orbit instead of relying on other countries but

we will actually reach space faster and more often under this new plan in ways that will help us sprove our tech in a logical savvy and build what is more sustainible for long-term space night and in fact we'll be sending more astronauts to space turnover next decade. [applause] there are also those who criticize our decision to end parts of constellation as one that will hinder space exploration below, lower its orbit. but it's precisely by investing in groundbreaking research and innovate companies that we will have the potential to rapidly transform our capabilities even as we build on our work already completed like projects like orion for future missions and we are setting a course with specific and achieveible milestones. >> early in the next decade a

set of crude flights will test and prove expectationing -- by 2025, we expect new space craft design for the long journeys to allowtous begin the first-ever crude mission beyond the moon into deep space. [applause] >> so we'll start -- [applause] >> we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. [applause] >> by the mid 2030's i believe we can send humans to orbit mars and return them safely to earth. and landing on mars will follow, and i expect to be around to see it. [applause]

>> but i want to repeat. i want to repeat this. critical to deep space exploration will be the development of break through propulsion systems in other advanced technologies. so i'm challenging you to break through these barriers. and i know you will. with ingenuity and intensity, because that's what you've always done. 12k34r now. [applause] >> i understand some believe we should attempt a return surface to the moon fist, as priestley planned. but i just have to say, pretty bluntly, here. we've been there before. buzz has been there. [applause] >> there's a lot more of space to explore. and there's a lot more to learn when we do. so i believe it's more

important to reach at and operate rm with each step forward, and that's what the strategy does, and that's how we weren't sure in this new century than it was in the last. [applause] >> finally i want to say a few words about jobs. suzanne pointed out to me last time i was here, i made a very clear promise that i would help in the transition. into a new program to make sure that people who are already going through a tough time here in this region were helped. and despite some reports to the contrary, my plan will add more than 2500 jobs along the space coast in the next two years compared to the plan under the

priest administration. so i want to make that point. . [applause] >> we're going to modernize the kennedy space center. updeprading. and there's a potential for eeven more jobs in countries and in florida some of those industry leaders are here today. this holds the patrols of generating more than 10,000 jobs created all over the field. this is fax machine -- now, it's true. there are floridain's who will see their work on the shuttle end as the program winds down. it's based on a decision that was made six years ago not six months ago. but that doesn't make it any less painful for families and

communities expected snosmse so i'm proposing in part because of strong lobbying by bill and by suzanne as well as charlie, i'm proposing a $40 million initiative led by a high-level team from the white house and other agencies to develop a plan for and i expect this on my desk by august 15. [applause] >> it's an effort that will help prepare this already-skilled workforce for new opportunity in the space industry and beyond. so this is the next chapter that we can write together here at nasa. we l partner with industry and invest in cutting edge research and technology. we will set far-reaching

milestones and provide resources to reach those milestones and step-by-step we will push the boundies of not only where we can go but what we can do. our goal is no longer just a destination to reach. our goal is a capacity for -- for extended periods of time. ultimately in ways that are more sustainible and even indefinite. and in fulfilling this task, we will not only extend humanity's reach in space, we will strengthen america's leadership here on earth. i'll close by saying some splerns asked a question, why spend money on nasa at all form -- solve here on at any ground

and obviously our country is still reeling from the worst economic turmoil known in deck aineds we have things that have to be closed but you and i know this is a false choice. we have to fix our economy. we need to close our deficits but for pennies on the dollar, the space industry can fuel jobs and the space program has sprod our lives, strengthened her economy but that is why [applause] >> but i want to say clearly to those of you who work for nasa but to the spire community, that has been so supportive of

the space program in this area -- that is exactly why it's so essential that we pursue a new course and revitalize nasa and its mission, not just with dollars but with clear aim and a lancher purpose -- a lot of their feet touched the dusty surface of the earth's only moon. this was a kul ma nation of a perilous -- of an endeavor pushed the boundaries and knowledge of our technical prowess and very capacity as human beings to solve problems. it wasn't just the greatest achievement in nasa's history but one of the greatest achievements in human heist and the question is now was that the beginning or end of something? i choose to believe nl so.

thank you and god bless america, thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> more from senator kay bailey hutchison. this is about 20 minutes. >> madam president, later today president obama will travel to the kennedy space center in florida. he will visit with employees and officials there and deliver a speech on his vision for nasa. we've begun to learn the details about some of what the president may be announcing, but so far nothing has been suggested that alleviates our concern. in fact i'm growing more concerned. i have serious questions about the administration's proposed vision. for example,, the president is proposing to rely on a commercial space launch industry that is still in its infancy.

once the space shuttle is retired, a commercial vehicle would be the only american human space flight capability for the foreseeable future. further, we are about to complete the international space station and begin the period of scientific research that we've been waiting for. for the past 10 years we have waited for the space station to be up and going and operable. at the same time that it is now becoming operable, we are beginning to phase tout space shuttle program, and that is the only means we have to deliver crew and cargo to the space station. we are no where close to having an alternative to the shuttle whether government-operated or commercial operation. congress and the president agree that we should extend the life of the space station at least until 2020.

that only makes sense, because we've invested $100 billion in this peace station. our partners are international. we have contractal commitments to our partners who have also made huge investments in this space station, and yet now we are looking at stopping our shuttle at the end of this year so that our alternatives are going to be very limited. we must be certain that the space station can be supplied and maintained with the spare parts and equipment it needs to operate for the next 10 years. i sprused legislation last month to require nasa to have a review of the station components and identify anything that might be needed to be delivered to equip it for

its research mission. of course, nasa could do that review right now, without legislation, and i urge general bolden the, the national administrator to undertake such a view, particularly in light of the space shuttle not being extended under the president's proposal. it is still possible that we could extend the time between shuttle flights to deliver the necessary materials to the space station, and that is an option i believe we need to preserve. this is also part of the legislation that i introduced because it would prolong the time that we could put our own astronauts into space with our own vehicle that we know is relibel. that is the key. we don't have to add more spot budget. the budget is already providing for two more space shuttles

this year and one that could be an contingent. if we will just extend these out, it will give us so many more national options that would be in america's best interest. without a nasa-managed alternatives for human access to space, we will be dependant on the russian-used rockets to take american, european and japanese and canadian crew members to the space station. today it is a cost of $56 million per passenger. now that price could go up. if we end the space shuttles fmple if it is real life we will have no capability and we would be shutting down our own

capabilities at the time we would be asking for help from the russians. of even more concern is the possibility of out of shuttle or alternatives, any failure of the use could lead the space station to be abandon and becoming anor -- what if the commercial industry that is very fledgling doesn't come up with an alternative for -- or worse yet, what if they go out of business? well these are the things the president is not addressing in it's -- his budget for nasa, and i hope he will become more willing to look at the long-term sequences of what is of what he is proposing to do if we are to maintain our leadership position in space,

economic and security. these and other krns have been expressed by another memberses turnover past days. and -- madam president, i ask. unanimous contestant -- consent that the ed toirlts i'm going read be made a part of the record. >> ok. >> let me start by three of our nation's astronauts. neil armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon from america. commander of apollo 11. james lovely commander of apollo 13. and commander to the state that

although some of the president's proposals have merit, the decisioning to cansal the constellation program as area one and area five rockets a and the orion space craft is devastating. they say america's only path to low earth orbit tft to purchase space op their -- at a price of over $50 million per seat with significant increases expected in the near future. until we have the capacity to provide transportation for ourselves. the availablity of a commercial transport to orbit as erin visioned. but likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we wourmeds -- it appears we will have wasted our current $10

billion-plus and years required to recreate the convince lent of what we have now discarded. for the united states, the leading space-bearing nation for half a century to be without carriage to low earth orbit and with no human expore ration fotch just as our nation to become one of the second or third-rate in statueture. whileal the president's plan envisions humans traveling away from earth and perhaps towards mars some time in the future, the lack of developed rocket as space craft will assure that availableibility will it's far too income america must decide

fit witches to demovep -- fit does, we should institute a program that would give us the very best chance of achieving that goal. that is all from the letter signed from kneel armstrong, james lovely and eugene stern you mean. in another letter to president obama, 27 space experts, ian including arrest nauts and program managerers make the following point. america is -- with a mere simultaneous ending of the shuttle program and your recent budge tote -- the program. this is wrong for our country for many reasons. we are very concerned about america's hard-earned global leadership in technology to other no. this move will force as many as

30,000 irreplaceable engineers and managers out of the space company. one of the most inspirational tools promote science, technology, math to our young people being reduced to mediocrity. nasa's human space program has enspired to nofments -- there's a misguided propose that forces nasa out of the operation it's for the foreseeable future. for those of us who have accepted the risk and dedicate ad portion of our lives to the exploration of outer space, this is a terrible decision. america'sal greatness lies in her people. she will always have amend women willing to ride rockets spot heavy ns. america's challenge is to match their bravery and acceptance of risk.

worthy of their commitment. nasa must continue at the frontiers of human space exploration in order to develop the technology and set the standards of excellence that will enable ventures to succeed. canceling nasa's human space operations after 50 years of unparalleled one of the greatest fears of any generation is not leaving things better for the young people of the next. in the area of human space flight we are about to realize that fear. your nasa budget nomplee that was all by the letter signed by 27 people who have dedicated their lives to america's space exploration. in an open letter by lee arch

balanced who was a pilot on atlantis and discovery, he says, as a space program marches closer toits apparent end, nasa's future is in jeopardy more now than perhaps at any other time in our history. the shuttle rerlt would yield seoul access of space exploration to russia for the seven-year gap. others are foff but to and from the space station. not quite yet. our commercial industry is indeed getting closer to obtaining the ability to send unmanned space craft to the space station as we supply ships. ultimately these companies may produce to i would not get

future fofffoff then 2017 if orion is capable of flying to the space station. thus this option cannot be considered a viable gap-filler at this point. not until orion or a commercial alternative is indeed ready and capable of transporting our astronauts to and from the space station should we consider retiring the space shuttle. the future of our space station must -- finally this week in an editorial from the washington times entitleled losing it in space. the editorial from the times times says. pity poor nasa. rather than reach toward stards america's premiere scientific

organization has settled its site on stoigged athleticism if to see -- such is the hope of to to the package of launch and landing vehicles that were to replace the aging space shuttle fleet to carry americans into space. this is not a cost-cutting move. the agency is budgetted to receive $19 billion next year. and mr. obama tweants throw an additional $6 billion at it overal the next five years. the hitch ask he wants to shift his mission towards climate research and airplane design. anxious to stay really van' t, nasa agreed to research the cause of toyota's sud that

federal money is for fostering growth of the commercial space industry including the development of space stacksies. but if thal results part of the president's stimulus are any indication, command economic policy san inefficient generate of jobs. it goes on had you sign a $340 million deal pop to the spl space staying no by then cheyne intends to conduct an ambitious schedule of flights with its space craft. it doesn't take much imagine nice envision the day where nasa must pay its asian competitor for a large sum for

its citizens to ride into orbit as apparentlies. thanks to m. obama the unite will be dependant on is to the day this to to orings foff -- earth's centric activities like the study of the antarctic shrimp -- and anomalies should be left to others. a less-costly nasa should be relieved of to zpo -- on behalf of all americans, floridain's should be sure the president gets the message loud and clear when he host it is corns about the the future of it today in the sunshine state.

met no that is -- let me remind my colleagues, the agustin committee which the obama administration asked to review the human space flight activities. used a sub title for its report which propose ad set of options for a space program worthy often a great nation. the items i have submitted for the record reflect the feelings of many of those that gave us a so it was a challenge the congress and the president must met povep president obama will femples for our nation's future nice -- i still remain hopeful that the president will come away from this visit today with a deeper understanding of what

is at stake in our nation's history of space exploration. i renew my offer to work with the president and my congressional colleagues to come up with a plan that they set for america. the frals necessary to bridge the gap between the president and congress have been set forward by the bipartisan legislation that i have introduced and has also been introduced on the house side. ail that is needed to align these principals with the president's goal and is a willingness to take the same risks that had been hallmarked. madam president, some would say, you know, why not here? >> madam president, the answer is this doesn't cut the budget. the president's proposal does not cut the budget. it increases the budget. it just turns the money over to private companies. that are as yet unproven to try

to do something that we have already made a $10 investment in. and so? -- we will lose all this has been gained, the engineering, the science, the research that has gone into this will be lost. those people will go into other area. we will not be able to recreate it. but yet we have not cut the budget a penny. what we have done is squander the capability for america to continue to be the leader of the world? innovation, in creativity and most certainly in taking the risk to explore the heavens. which have perused so many results in our depel from national defense capability fosm we are using folve all of

this into weds from immediately -- so we will not have collateral damage and hurt other people. we now learned from exploring we have velcro, mri's, we have health benefits that we could never have gotten without the research that we did to go into space. now we have a $100 billion investment in a space station that will specialize with ni h and other agencies in doing research that cannot be done on the ground because of the micro number of so because at the end that year to for america grooverple >> madam president

this has not found president for country and i'm usualing the president to listen to people like kneel armstrong and gene southernen and jim lovely and former prosecutors that have knowledge that is -- former administrators that have knowledge that is beyond mine and his. we need to rethink the announcement today and remember that america's greatness is adapt on our -- is dependent on our creativity. and stoppings mid track,ened if -- this is not the answer. madam president, i yield the floor. >> today on america and the courts scorlt justice it's brire and clarence thomas

discuss the supreme court justice. they allegation talk about cameras in the courtroom, diversity in law clerks, and thanksgiving >> this weekend the first of three british election debates. for the first time prime minister gordon brown, conservative party leader david camron and nick clegg will debate. sunday 9:00 eastern pacific on c-span. >> at a tacks day rally held here in washington earlier this week, speakers included members of congress, and radio talk show host kneel ports. this is about 2 1/2 hours.

>> all right, the old days when i -- [inaudible] god, country, family. [applause] >> but let's start out giving thanks where thanks is due. let's start out with god. -- please lead us into prayer. thank you. you're dear father in heavien we praise you as the soverple ruler of the universe, king or kings and lord of lords. we thank you that you are ordained human government and given that government its

limits and called civil imagine strates ministers of god and indeed when they stay within the boundaries they are a great blessing, fighter whose god is anything other than the one true god, and we know that when the imagine stratessteppings out of his god-or deigned boundaries and his rulership is a great curse upon the people, for when he will not serve as a minister of god he becomes none other than the minister of satin. we confess our land has long departed from -- and thus of you have given it two jobs and two jobs alone. to establish justice and defend the borders when the el civil magistrate has failed to do

that, as he has here in washington and continues to unbrazenly, unrepentively do that every single day. establishing justice and defending the borders are the only two legitimate functions of civil government. we understand there are the only legitimate fungses for which the -- all other taxation for any other purposes is none other than legalized plunder, spilling inge on paper and calling it law even though it violates nature. it is a damnable sin. this >> we could feart that turnover regulating the citizens by a especially something from a

long list of alphabet soup agencies here in washington. all these and more are in violation of the supreme law of the universe and we prayed that you will foregive the multitude of our since and extend to our astemp to same, ziffel ghoovet we might enjezz in our nation. taxation that will abide by your law and keep government within the boundaries that you have established by your holy word. we pray that you would bring an tend to legalized plunder. our lord and save color, jesus christ in whose blessed name we pray, amen. ladies and gentlemen i'm ken

leader of the tacks revolt. i want to introduce now someone many of you know. mark william. his voice is ringing out across the country for conservative principals and to take back our country and our government. mark is going to be helping introduce the great participants from the tea party express and other grass roots groups today. mark, come on up here and say a word. [applause] >> wish me luck, i'm on with joy behar later this afternoon. try follow up on my number one youtube hit with dylan ratigan. thank you for being here. the tea party express, we started the search in nevada on march 27 where 35,000 people joined us to wish harry reid a happy retirement. [applause] and moments ago at the national press club we announced our

endorsement and in time to elect former state legislature sharon angles to replace harry reid. [applause] and yesterday even though i live in the california my hometown is boston. we were in boston yesterday with sara palin. [applause] >> and 10,000-plus of my base staters to joining us to take and reclaim the peel's republic of mastercard for america. republic of massachusetts for america. you're doing all the hard work, though, the only way this country gets fixed is if you do the work in the trenches. we can get you reved up but at the end of the day it's walking precincts and keeping the hammer down to restore a constitutional republic to the

united states of america. >> and don't you dare ever let anybody tell you you're a racist, you're angry or you're a mob. wear human rights movement. what we are doing is based on the united states constitution. [applause] the united states constitution sets up america as the only -- only society in the history of mankind premised on the idea that the only legitimate idea for government to protect the individuals' civil liberties and rights and it's impossible to be a racist and civil rights advocate is to anybody who hangs around with misspelled signs i got news for you. we're americans. this is our country. we are taking it back. [applause]

>> all right. god, country, family. diane, please come up here, and let's sing together the star spangled banner to officially kick off this great rally. diana? diana nagy, tea party express, and let's put our hearts into it. [applause] >> hello, d.c.! >> if you'll all join me in a song to hanour country. ♪ o say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed

at the twilight's last gleaming whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight o're the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming. and the rockets' red glare the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there

o say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o're the land of the free and the home of the brave ♪ [applause] [cheering]

>> thank you. >> [inaudible] before we do that the national media including c-span said we can't see the speakers because of your songs. i love this lines but if you are right in front of the media stand would you mind letting them a little? we want america to hear this message. thank you. there's nobody special i want to thank right off the debt. he couldn't be here because he's on hannity in cincinnati but ten days ago we started reaching out to every tax reform group in washington and around the country to the tea party express everybody was coming in a little

bit different direction. samuel joe the plumber. [cheering] this simple question a couple of years ago on the street got a lot of people thinking and a lot of people to stand up and speak. thank you, joe. the online tax revolt as of this morning has more than 270,000 people marching from across the country. many of you have avatars and your heroes so physically. something wonderful was happening here today and over the last month. for the last five or ten years the fair tax supply taxers, the ronald reagan tax cuts and people who just know something has gone terribly wrong in the country have been talking in different directions but something today is happening.

we've put aside our differences and best solution and said what we need is a solution. let us come together. [cheering] what is that important epic driving us to come together with each of us feeling so passionately that we know exactly what the right solution is. i am a passionate affair taxer but i will tell you i respect dick amrey and the wall of regan taxers and that he party for an angry and wanted a solution and maybe they don't know exactly what it is but what we know is this income tax is badly broken, badly corrupted and at our expense. is there any question it could

not be more obvious. 237 years ago our forefathers in boston harbor don't cease to tell the king of england we will not be treated this way. we rally around no taxation without representation and yet look what ening unborn generations of americans are being taxed today to secure trillions of dollars of loans today. we are taxing them without them being represented. that is taxation without representation all over again. 237 years ago we said we have a new idea, brand new idea for the world. no government shall have power with the power granted by the people. how far have we come from that

when the majority is ignored by people in that building up the street. we threw up the power of royalty for the 200 years ago and our forefathers shedding blood on beaches and jumbles across this world to protect that principle. we will not let this be forgotten. we threw out the power of aristocracy and yet we have it again right there in that building up the street. that has been sold off and has been through two or three loopholes a date to lobbyists with their pockets bulging with money at our expense. 7,500 pages of regulations in the tax code no one is going to

understand it, no one. i say to do any mall that has cost three federal billion dollars last year to obey just to fill out the paperwork any law that is coming in trouble tax where unmarried people pay more than to live together. pastors are told what they can and cannot say from the pulpit. any law that costs so much and is so hard to understand is on its [inaudible] our forefathers said no we will not take this and we formed a new union. the envy of the world. do we want to be like europe? no, we do not we rebuild europe after the second world war. we've rebuilt asia, the personal computer was not invented in the capitol office it was invented

inigo ghosh in san jose. the genius of this nation does not live here. the genius of the nation is in our home town and until the people speak this government will not be put back on the track and that is what today is all about. [cheering] i thank you all for your civic responsibility. thank you for not giving up on the promise of the founding fathers that we the people can control our government. so many today have given up on that and have forgotten and today to say you cannot beat city hall. you cannot beat capitol hill. we know that tax code is very good for people in washington and very bad in destructive for the country but there is nothing we can do about it? i would say no.

i want to thank each and every one of you for going back to your home town till then your neighbors, tell the person you've been arguing with passionately for 20 years here is something we can come together on. the income tax code does not just hurt the right it hurts the right, the left, the union members. it is good for people in washington and bad for the nation. [cheering] today we have got a great program. we've got speakers from every remove meant. we all -- also have someone else today. the media reports the last couple of days have said there are some who do not agree with the tax reform bill would be crashing tea parties across the country. they will be hurtling racial

epitaphs, they will try to bring discredit on to the great people's movement and if they people's movement and if they come here today, i humor them. i will quote ronald reagan right now. if you love america you love all americans. [cheering] i don't agree with them but i know they have a right to the first amendment to the freedom of speech as well. the american people have always been very good at figuring out the right course. hey you want to get it out of your system, do it right now. if you see them, don't be angry. say okay we are both americans. we will hear that. but our message will not be deluded. it will not be discredited and

our messages we, the people, are taking our government back and taking our country back. [cheering] if you are stealing our money i want you to take a look at the big screen what is coming up next. watch this and then i am getting out of the way and moving aside for the great speakers today. thank you. [applause] [cheering] ♪ ♪