it may very well be an indicator of putting something catastrophic in motion. >> my time is up. i just want to stress what i think has been said. in the legislation, it does not mandate that the person on the terrorist watch list be prohibited from buying a gun. it gives the department of justice the authority. there may be cases where justice decides it wants a gun purchase to go forward because they are following that individual and he or she may lead to other co- conspirators. senator gramm. -- senator graham. . .

you are going to be well taken care of. there is a risk in getting out of bed. maybe a meatier will hit you at home. it is a responsible thing for americans to be talking about topics such as this, but there has to be balanced. i am in the camp that i am not sure this is the right solution to what the dangers are. the d.c. gun ban law was an experiment that if you have a law against owning a handgun you would be safer. i do not think that worked.

the supreme court said that went too far. they are about to issue a ruling soon to determine whether or not gun ownership is an individual right. i would argue that will affect the outcome of this legislation. but i have been told -- and i am not going to ask you for specific numbers, but here's the general question. there are 1228 people on the watch list that tried to purchase a handgun. is that right? what percentage of those people are facing terrorism charges now? >> i do not know, senator. let me start by saying i agree with you. border security does not have control of the country's borders. it should. 40% of the undocumented, the estimates are forged documents. and when can forge a passport or a green card or a social security card. we should do something about that.

which to get control of our borders. we track people when they come through immigration. we do not track them when believe. we do not know. we should fix that. we have documents that are too easy to fake. it is a joke. we have to get control of immigration in this country. we need immigrants, but we should be choosing who comes here, what skills, where they come, and not let who wants to come here decide. >> you have been very forward leaning in a balanced way. that is why i am looking forward to working with you. when it comes to reasonable restrictions, which the supreme court said are acceptable and consistent with the second amendment, i think this is a reasonable restriction. i do not know whether any of the 11 or 1200 on the watch list are facing charges at the moment, those that bought guns. i do know that if you -- if

society decides that these people are too dangerous to get on an airplane with other people, it is probably appropriate to look very hard before you let them buy a gun. >> i totally understand what you are saying, but you're talking about a constitutional right here. the reason i brought that up -- if all these people are fanatics and every one of them on the watch list is a terrorist planning an attack, it would be odd that 1228 who tried to buy a gun -- none are being caused -- none are being charged by a terrorism related offense. there is a disconnect between what we are saying and reality. there are 400,000 people on the watch list. what percentage are american citizens?

>> i cannot give you an answer. >> the law prohibits purchase of a gun unless you are an american citizen or a legal resident alien. i think we are talking about a small percentage of the people. the nra -- some people believe banning handguns is the right answer to the gun violence problem. i am not in that camp. i believe my right to own a gun should not be infringed because some not is going to take a gun and use it wrongfully. i just think he should prosecute them very swiftly and forcefully. i am all into national security. i want us to take our social security cards and make them by a metric. i want to stop reading these guys their miranda rights. we are so much on board here. your son is a marine -- a former marine. is that right? he was a fighter pilot, right?

>> my son was a former fighter pilot. >> i knew i liked you. now i know why. at the end of the day, you have been great on this issue. nobody in their right mind would expect a marine to read someone caught on the battlefield their rights. you catch them and to interrogate them lawfully to get intelligence. you're special unit is probably the best in the world at this. but i do not think it is smart for us to say that the homeland is not part of the battlefield. you get to america you get a much better deal? you get rewarded? if you can be caught in pakistan and intelligence gathering can happen with an intelligence agency without your miranda warnings being given, why should you get a better deal when you get here? even if you are an american citizen helping the enemy, you

should be viewed as a potential military threat, not some guy who tried to commit a crime in times square. i will look forward to working with the new york city police department, the mayor of new york, peter king, to devise a law that recognizes we are at war, that when you capture someone like you did, and this is a marvelous piece of not police work alone but a combination of intelligence gathering and police work, that you would have the opportunity to hold the suspect because they represent a military threat to our country, even though they are a citizen, and be able to gather intelligence before you did anything else. what i want to know about this guy is not how he committed the crime but what led him to commit the crime and who he worked with. miranda warnings are counterproductive in my view. we need a law that would allow you to go to a judge somewhere and hold a suspect like this,

and working with the intelligence officials of this country gather intelligence and then make a prosecutorial decision. the problem i have. -- the problem i have is that the watch list, when you look at the numbers, has so many problems with it that i think it is not appropriate and to go down the road that we are going, because a constitutional right is involved. that is my only concern. i understand, from the mayor's perspective and a police perspective, how you feel about this issue. please understand that i feel differently not because i care less about terrorism. >> senator, perhaps we can allow your fears. the watch list is accessed a billion times a year and the error rate is probably as low as on any large list. keep in mind in congress you

have passed laws preventing convicted felons from buying a gun. that does not mean every convicted felon is going to commit another crime. you have a law that says you cannot sell guns to minors. that does not mean that if we get guns to every minor they would use them and kill somebody. i think we disagree on this. it is a reasonable position to take. there is the ability to contest, if you are on the list. if there are problems on the list, let us fix the list rather than not use it. >> maybe we will have a good discussion on how to fix the list. i will end with this. it is hard for me to believe that if 1228 people have tried to buy guns who are on the list and 91% of them are allowed to buy guns and none of them are being prosecuted for any terrorist related offense, there is a disconnect somewhere between the people on the list and people we are actually going

to prosecute. before we subject innocent americans who have done nothing but have the wrong name at the wrong name -- at the wrong time and have to pay the costs to go to court to get their gun rights back -- >> something you said about miranda rights. i agree with you and senator lieberman on this. my view of the supreme court decision is that you can declare, in emergencies, and enemy combatants. if they have moved the battlefield from afghanistan or pakistan to the united states, which should find legislation to refine that. as far as i'm concerned, he was an enemy combatants when he came here. >> let me set the record straight. the fourth circuit held that pedilla, an american citizen, could be held as an enemy combatants. the supreme court has ruled that americans can be held overseas as enemy combatants. i do not believe the supreme

court would allow the congress to write a law that says the homeland is a battlefield. i cannot imagine the supreme court sang the homeland is not part of the battlefield. when it comes to an american citizen, they have a responsibility under the constitution. once you go own that road, you should be viewed not as a common criminal but as a military threat. you cannot try an american citizen in front of a military commission. i helped write that law. they can be tried in federal court. the charge of treason should always be on the table. no one got killed in this incident, thank god. but if it is proven that this man committed an act of treason against his fellow citizens i want to keep that charge available to our government. that is my view of that. >> we just saw the case saying americans can be held as enemy combatants. obviously, they cannot be tried in a traditional. a method should be laid out. we should get all the

intelligence we possibly can. >> the people of new york know more about this than anybody in the country, quite frankly. >> i must say i am troubled by your concerns about this proposal. i think it is very limited. what can i say. in this committee, i have argued that we should more broadly apply the terrorism watch list to give secondary screening to people before the board airlines. this was something a lot of us reached a conclusion about after the detroit bomber. in the current state of operation, only people on the more limited no-fly and select the list are given secondary screening when the show up for an airplane. it seems to me that if anybody is on a terrorism watch list

because somebody suspects they may be a terrorist, it is in the interest of everybody else on that plane, and of society, to at least stop them and give them a secondary screening. incidentally, that would have presumably found the detroit bomber had explosives on his person. leave the specifics of that aside. to me, the same is true here. if somebody is on a terrorism watch list -- most of the people on the terrorism watch list are for nationalists. there are a good number of americans, including -- there are a good number of americans. why would we not want to give the department of justice discretionary authority when one of them comes in to buy a gun -- a suspected terrorist. after a three day waiting period, they may be about to go out and kill some americans.

i just do not see an argument that holds up -- an argument that is based on the rights of law-abiding citizens to own guns. if you have a criminal record today and that turns up when you go in to buy a gun in a federally licensed dealer, you cannot buy that gun. you do not have a choice. that does not compromise the rights of law-abiding citizens to buy a gun. here, we are not even making it that strong. they are just saying did the department of justice discretionary authority. >> can i take a shot at that, no pun intended? that is probably a bad choice of words. >> i do not get your concern about this. let me try to explain it to you. i know i talked slowly. i have an accent. i assume that your inability to understand my argument is based on me, not you.

>> if you talk slow enough. i think i understood. i do not agree with it. >> here is the argument. there is no constitutional right to get on an airplane without being screened that i know of. when the founder sat down and wrote the constitution, they did not consider flying. i do not believe that the constitution protect any of us from being able to get on an airplane without being screened. here is the elephant in the room. what if all the secondary screening happens to be 99% muslim males? that is where we are headed with this thing. >> only if they are on the terrorist watch list. here is the issue about profiling. we are at war. we have to realize the profile of the enemy. you do not want to focus on law abiding american muslim males who are serving in the military

unjustifiably. as you said, mayor bloomberg, this is not about religion. there are plenty of people in this country of the muslim faith that are fighting and dying for this country. we have to watch what we are doing and what we are saying here. senator lieberman, joe, we are talking about a second amendment right. some of the people pushing this idea are also pushing the idea of banning handguns. i do not think banning handguns makes me safer. every criminal who wants a gun seems to be able to get one. i do not believe taking this concept of gun ownership and denying it not after you have been committed in a lawful court of a felony, where you get your day in court with a lawyer and a journey -- i think you are going to far. there is a huge difference between losing your gun right based on a felony charge that was proven by a court of law and appealed, and is a conviction on

the books, than being on some list that is at best suspect. if everybody is that dangerous on the list, those that tried to buy a gun -- nobody can tell me how they have been prosecuted. i have a lot of concern that this is not going in the right direction. we are dealing with the constitutional right. i am very concerned about gaps in our defenses. maybe i am making a bad argument to you, but it makes sense to me that losing the ability to own a gun, which is a constitutional right, using this list, and the way it is constructed, is unnerving at best. >> you and i will continue this argument. but no one is trying to ban handguns here. i am not. i certainly would not support that. some make, but this is far from that. the second amendment the first, our most prized right, free speech, assembly,

petition your government, freedom of religion -- they are not unlimited. to me, this is an extraordinarily limited law that is being proposed by congressman king and others. to say that somebody suspected as a terrorist can buy a gun -- we will continue that discussion, i am sure. i want to ask just a few more questions. actually, what i am about to ask would be to slightly expanded the databases against which gun purchasers are related. mayor bloomberg, you said quite directly that nidal hassan was not on a terrorism watch list. but he was the subject of an active joint terrorism tax -- a task force investigation.

because of the e-mail contact that he had with the radical cleric in the yemen, there is a larger fbi database of people who are subjects of investigation. congressman king, i was going to ask you -- this does not need to be done by law. it could be done by the fbi, by regulation. wouldn't it make sense to go beyond -- again, for this precautionary system that we are talking about, wouldn't it make sense to also ask the -- ask somebody coming in to purchase a gun be run to the larger database the fbi has of people under active investigation? >> senator, i fully agree with that. i am familiar with the case of major hasan. using that case as an example, i agree with you. >> thank you. just a couple more questions,

quickly. the nypd has a program called operation nexus. it reaches out to businesses that sell or release certain equipment that could be used to facilitate terrorist activities. i want to ask you to talk a little bit about it, how it has worked and whether the federal government ought to encourage other communities to adopt the same kind of program. >> there actually is a program similar to that in customs. it had to do specifically with airplane parts leaving the country. that is where i got the idea. nexus is an outreach program on the part of the department where we go to businesses that may unwittingly be used by terrorists, even garden supply stores, as far as fertilizer is concerned.

we went to marinas. we went to insecticide spraying companies. we have gone to their conventions, conventions a storage facility owners and that sort of thing. we have made probably 50,000 visits since this program started in 2000. it gives them a certificate and gives them a way of notifying us if they see something of a suspicious nature. as a matter of fact, the british authorities came here in 2003 and said openly that they looked at this program and copied it. it was helpful in the crevice case, which you are familiar with, in which there was ammonium nitrate stored in a facility in the uk. i see no downside in doing a similar program. people are under no obligation, but the business owners who are

approached seem to be supportive, seem to like it. they feel they are sort of in the game. we give them a certificate that says nypd. it has been helpful in a series of leads. >> i appreciate that. i think we are going to see whether we can urge other companies to adopt that. there has been some reference here to the so-called gun show loophole. that is not specifically the topic of this hearing, but it obviously is another concern that we have about the ability of would-be terrorists to buy firearms at gun shows without having to go through the checks, including the one we are trying to expand and toughen here, that they would if they walked into a federally licensed gun shop. i wanted to ask both the commissioner and the mayor. i believe the nypd did an investigation of gun shows

recently and reached what i thought were some very important conclusions. i wonder if either of you wanted to share that. >> it was a private group that did the investigation that we hired. let me explain for the record what the gun show loophole is. federal laws require background checks if you buy a gun from a dealer. there is an exemption for at a gun show, ostensibly so that if you owned one gun and wanted to sell it to me we would not have to go through any of the investigatory process. the trouble is that if you go to gun shows you will find people coming in and not with one gun to sell but with hundreds of guns to sell. they are fundamentally dealers. they have the same sized inventory as the legally registered gun dealers to go to these gun shows, but the law does not apply to them.

i do not think that congress meant that loophole to be a way around having professional sellers of guns avoid the regulation that you have to do a background check. it was met for individual purchases for one gun or two. it has been used for something different. closing that gun show loophole, requiring the same processes for non-registered dealers who are effectivell dealers as you do for registered dealers, would help the government keep guns out of the hands of those that the federal government has already legislated should not have them -- convicted felons and miners, people with mental problems. there are some categories. the terror gap is just another category. i am sympathetic to senator gramm -- senator grrham's

concerns. he is a thoughtful senator who has put a lot of time into this. i am hopeful that we will be able to convince him that this is consistent with the other laws that the congress has passed and the supreme court has said are reasonable. >> thank you. commissioner, tell us as best you recall about some of the findings of that study. i saw something about it and i was struck by just how willing a lot of the gun show dealers are to break he law. >> this investigation was done by a private contractor. but we are obviously concerned about the gun show loophole. it has been known to be -- it is talked about on the street. certainly, in some states, it is more of a problem than others. we have certain states that seem

to contribute excessively to the guns that we find on the streets of our city. the gun shows sort of predominate in a lot of those states. >> let me add one other thing. >> go ahead. >> our investigation at the gun shows -- we made sure that the seller of the gun, who was somebody that we have hired, said to the potential buyer, "if you had to go to a background check, would you pass? 63% we have this on tape -- said they would not. people who could not go to a reputable dealer -- and 90% of the gun dealers in this country are reputable and insist on a baccground check -- people who cannot buy guns that we go to gun shows to avoid the federal law. i do not think congress wants to pass that. they passed a law. it should be enforced.

>> i agree. congressman king, mayor bloomberg, governor kelly, thanks for taking your time to come in. it helps us draw attention to this gap. hopefully, it will encourage our colleagues to vote to close the gap. have a good day. thank you. we will call the second panel. we will give the first panel in a moment or two to find their way out. ho[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> today, retiring supreme court

justice john paul stevens and solicitor general allocation on the justices' life. miss keeton -- kagan has been interviewed as a possible replacement for justice stevens. >> saturday night, on c-span radio and c-span not work, reports by utah's senator robert bennett. he is addressing the 3500 delegates, along with seven other candidates vying for his seat, saturday at the convention center in salt lake city. we will have those remarks tonight at 8:00 p.m. on c-span. >> senate majority whip dick durbin is our guest sunday, onn c-span is "newsmakers." he will talk about democratic efforts to pass reform legislation and the issues heading into the midterm election.

a look now at u.s.-mexico relations. mexico's chief of international affairs gave a speech recently on his country's economy, border security, and combating the drug trade. this is about 45 minutes. >> i would like to thank you for coming in today. i am honored to introduce to you a man with a substantial influence over international matters in a very important region of this world. that is the state of mexico. i am talking about dr. arnulfo valdivia machuca. he is the chief of international affairs in the state of mexico. he is a political adviser to the governor. he has served as an honorary representative of the state of mexico in europe and the united

kingdom. he has served as an independent adviser to the secretary of economic development of the state of mexico, the european union, and several mexican political parties. he is currently the president of the regional advisory council for the national immigration institute in the state of mexico. he has a post doctoral degree in economic integration from the european university institute in florence, italy. he also holds a doctorate in political economics and a master's degree in development studies, both from the university of cambridge. in addition, he has authored a book about mexico and the rule of informal institutions. please join me as we welcome dr. machuca. [applause]

>> i would like to thank you all for being here. that was a nice introduction. i had a lot of fun of getting all those degrees. the truth is they are there but the process was very fun. of course i have to think the first council of pittsburgh for this invitation. david murdock, thank you very much. i would like to think annie and of course brandon wallace for all their efforts. there is great work they put into this luncheon. i am deeply honored for this invitation. i would also like to thank h.j. heinz and u.s. steel for their sponsorship, as well as the university and the hispanic chamber of commerce of pittsburgh.

i would like to think the presence of all of you, including your district attorney and many important people from the city of pittsburgh. i would like to thank you for the interest in mexico. this is my first time in pittsburgh. i always thought that my first visit to pittsburgh would probably be to stadium to watch a steelers' game. i am a great fan of the steelers since i was 7 years old. but i suppose coming to a heine's luncheon with u.s. steel is probably very close to that. so i am happy. i am really glad i am here. anyway, first i would like to explain to you what the state of mexico is. it is very weird to most people. in mexico, complicated as we are, we have a country named

mexico, a state named mexico, and a city named mexico. the state of mexico, just to make it easy for you, is as if we put maryland and virginia together and created a state around these. that is what the state of mexico is. the state of mexico surrounds what we call dias, the federal district, where the federal powers are. mexico city is located partly in the dias territory and a bigger part of it is located in the state of mexico. that is what the state of mexico represents. the state of mexico is 1% of the territory in the country. we contribute about 11% of national gdp we are the most populated state. we have 15 million people living

in the state of mexico. we contribute about 17% of industrial production. the state of mexico is hoped to a lot of the manufacturing that is done in mexico. for example, just to give you a short example, all the peaty cruisers in the world are made in m -- all these tp pt cruisern the world are made in my city. many of the cars in the hemisphere are made there. we have gm, ford, nissan, bmw. we have a huge auto industry. we have a huge chemical industry. we have a huge processed food industry. david probably knows a little bit about that. in short, the state of mexico, as you can imagine is a very

influential state in mexico. i am very proud to be the chief of international affairs of that state, which in a way amounts to the secretary of state of the state of mexico. i take care of the international cooperation, the migration issues. we have a lot of people from the state of mexico living in the united states and sending money to their family there. we do international economic promotion. that is the state of mexico. that is a short explanation. i want to get into today's topic. i think it has generated a lot of interest, obviously. i want to think your presence here. i think part of the interest that mexico is causing -- that mexico causes today comes from a huge mystery.

the mystery is why is it that such a great nation, because i think we all know that mexico is much more than what we see in the news today -- why it is going through so much trouble. what is happening in mexico? and what is happening on that border that we have? how can we understand what is going on in mexico, and eventually how can we help or change or whenever? i think that worries the u.s. even more because we are next door. a lot of american businesses are based in mexico. mexico represents a huge market for u.s. products. i think we all see that mexico, from the outside, has great opportunity for many things. it has a great potential. at the same time, there are things going on there that we do

not understand. that is what i am going to try to explain a little bit during this conversation, at least from my humble point of view. first of all, i would like to say that the u.s. and mexico are inextricably linked. we are not going to go anywhere. we could -- we mexicans may not like some things about the u.s. or u.s. policy. you americans may not like certain things about mexico and mexican policy. but the truth is we cannot move. we are going to be there and you are going to be here. we have to find a way to solve our problems. there is no way to move. we can move individually, but the country will stay there. let me just give you some idea

of what mexico may represent for the u.s.. i do not know if you know that for example mexico is the first trading partner, above china, canada, india, japan, the u.k., and france. mexico is the first trading partner of california, new mexico, texas, and arizona. just to give you an example, last year, 2009, texas exported $56 billion to us. 32% of arizonas exports went to mexico. this is an additional piece of information i would like to give you. we are the second trading partner -- we are the second

market -- for states like wisconsin, michigan, illinois, and pennsylvania. we are the second market for pennsylvania products. we are the third seller to pennsylvania just last year, again, controlling for the economic crisis, you sold us $2 billion of cars. you bought others from us. again, we are third for new jersey and colorado. you can understand in the case of texas and california, but illinois, pennsylvania, new jersey? the state's i just mentioned are not small economies. they are huge economies within the u.s..

that gives you an idea of the importance of mexico in trade terms for the united states. in terms of population, 12 million mexicans live in the u.s., 12 million people with a mexican passport. 22 people of mexican origin -- 22 million people of mexican origin, second or third generation mexicans, live in the u.s.. you may not know 1 million u.s. citizens live in mexico illegally -- live in mexico legally. about 300,000 illegally. why am i saying illegally? is this backpackers who decided to go to puerto vallarta and stayed there?

that is a huge number. then we are linked by another current of migration we do not often talk about, because mexico is the gateway to all the central, south american, and caribbean immigration. they go through mexico. something you may not know is that about 20% of those that aim for the united states and up staying in mexico. we ourselves have a huge problem as well of migrants, central american and south american migrants staying in mexico. we have what many people talk about -- nafta. nafta is there. i can talk a ittle bit about it later, but we may like it or not

like it. nafta means we all legally decided to be partners. we decided to be trading partners. it is sort of like a marriage. like it or not, you signed a contract. today i would say, very importantly, we have a topic that is hot right here, which is crime. this may sound terrible, but we are united by crime. why is that? through mexico, the drugs that young people are consuming in the united states are marketed and introduced to the united states. the guns that are used to kill the police agents in mexico are bought in the u.s.

selling guns is illegal in mexico. guns have to be bought in the united states. i would like to get into three questions, having set the stage for this. i will do t quickly because i am aware i do not have too much time. i will very quickly go through three questions. how did mexico get into the situation is in today? what could be the options moving forward? and what could be the future of mexico's relations with the u.s.? how did mexico get into this? well, you may remember that there was a political party called the p r i, those of you who know about mexican culture. there was a political party called the pri's that governed

mexico for about 70 years. by the way, i belonged to that political party. the government i work for belongs to the political party. we lost power in mexico in the year 2000. in the last 10 years, another party called the pan has been the governing agency. one thing that has happened, and i am not here to make political statements. what i am here to do is to explain that the political transition mexico went through did not come, necessarily -- and by the way, i believe in democratic the use and that democratic transition was good. i am not glad we lost, but i am glad that the fact that we lost created a democratic transition.

but we have been so guilty with our, let us say, undemocratic system of the past, that in the last 10 years all we have been doing is trying to make clear that we are a democratic country. we've invested a lot of money, a lot of effort, and not a negotiation, and a lot of political capital and will into proving we are a democratic country. what that created was that many of the institutions that make mexico or any country work in mexico were left aside. they are working the way they worked 10 years ago and under a democratic reality. that does not always work well. to get a little bit into the topic of security, of organized

crime -- when you have a very centralized system of intelligence, when you have a very totalitarian way of preventing crime, would you have a strong olice institution, you are bound to have a certain form of control under organized crime. at least the whole institutional structure is created for that. it works around a centralized power controlling crime. when you suddenly opened up institutions and you have no way of coordinating police action, you have no way of centralizing intelligence, you have 3200 local police under different commands, it is a lot easier to

infiltrate the police. we have 3000 police departments under who knows what command. it is easier to infiltrate. when the justice system was very centralized and positions were made in a centralized way, and all of a sudden it is totally open and you have to create the institutions to make it work under an open system, things do not work as well as they should. in many ways, that is what happened in mexico. democracy was very good. i still think democracy is good and it is great we went to a democratic transition. the problem is how do you change or institutions to work properly under a democratic system when you previously did not have one. institutions are designed to work under a non democratic or

partially democratic system. that has to change, meaning we have to push very important reforms in mexico if we want things to work better. this is the same for trade. this is the same for the economy. again, we thought that just by getting democracy right and getting the market economics right we would -- things would just work out fantastically well. they did not. we have to go deeper into reforms that make the country work, that make the country effective. what are the options to move forward? i believe that first of all we need political reform in mexico,

to find a way to agree. for example, let me tell you -- there is legislative paralysis in mexico just because there are no ways to get a majority in congress, even if you are a majority in in the voting ballots. you win the majority -- you do not have a majority. there was a system created to avoid majorities because there had been one party rule. what happened was that whenever the pri's one at 90% of the seats in congress, which it did all the time, there was a mandate to put representatives from other parties in congress just to avoid an overwhelming

majority. those rules are still in place. what happens now is that when parties get a 30% vote, or a 60% vote, they still would not get majorities because the system was for a totalitarian system. it does not work for a democratic system. you end up having a congress that is constantly unable to pass anything. fight. no one has the majority to pass anything. i am hearing voices but i will not get into internal politics. just to give you an example, from 94 to 97, and this is still p r i years, still majority party, 60% of the initiatives sent to congress

passed. 60%. 97 to 2000, still a mix. the opposition made a huge events -- opposition to meet, because i belong to the majority party. it went from 62% to 47%, the number of initiatives improved -- approved. 2003, the first three years of the democratic change, 41%. 60, up 47, 41. the next three years, 28. now what you have is that 7% of initiatives in congress pass. it does not matter where they come from. they do not pass. 70%, nothing happens. if we have a system that promotes disagreements instead

of agreement, you are bound to have this response. anyway. we need political reform because we need to find better ways to reflect our newly born democracy in institutional ways. we need the system to work better. we need economic reform because we also need to make the country grow again. if mexico does not grow, you are still going to have children finding it must -- finding it much easier to enter a drug cartel and to start a business. if they have no hope that their initiative -- their personal initiative in creating a business -- will be successful, they will find it very easy to enter a drug cartel. when you have a judiciaryyand a police system that does not work too well, you have all the

incentives wrong. you have the negative incentives not to be a criminal not working. you have the incentives to be a criminal working quite well. that is a very dangerous combination. i do not mean to say that every child in mexico wants to become a drug trafficker. that is not the case. what i am saying is that for some people who are under poverty and in extreme social and personal circumstances this is a very feasible way to get out of their situation. i am going to go to my last point. i want to be -- i think i am more interested in your questions then in my own remarks here. whatever happens, however this

reform process continues, and however we continue this strategy against drug cartels, which i say as a personal remark and not on behalf of any government, i say that as a personal review -- a personal view, i do not agree with the way the strategy is being run. but that is another story. i think it had to be done. we had to fight crime. but not precisely in the way it is being done today. anyway. whatever we do with the security policy, whatever we do with economic policy, mexico cannot and should not do it alone. we just cannot do it alone. we are just too linked to the united states. we are to linked to central america. we do not have the resources,

either economic or technological, to do it alone. with the degree of cooperation and integration in the world, why should we do it alone? going back to my initial figures, i think we should do it with the u.s., just because the u.s. is very important to us. and we are very important to the u.s., for reasons that are not always known by the general population. again, let us go back to our wedding. we signed a contract. we are partners in this. again, we are neighbors. we cannot move. so you have all these things. why should we do it alone? it is affecting you. it is affecting us. you are worried about what is happening. we are worried about what is we could do something together.

i see for the future and i would hope there is a much broader and deeper agenda of cooperation with the u.s.. i think many times the problem between mexico and the u.s. and their relation is that we talk about the things that interest us and you talk about the things that interest you. we rarely talk about the things that interested the other. we are interested -- and i am going to be critical here. mexico always says migration reform and blob blob blob and why do you treat the mexicans like -- i have never heard mexico talk about cooperating with you as a terrorism partner -- and anti-terrorism partner. that is a line which we have to start talking about.

otherwise, you will not be fully interested. the other way around, we will not be interested. i see a lot of cooperation in the future for anti-drug fighting. i see a lot of cooperation for nafta. nafta is an old guy. you can teach a 20 year-old to be different. you cannot complain because when he was 16 he did something wrong, or when he was 9. you have to think about what flows from nafta. we have to think about what follows. we cannot just opt out, neither of us, because the companies are there. the people are there. do we have to learn from the mistakes we have made in the past with nafta? of course we do. i think we have to compensate

the losing industries. i think we have to compensate the losing communities. but to say we are not going to talk anymore because "we won this and you won that -- we could keep going on a never ending discussion. anti-terrorism, migration policy, community development not only in mexico. the migrants come from mexico but they attached to communities in the u.s.. we should maybe have a fund that helps mexico develop so that migrants will come, but we should also have a fund -- in north developed -- a north american development center we could find better, to have communities in the u.s. the compensated for migrant workers arriving there. that would create a good incentive for people to accept

better this inevitable flow of people. i am saying inevitable does because the cultural, personal, and social ties are now so big in some communities it is almost just to conclude, i see -- i am a very optimistic person about mexico. i am very optimistic. but i think i would have to be and would love to be more optimistic about how mexico interacts and will interact with the u.s.. i think this is a great time to do this. i think eventually there will be conditions. i also think that in counters are a real point of contact to get to know each other better. . .

>> i will stay away from arizona's new immigration law and focus on drugs. we're hopefully helping you with the war had -- war that has been declared by the drug gangs appeared over 23,000 people have been killed in the last three years. several of them have been public officials. we are spending billions in afghanistan, that is a 90% narcotics the paramilitary policy is basically to ignore the poppy fields. -- that is a 90% narcotics state. our military policy is basically to ignore the poppy fields. should we consider decriminalization? >> should i go question by question? ok. first, i am not fit to come and talk about local politics or

about the wars the u.s. is waging on other countries. i really would not like to do that because that is a matter of internal policy. however, i do believe that the strategy of drug fighting in mexico has been a very difficult, because of what is happening in the u.s. troops in afghanistan or iraq for example. what you have is a little -- is literally a guerrilla war. before this war, you may have had four or five big cartels, with four or five visible heads. with the war on drugs, the strategy -- i do not personally agree with it. when you cut off the top -- the heads -- and i do not mean this

literally -- when you get rid of the top five guys, what you have is five or six underneath that long now want their own cartel. instead of having in four cartels, you now have 30. when you get rid of 30, you have 100. what is happening is that come in many cases, these games or these mornings are now fighting over territory or over markets. -- and again, people are being fought by the army. after four years, we still have the army in the streets. it is very dibble to fight gangs with -- difficult to fight gangs with the army. there are a lot of civilian casualties on the war on crime.

when you have a army fighting gagngs, -- gangs, the army is trained to shoot and to bomb, not trained to do intelligence and pick the gain leader and take him out -- gang leader and take him out. the army is trained to shoot. what i believe would be a much more sensible approach would be to have specialized crews of civilian police -- very specialized, with intelligence, with the latest, high-tech, and the knowledge of the new crime- fighting methods -- prepared to enter this war. prepare to solve this problem. i think it was the time to do it from the start. it was not done, but it should be done. and that is where the u.s. can come in.

in my opinion, my personal opinion, i do not think the aid or help of the u.s. in fighting this should be equipping of the army a lot more so that they can bomb and shoot more. i think all this high-tech intelligence, these ballistic machines, and so on and so forth, that we do not have in mexico, all of the laboratories that are ideas for crime prevention and prosecution of criminals, to stay better cases so that they stay in jail -- all of this is where the u.s. can very easily come in. and not very easily, but should hopefully come in. that is the way i see it.

that would be my answer. my answer would be, i am not sure that the answer is strengthened the army. my guess would be -- strengthen the army. my answer would be helped us strength and the police so that we can better fight organized crime. -- help us strengthen the police saw in better fight organized crime and gangs -- so that we can better fight organized g crime andan -- crime and gangs. >> can you give us your perspective on how this new lot in arizona will affect the relationship between art t our o countries? >> i can mention another number,

30% of the work force in arizona is either mexico -- mexican or from mexico. however, we also understand that it has a huge political charge. the primaries and the governor's election is coming. we also understand that that is not something approved by americans in general. we also saw the voting -- a very divided vote to pass it. we have hope that things could be reversed or, at least, modified. however, in the end, and that's my opinion, what we would need

would be a much clearer, federal immigration policy and law. when you have vacuums' for certain issues -- and that is what's happening in terms of immigration, there is a vacuum -- local powers and groups are bound to fill them up. in the best of cases, you can expect a very uncertain outcome of how they will fill them up. there will fill them up to the best of their interests. in the end, and deep down inside, the answer would be proper federal regulation. i'm not saying we should legalize them or not. that is an internal issue. the u.s. and the american people have to decide how they're going to do it. i believe that this shows that there can be no more wait for a

national immigration act of some sort. >> 7yes. -- yes. >> my question is, is there not a significant amount of corruption in the local systems that are preventing -- one of the reasons that the federal government is taking the position that it has under the call to run -- under the calderon administration. what would you do to prevent that systemic corruption and include a more statewide system? it seems there is a tremendous amount of bribery, infiltration, as you stated. i have to commend the calderon government, considering that it is my understanding that he has a tremendous amount of courage and the people under him, as well, that even federal police

and their families are being attacked. >> i totally agree with you. i want to be very clear that i am not saying the war on crime or the attack on it should not have been done. i think it had to be done. i think it has to continue. it cannot be a one- administration policy. it has to be a national consensus. i think it is a national consensus that we have to fight this organized crime. answering your question -- and there have been recent moves that all the governors in mexico, like you have here, the national governors' association -- there is something like that in mexico. in that association, the national conference of governors, they all agree to

create state police instead of local or city police. to consolidate into one state police, instead of local police. what happens in the end is that it is going to be much easier to coordinate with 32 police departments than it is to coordinate with 32,000 -- 3200. there are moves towards that. i also believe that, yes -- i still believe that, even if it was -- it is the historic responsibility of the federal government to take this into their hands and try to solve it. there should also be moves toward professionalizing this policy through civilian groups that could be federal.

i am not saying they would have to be state groups. in my opinion, they should be federal. but not the army -- that is what i mean. not anymore. >> dr. machuca, how has the economic and financial crisis impacted mexico? do you see mexico recovering any time soon? >> when the u.s. -- we are so connected to the united states economically, as in other ways, -- ways. we export 80% of our total

products to the united states. we buy 80% of our total imports from the united states. that has a lot of problems. it is so concentrated on the united states. it gives you an idea of why when the u.s. has an economic downturn, we have a much steeper downturn. the way it was is that last year, for example, mexico had a 6.5% loss of gdp. we did not grow precontracted by 6.5 -- we did not grow. we contracted by 6.5% or 647%. -- the 6.4% -- we contracted by 6.5% or 6.7%. we talked about another topic which i forgot to address during

my talk here. how it has impacted the economy -- crime. we do not have specific measures as to how organized crime and drug problems have directly impacted the decisions to invest in mexico. we cannot certify all guests. we do have a local figures. state by state, and have a have been behaving in terms of foreign direct investment in the last few years -- and how they have been behaving in terms of foreign direct investment in the last few years. the perception of organized crime is high. most of the foreign direct investment, some of them at 50%, where the perception is not

commonly held. for example, the state of mexico. they are not known for having a huge organized crime problem. last year, even controlling for phe economic crisis, we had a 27% increase in foreign direct investments. it shows you the people somehow know that mexico's drug and violence problems are somewhat localized. they avoid those regions and those areas. but there are others they do not avoid. for example, even if i asked you here, would you go to mexico city? most people would probably say yes, i would. they would probably ask if there was a safety problem, but you would still go.

if i said another part of mexico, you might say, why do we not do it another time? anyway. >> i have a question from the web cast. we have a number of yours, not only in you -- we have a number of viewers, not only in the united states. how do you find the rise in the organized crime in mexico linked to the global, economic downturn? how do you feel those are linked? >> again, i am not an expert on security or crime. i am more of an international relations by. my guess would be that organized-crime is a different

manifestations of crime then the crime that rises or comes from not having a job. when you lose your job -- most of your life you have been working in full employment. -- in formal employment. if you decide to become a criminal, you would steal to eat. you would not get into higher forms of organized crime. this i know -- there are studies that show that crime escalates. whoever starts by may be stealing a pack of cigarettes, and does not get caught, the next time they may steal the mirrors of a car, does not get caught, steals the car, does not get caught, starts of van that then doessteals, not get caught, then becomes a

kidnapper. entrepreneurship rose as you do not get caught -- grows as you do not get caught. the organized crime was there before the crisis. that is why they were fighting. they have been here for many years. what i think is that there is a huge fight between the smaller of gangs for points of distribution or routes. i do not think the economic crisis necessarily made it worse. it is two types of crime. >> we have time for one more question. thank you. >> i was wondering if you could speak to social enterprise and micro financing.

how can and help with economic development in mexico? >> micro-financing is a huge part of what we can do to get out of the crisis in mexico. literally, 97% of the companies in mexico are small and mi cro enterprises. from one to ten people or so. it does play a huge role in what we're doing. i do not think we have a system that is fully developed yet for micro-financing. it is very expensive to create a formal job. that is something we have to change. that is something i have here on the social reformer. we need to change the social structure of benefits. right now, if you hire a person,

you end up paying 40% on top of his wages, just for social benefits. that becomes really expensive. we're subsidizing informality, in away. that is another topic. i agree that micro-finance has a place. [applause] >> thank you very much. hold on. dr. machuca, thank you very much for coming to pittsburgh. we appreciate you speaking here for us. you.ve a globe for if you have any visitors from organized crime, just throw it at them. thank you so much. we really appreciate it. [applause] >> thank you very much. should i stay here or go there?

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] but today, john paul stevens an elated kagen -- >> john paul stevens and elena kagan on the america & the courts. >> remarks by robert bennett at his party's nomination. he will address the delegates along with the seven other candidates in vying for his seat. you can watch that coverage tonight at 8:00 p.m., here on c- span. >> he got on the phone and said "judge, i would like to announce it as my selection to be the next associate justice of the united states supreme court." caught myhim -- i

breath and started to cry. "thank you, mr. president." learn more in the new book available now in hardcover. it is also available as an e- book. >> education secretary arne duncan talked about the role of parents in improving the nation's schools. this was a conference in washington with delegates from every state and the district of columbia. this is about one hour. >> it is a pleasure to be with you this morning. i want to thank you all for joining us for this special town hall on education and the role of family engagement in education reform. i would like to recognize our special guests who are here with us today. the u.s. secretary of education,

arne duncan, our keynote speaker. susan king, the better -- editor in chief of "printing" magazine. my colleague, robert manuel. and the members of the "m.o.m." congress. this is a collaboration between a number of groups who celebrate, connect, and support people interested in education advocacy and reform. parents play a primary role in their children's educational success. it is heartening to see some many of you who are interested in providing stronger and better education for all of our children. of course, not just parents and educators, but all community members have a responsibility to ensure that all students have the opportunity and resources

necessary to achieve their fullest potential. this is an enormous responsibility. whit has transformed of potential. we enable our students to achieve better lives, overcome hurdles, and to become thoughtful, compassionate, creative, incompetently dollars of tomorrow. education positively -- creative and effective leaders of tomorrow. education positively impact children. we're committed to ensuring that children receive quality education. with our partnership with a network of schools, which brings with them a number of high- school students from all around our country, including from the secretary arne duncan's hometown of chicago, where participation

in the washington, d.c. reitz program,nd through the tutong and mentoring of our 0- -- d.c. reads program and through the tutoring and mentoring of our students, and it through the choice that many of our students have three made through teach for america. we remain to -- committed to confronting the pressing issues. the united states secretary of education comes from a family of educators. his late father was a professor at the university of chicago. his mother has run a south side triggering program for inner- city children since 1961 -- tutoring program for inner-city students since 1961.

he helped fund a college education for a class of inner- city children under the i hava dream program. he was part of the team that started aew public elementary school built around the financial literacy curriculum. it ranks among the top elementary schools in chicago today. for a 2001 to 2008 --rom 2001- 2008, he was the head of the chicago public schools. during his tenue, the students' meeting oexceeding state reading and math standards increased. throughout his career, secretary arne duncan has focused on innovative approaches to education and education reform. we are honored to have him here with us today.

secretary arne duncan, we are grateful for all you have done and for joining us here at georgetown university this morning. it is my privilege to introduce the united states secretary of education, the hon. arne duncan. -- the honorable arne duncan. [applause] >> good morning. ank you so much for that kind introduction. i am a huge fan of his and this university. i feel smarter every time i come and a place like this. this university's commitment to academic excellence, leadership skills -- he was so much for what you are doing. i also want to thank "parenti magazine," for sponsoring this conference. my wife and i are huge fans. thank you so much for what you

are doing. last fl, the president was in south korea where he had lunch wi the president. president obama was aware that south korea pose the economy had expanded rapidly in recent decades. so he asked the president, what ishe biggest educational challenge you face? the president said without hesitation, the biggest challenge i have is that my parents are too demanding. when president obama tells that story, he often gets a few chuckles. i think the south korean president's comments were interesting. south korea has to import thousands of children. all parents insist that their children must learn english in elementary school if it will be successful. biggest

educational challenge is the consistent demand from all parents for excellence in our nation's schools. the south korean challenge is one that i would love to have here in our country by think everyone would also agree that america strongly believes in good parenting and family involvement is essential if children will flourish and fulfil their dreams. the extraordinary accomplishment of the mothers in this conference are a testament to that belief. there is a paradox when we talk about family engement in schools. it is this -- americans celebrate good parenting and family involvement, yet they feel that too often, the parents do not know their responsibilities. parents and educators have been looking out th window instead of in the mirror. inadequate parental involvement is seen as a problem for other

people's children and not for our own. it reminds me of a story that warren buffe like to tell about a man who was new in town. the stranger walks into the town square. he sees a man sitting and readinghe newspaper, next to a chairman shepherd. he asked the man, does your job dog bite? he reaches down to pet the dog, only to ve of the dog terror a shred on his coat. the man looks up and said, this is not my dog. i am here to say that we need to stop treating the issue of family engagement as though it is not our dog. parents think well of the school their child or children attend. but they believe at the same time that publicchools in general across this country are not as strong as theneed to be. the same split vision of

education is evident when americans asked about parenting and family engagement at school. overwhelming majorities say that their parenting skills a solid, but they are actively involved -- they arectively involved in their child's school. they are convinced tt other parents are falling down on the job. other parents how about too little with homework, failed to discipline their children, or leave their children alone too much after school. this cognitive dissidence -- dissonance his troubled both political paies for years. iteaves paralysis in civic life most parents think their own schools and family engagement is fine, fostering complacency about challenges close t home. but the challenges that other schools seem to distant or overwhelming to tackle. lamar alexander, a good friend of mine, and a secretary of education, once said that this i

am o.k. but you are not syndrome is the overwhelming obstacle to everything we are trying to do. to many people say that schools e bad, but my school is good. sour tyour a bubble low math scores, but my johnny is doing -- sry to hear about below math scores, but my johnny is doing just fine. when parents look in the mirror, they are forced to develop a can-do list of actions on how they can improve schools in support children. when they look out the window towards others, they produce and if only approach to reform. one word children can be helped if only others would take action -- one which children can be held only if others take action. every parent, regardless of race, class, socio-economic status, they want what is right for their ildren. but h do parents figure out that their school does a good job of educating their chiren?

i'm the big believer in looking at data, but the acid test for this is personal. good schools engaged parents and the surrounding community. when was ceo of the shuttle public schools, i could walk into a school and five minutes and figure out what was going . i have an 8ear-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. if i walk into a school, and it feels good enough f my chilen, i tnk it is a good school. if it is not good enough for them, that is a school that needs work. for far too long, we have created schools that are good enough for somebody else's children but not for our own. so this has to be personal. if not, we will perpetuate status quo. as president obama points out, all the innovative education programs that the administration is providing will not in and of themselves make a difference if each of us as parents and community leaders failed to do

our part by increasing excellence in our children. i learned about family engements schools firsthand at my parents' feet. in 1961, several yearsefore i was born, a neighborhood pastor asked my mother to help teach the smer bible study to a group of 9-year-old girl. my mother figured everyone could read a few sentences and pass the bible to the next grow. she was horrified when she discovered that not one of the 9-year-old could read. she decided to do something about that. e opened a free -- opened a free, after-school tutoring program. they were not the norm in chicago. my mother could not get any school to let her set up shop, because chicago schools generally shut down at 2:30 in the afternoon. so she opened the after-school program in a church basement in a poor neighborhood on the south side of chicago. we stayed at one church basement

or another for the next four years. from the time were born, my brother, my sister, and i worked at that after-school program every day. the older students tutoredlong turkthe younger kids. her philosophy was that everyone should be teaching and being taught at the same time. [applause] after we were done with their studies, we got to play basketball together. everyone knew our program was a safe haven where kids were nurtured, respected, taught right from wrong. from the cner of 46th in greenwood avenue, some remarkable success stories emerged. the teenager who had the tough job of to bring my group of students, today is an ibm engineer who i. another student became a brain rgeon. michael clark duncan pursued his drea in hollywood.

another helped me manage the chicago public schools. i learned of the high-quality tutoring program can be a good thing. but a high quality tutoring program run by caring adults is a great thing. it can literally help transform lives. parents will always be a child first and most important teacher. parenting is the most important job that every parent takes on. no other activity in our lives carries the same degree of responsibility or influence. it also takes caring and talented principals, teachers, and guidance counselors. it takes nonprofits that provide opportunities for recreation. it takes to government agencies that provide health care. it takes mentors from the community and churches to teach ildren the virtues of community service, leadership, and self discipline. it takes a high quality after scol and urban childhood education programs. with the exception of my

brother, sister, and die, all the students in my mother's program were african american. despitthese challenges, my llow students just wanted a chance to succeed. to see the extraordinary potential that evy chd has, no matter where they come from, that is what i learned from my mother's work. at is what drives me today. we cannot let a child falls through the cracks, regardless of what is happening in their homes, regardless of obstacles they face to becoming successful. poverty is a never destiny. my vision for family engagement is ambitious. as i said, i actually want president lee's problem. i want to have too manyarents demanded excellence in their schools. i want all parents to be real partners ieducation with their teachers, from cradle all the y to a career. students and parents should feel

connected and teachers should feel supported. parents can serve in one of three rolls -- partners and learning, advocates and advisers to push for better schools, and decisionmakers to choose the best educational options for their children. when parents demanded change and better situations for their children, they become the accountability backstop for our educational system. parents have more choices today than ever before, from virtual schools, to charter schools. in our schools, we need to empor parents. we need parents to speak out and drive change in underperforming schools where children receive annferior education. with parental support, struggling schools need t be turned aund now, not some hour, because children get only one chance at an education. sometimes it can be pretty hard for parents to envision a brighter fure, but not always. in fact, we have extraordinary

parent leaders across the country. i met one this friday in texas. she refused to accept any excuses for her children or her school. she demanded that her high school be turned around and do whatever it takes to give her kids the ecation they need and deserve. just two years ago, after some tough conversations, pain and hardship, that school did turn around. today, that school as a model of reform that everyone can all learn from. she is a hero who shows us what the power of parents really means. that is the power we need to harness if we are going to transform public education in our country. now, parent engagement is a two- way street. parents, in part, disengaged because schools sometimes fail to welcome their input,aking parents feel intimidated about speaking up. parents come to school only when there is a problem, rather than

touching base regularly to see other children are progressing. a good parent and family engagement program removes obstacles that paren face and encourages them to be good role models for their children. communities where adults need better literacy, more schools shou be running family literacyrograms were adult education classes take place after hours,ith transportation and child care provided so students can study after school as well. for families where no one has attended college, i want middle scol a high-school teachers and principals providing guidance about courses children need to be college-ready. families should be encouraged to visit college campuses, starting not in high school, but in middle school. the nature of parental involvement has changed since i was a child. more parents are single parents. if your families have stay at home moms. parents are sometimes -- fewer famies have stayed home ms.

some are looking for new jobs to support their familieafter being laid off. it isough out there today. i was lucky to grow up in a family with two well-educated parents, who read to me every night. noall parents -- children grew up in middle-class families or their supporters along the way. schools shod be places of honor -- that honor and respect families. that may mean teachers giving up their cell phones to field questions at night. or calling that that sine mom who missed a parent-teacher conference because she had to work. that neutral support is still missing from far too many of our nation's schools -- that mutual support is still missing from far too many of our nation's school as firstady michelle obama has set about childhood obesity, our kids did not do this to themselves. she points out that our kids do not decide what is served in a school cafeteria or whether it

is time for gin class or recess. our kids do not choose -- for gym class or recess. our kidsid not choose this sugar or sodium or super sized portions. we have a long w to go before all schools support student learning and heahy growth. but parents are not off the hook,, in this partnership. president obama urges parents to turn off the television and shut off the x-box. many parents think those warnings are not really for them, but for other parents. i could not disagree with tha more. earlier this year, the kaiser family foundation released a study that shows the problem of heavy media use and lax supervision is far more pervasive than many people imagine. in fact, the study's findings almost defy belief. the average teenager today

spends nearly 12 hours per day using media. that is higher for black and hispanic students, and includes almost six hours of television every day. by contrast, teenagers spend about 25 minutes per day reading the book. one of my predecessors, richard riley said that the eight magic words from children that can solve all our problems are -- please shut off the television. i am trying to rd. we do not oen hear those magic words. in the days when families share food and lessons learned at the dinner table -- they are fading fast as we. two out of three young people eat dinner with the television on. this oversaturation of electronic media has summit -- amassed by overly permissive parents do. only about 1/3 of the parents and the study report setting any rules on television, playing

video games, and using a computer. parents rebelled against these lits, whether it is removing sweets from the dinner table o insisting children finish their games. work before playing video the time-honored fact is that the job of res is apparent, to login and give them direction and set reasonable limits. -- to lovingly give them direion and set reasoble limits. the problems of new media -- is real, but it is transforming it educion we. children can research online and watch educational tv programming. they can make connections on line. they can learn to socialize, communicate, and right through social networking sites. -- and write through social networking sites. the hopes of those new media proponents have only been at partly realized. heavy use toooften in peace

student learning. in the study, though some may have use of electronic media, spend less time reading books and do poorly inchool. i will admit that i was not raised in the vanguard of the technological revolution. in fact, quite the opposite. i grew up without a television in our house. when other kids were turning on the chicago bulls, we read books. my friends thought it was crazy we did not have a television. at the time, i thought the same thing. today, 3/4 of junior high and high school students not only have a television in their bedroom, but a profile on the social networking site. we will never put the electronic the genie back in the bottle, nor should we try. but parents can do a better job of setting limits on children's use of electronic media and work towards using it more creatively to support student learning.

there are examples of using technology to better engage children in their own learning. but more and more pants are concluding that media oversaturation and addictions are real problems for their children. these are not just modern-day afflictions that affect other families. it is time for all of us to look in the mirror and not just out the window. and that absolutely includes us at the u.s. department of education. [applause] for 45 years, ever since the passe of the elementary and secondary education act, the government has eouraged states, and districts and schools to promote parental involvement in children's education. parental involvement, for example, has been a cornerstone of headstart. yet the department has done a mediocre job of sporting parental engagement.

we have been too concerned with monitoring for compliance and noconcerned enough with improving student learning and boosting meaningful family engagement. part of the problem haseen a parade of parental involvement policies in the last half century. at various times, congress and the department have promoted parent advisory council meetings, volunteering in school, school parent context, and helping children learn at home, y these policies have rarely been shown to mo the needle on the student achievement. it is well documented and common sense that parental involvement in taught -- child education boost student learning and improves behavior in attendance. know that children with parents or in case are less likely to drop out. there is surprisingly little research to show what works and does not in family engagement programs, to accelerate student learning, yet there are many promising programs all across the country.

in arkansas, the national council for family literacy is running a family literacy program, primarily for latino and immigrant parents in their schools. pares spend two hours a week in class with their children learning literacy practices for use in their homes. the reading scores of both children and their parents have risen significantly as a result. in chicago, or one development program has boosted reang and math scoreusing parental involvement. other cities like new york and boston, as wl as one in florida, are empowering parents with information aut their schools and education as never before. new york is holding monthly. academies on saturda for parents. they provide child care, the subway access, and translati services in an array of languages. in florida, with did

transparency, parents can determine not only if graduates of their local high school e going to college and jobs, but how their college and job market performance compes to that of other high schools in the state. our blueprint to reauthorize us d -- it supports -- it empowers families with additional high quality school options. support programs that ask families how they feel about their child's school and educational experience, giving parents a real voice in -- and opportunity to engage. increases the number o schools that concern as community centers and provides more than $200 million for certain neighborhoods, which will have excellent schools and comprehensive community services. our proposal allows family engagement to be included as one

measure of success in teacher and principal evaluations. and it would define professional development -- to include working with their students' families. we are putting more resources into the it -- the importance of activities because we need to do more and do more faster. we need to do a much better job in this area. so today, based on feedback, we propose tdouble funding for parent engagement from 1% to 2% of type of title i dollars. [applause] to bring that total to $270 million. the same time, in order to drive innovation, we will allow states to use another 1% of title i dollars for grant proams that support and expand district- level, evidence based, parental involvement.

we want is to think big about family engagement, to propose new strategies and hone in on the best practices there raise student activity. leslie, require our parents information resource centers -- lastly we require these parent information resource centers. we must justify every dolr we spend and in short that it benefits our students. we do not have all the awers. but i am so struck by the extraordinary success stories of the delegates to the moms conference. it is not just that these mothers volunteer regule and serve on -- volunteer on school boards. seated behind me, i am convinced is the futur on the stage are moms who crafted programs to train teachers to work with special needs students. we have mom secreted texooks

for kindergarteners and detailed curricula -- moms who created textbooks. we have nutrition educators who are helping get junk food out of scol lunches and vending machin. we have mothers who run summer programs that provide arts education and acadec enrichment. so, today i want to honor all these incredibly strong women here, the woman in texas, and my own mother who, for years later, is still running her after-school program. -- 40 years later. all of you here have shown, through your commitment, your courage, and your insight, that we can multiplied your power many times over and over and build ou capacity in knowledge to help parents unable every single childo learn and live

toir full potential. thank you for your vision, thank you for your hard work, and thank you for the example you set for all of us. a nation, we must educate our way to a better economy, and coectively, you are helping to lead the country where we need to go. he was so much for having me here this morning. [applause] -- thank you so much for having me here this morning. >> we are going to make a quick status change, and tn we will move into the town hall portion of the meeting. secretary duncan has agreed to take some questions from the audience and from our delegates on stage. it will take as a couple moments to get the podium out of the way. let me say that i will serve as moderato. it will be tricky because we have questions coming from the audience as well as the stage.

there is a microphone in the middle of the stage, if you're interested in asking a question, move behind the microphone and we will get to as many questions as weekend. if you're going to ask a question, interest out -- introduce yourself and provide context. name, affiliation. now i will invite the secretary duncan and susan tooin me in the middle. i think we will start the conversation with a question fr the editor in chief o "parenting magazine." . . >> how can we make positive changes in the schools when

such a severe state budget cuts are looming and we hear these scary stories about 60 kids in a classroom and so on? >> these are very difficult economic times. i am pushing very hard for emergency legislation that would help save teachers' jobs around the country. we want to do this in a bipartisan way. the president is committed to this. we talked about this last week. through the rich every act -- through the recovery act, we save hundreds of thousands of teachers jobs last year. we did not want to see summer school and after-school programs being eliminated. the economy is still very tough. we want is the emergency legislation that passed. we want to work as hard as we can to make sure that does happen. as class sizes skyrocket, we see schools going to of four days a week -- we need more time, not less. i worry a lot about summer school being eliminated. we have to fight that.

we want to see an emergency jobs bill around education and we will push to see that happen. >> we will fight for you. >> thank you. >> are there questions or any of the delegates on stage? -- are there any questions from any of the delegates on stage? them a good afternoon, or is it still morning? -- >> afternoon, or is it still morning? thank you to georgetown for having us all here. i have to give a shout out to the elementary school in connecticut. they took the time, especially when -- on the issue of family engagement, they took the time to write essays for you of what they need to succeed in school. [applause] benjamin franklin elementary school fifth graders. the reason i say that is that

parents and youth are the only consumers who did not have decisionmaking power. we need to be very clear about that. we can get our input and feedback. , but a final decision -- but the final decision for our future lies in the hands of others. i look at a lot and it does not matter whether you give 2% or 10%. if you do not hold school officials and school districts accountable to how they spend the money, we will end up in this same position, having this same conversation. my question to you is, when you give this money, whether it is through grants or for our rope -- or for early learning, it does not matter. the accountability and the checks and balances to ensure that their spending this money effectively to ensure a better outcome is what i need to know, as a parent. to every parent in this organization and audience, i want you to smile.

this is a clear path way to power and parent leaders. arne duncan, as my question -- accountability. >> these are phenomenal questions. we have to get out of the blame game. parents versus educators or parents versus teachers or principals -- it does not get us where we need to go. we have to be mutually accountable. we challenge everyone to say we have to get much better. we have a drop out rate that is unacceptable. it is almost 27% -- 1.2 million students leaving our schools for the street every year. it is economically unsustainable, morally unacceptable. students who do graduate -- far too many have to take remedial courses in college. there are dummied down standards premier tried to address that. -- there are dummied and down standards. we are trying to address that.

we need to hold educators accountable. you need to hold me accountable. we need to challenge parents to stepped-up -- to step up, too. what if we have a problem of parents being too demanding here? you should speak up. your voices should be heard. we should hold each other mutually accountable. we should work together in a respectful way. we have to do so within this -- with a sense of urgency. everyone thinks their school was ok. it is hard to look in the mirror. these are hard conversations. friday, in houston, there was a lot of resistance to change. things are not really ok. two years later, things are much better. night and day. . every parent here looking at themselves in the

mirror and being self critical. we're trying to -- we're going to push teachers, parents, administrators, school boards, and we have to push ourselves harder than anyone else. what do we do individually and collectively? i think ware done. thank you. >> let's take a question from the audience. >> i have a question. i am a parent advocate. we go round and will help the parents of baltimore advocate. we help the navigate the system. we do try to help, and we try to work with the school system. when we can't, we have to get assistance and help. some of the parents are

grandparents, some are parents that are not educated and cannot help themselves. grandparents may not have graduated from high school or from -- you know, finished middle school. th don't understand homework. some of them don't get a chance or have the opportunity to understand the assignments that have been given to them. you talk about encraging people or parents to assist were to work withhe schools, but what about funding to help the advocates work with the school system? we have prevented some much, prevented a lot of lawsuits. the school system has saved a lot of funding. the grandparents have spent some much time raising them, the students. helping them go through the schools. there is nothing there in his blueprint, because i have read the blueprint.

there is nothing to help financially assist the education of any of these groups that i have spoken of. you can't be collegeeady if we are lowering the bar. they cannot assist and work towards goals of being number one in the united states if we are constantly lowering the bar and 're not building a good, strong foundation for our children. we take handwriting out of the curriculum, lower the bar for everyone involved. >> do less statements and more questions, we have a long line. quickly, we want to try it double funding from $135 million to $275 million to support parental engagement. we want to make sure we are fiing tho path to that work best. >> is that engagement being assisting finances to educate?

or is that engagement to work with the schools? >> it will be determined at e local level. we want to support the best practices or make a difference. if you can demonstrate the difference is making to students, we will support it. there are multiple ways of doing as well. the best dancers wi never come from your from washington. >> i have a document like to leave wh you before i leave. >> thank you. >> we only have 10 or 15 minutes. if we can move the questions quicker >> am amyrom new york state, the executive director for health the school food. thank you for your efforts with obesity prevention. the child nutrition reauthorization act only happens every five years and is coming up now.

an independent committee has only proposed a 6 cent increase that will do almost nothing. it still isn't enough. the question is, what can we do when the food industry is still really defining what is healthy in determining nutrition policy and pushing their packaged food products and claiming that they are hlthy with their unscrupulous labeling practices. how can we get to the real nutrition and a real funding to provide heahy food for kids so their bodies and brains can actually function? if they don't have that, they can't learn in the first place. >> for all of us get to where we need to go, we talk about partnership collaboration. a lot of folks tnk that -- i

am fortunate to have a secretary who is a phenomenal partner. he is pushing very hard. i am very hopeful. i got rid of the junk food and vending machines in chicago, and it was tough. i thought it was common sense, but it was a brutal fight. it was -- to me, there are a couple of things. it is really emphasizing physical activity, recess, after school. if i didn't get a chance toun around, i couldn't make it through school.

i had a -- we know the challenges and the difficulties. i am convinced of this historic opportunity. if we do it right now, we can change things for the next couple of decades. working together, we have a chance for a long, lontime. >> i want to say thank you for allowing t parents to engage with you this morning. and the coordinator for the urban parent leadership program in baltimore city. what i like to bring to the table, as he spoke about parent engagement, and my concern is

that as the money funnels down, getting to do the things we need to do. there is no budget line for parent engagemt. there is no budget line for parent involvement. and the statements that you said about how the problems are parents -- in our neck of the woods, when parents speakp about the knowledge they have learned and asked to raise the level -- you are excluded. you are pushed out of the neighborhood. these are parents that have normally volunteered. i have a group with me. the volunteer in baltimore city extensively. there -- they are parents, care givers, and more. we taught them how to bld partnerships.

what the law says about education, they were educating others had to get better education. that is my question. many of the districts that get the money like to play with those who agree with them. they do not want to play ball with those that want t speak up, talk about what is for real, and keep a real. i am concerned that you come from a grass-roots organization and you have a lot of parents out here. first of all, they are never going to meet your face. parents are crucial, raising the bar, working with school systems, etc.. what is going to be done that the budget linelearly indicates? i have not seen a budget line ye

the grass-roots organizations, the schools like to play ball with. that is my question for you. [applause] >> that is something that we can look at an oregon. i will say that this is about all of us building a different culture. the are many parents who feel disenfranchised by schools. we talked about changing it -- the money is never going to solve this problem by itself. it is about how you train teachers and principals to think differently. it is something that they are evaluated on. we talked about it being part of the definition fo meaningful development. parents are scared of teachers, teachers are scared of parents so we shut down and close our doors. it is hard, it is difficult. you're living it, but we have to findays to build provisions. when parents fight, who loses?

the kids lose. wh the parents and teachers fit, the kids lose and a fall to the cracks. i don't have an easy answer. we want to make sure their resources are hitting the group's that are making a difference, but we have to break down the barriers and the fear to get folks working together better. i can use the bully pulpit, working through them and creating models that work. there are hundreds of those around the country. >> i'm goingo need to interrupt because we have a time commitment. i apologize that we will not be able to get to all the questions that we have. they will get to work the next couple of days, and secretary duncan has quite a busy schedule. i want to thank the secretary duncan for being with us today. [applause] before you leave, susan will

have a few closing remarks for us. if you could remain on the stage. >> i and the editor in chief of "parent thing. i want to say to secretary duncan, on behalf of all of us, than you so much for coming today. it means so much to all of us. parent thing into the modern congress, we applaud your efforts to include parents more in the education process, and we look forward to working together with you for many years. we hope we can continue to make sure that parents of voices are heard. i heard some very passionate voices today. these are the kinds of voices thateed to be heard, as i am sure you agree. but just knowing that education is one of the most important

issues to this ainistration, it makes me, as a mom, prideful and hopeful. we have to give them that. i wanted to thank georgetown for hosting this event. you have been so wonderful. to our sponsors, thank you so much. and everyone in the audience, all the passionate people, give yourselves a round of applause for coming out today. [applause] thank you for coming. if you want to pose questions to parenting.com, we will try to get answe to you. >> can we get a picture with secretary duncan? if you can take a picre with

the community -- >> i am happy to. [laughter] [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> today, retiring supreme court justice john paul stevens and the solicitor general on

"america and the courts." >> said today, remarks by utah republican senator robert bennett. he will address delegates as well as the other senate candidates -- the other seven candidates vying for his seat. >> senate majority whip dick durbin is our guest sunday on c- span's "newsmakers." he will talk about the political landscape heading into the midterm election. a house hearing now on improving teacher quality. witnesses testified about a teacher training programs and evaluations. this is one of three hearings looking at the reauthorization of "no child left behind."

>> today is a national teacher'' day. it is a day when we honor all teachers in this country, and all of those who aspire to be teachers. at today's's hearing, we will explore the issue of how we can best support teachers in schools and our students during the economic recovery. above all, we want to give students a good education. no one is more important than a teacher. school leaders are a close second. yet, we still do not treat teachers as professionals. we all know the stories of incredible teachers who are keeping kids in schools,

closing the achievement gap, and helping kids xl. more than one-third leave after three years. it is clear that we have to do a much better job of recruiting, retaining and rewarding excellent teachers and leaders. we have to do a much better job of making classrooms function like a modern workplace. we have to do a much better job of ensuring that students who need the best teachers have access to them. at almost every school across the country, schools and students most in need of funding often get the fewest resources. high minority schools have a hard time retaining teachers with strong backgrounds. this leaves us with an embarrassing and persistent achievement gap and poses a real threat to our economic recovery. too often in this country, poor and minority students are on a trajectory toward failure.

on average, african and american and hispanic students reach fourth grade three years behind their white peers. high school dropouts have an enormous economic impact on our local communities and our nation as a whole. a high-school dropout is worth a quarter of a million dollars in lost wages and productivity over the course of her lifetime. research shows that given the right resources, we can change the course of many of these students. in los angeles, for example, a study showed that if the district court to replace the least effective teachers with the most effective teachers for four years it would effectively

close the achievement gap. that is stunning, whether or not it is true. excellent teachers are the key to success in our schools, but we will not be able to resolve the many challenges we face unless we change the way we talk about teachers and think about teachers. we need to make the teaching or plays more like what other young workers expect. teachers need to be treated with respect, recognition and resources. other countries have recognized this. in finland, we heard recently, teachers are recruited from the top 10% of the graduating class. the highest achieving students are sought out more so than those in law or medicine. we need our teachers to help us shape the discussion about the future of education in this country.

we have made some progress with the recovery act and the race to the top. we need to turn around the lowest performing schools, implement data systems, and maintain teacher talent. these reforms will only be successful if they are done with teachers, not to teachers. we need to reward teachers where students are making significant gains in the classrooms. we need to share skills with less experienced teachers. we also need to be smarter about where principals are placed. leader skills should be set to match the needs of the students and the schools. we are serious about closing the achievement gap and ending the high-school dropout crisis. if we want to maintain our competitive edge in the world, we have to take a close look at

our teachers. we must create a modern teaching workplace that will help every teacher and every student succeed. i just want to add a note that at the beginning of everyone's testimony, you have all said that the teacher is the most important person in education. but now we are seeing a series of layoffs due to economic conditions that were not of their making. the crisis on wall street strict local communities of the tax revenues they rely on. because of the downturn economy , properties are being reassessed, revenues are being lost, and these cuts are felt at the school district level. we are all cognizant of that.

we have introduced legislation to try to stem those layoffs as best we can. somewhere between two hundred and 50,300 thousand teachers -- somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 teachers were laid off at the beginning of this fiscal year. we should consider the environment in which teachers are called upon to work. many students as well as their families are suffering because of the economic downturn. i would hope that the congress would respond by providing assistance to district to forestall layoffs this year and next year.

but we shall see. with that, i would like to recognize the senior republican into a's hearing. -- in today's hearing. >> i was shocked by a couple of comments that you had concerning the studies we have received. i thought we were just supposed to assume they were right. we are probably not. we are here today to look of the importance of quality teachers and to explore ways to support the best educators for our kids. no one denies that the success of our education system depends largely on the quality of classroom instruction. future achievement may well depend on the caliber of the men

or women standing before students into the classroom. academic research has concern -- has confirmed that students with excel, whileachers x those with less quality teachers are left behind. we have a responsibility to ensure the teachers are trained and performing well in the classroom. this is also the responsibility of state and local leaders to stand at the forefront of education in our community. i look forward to hearing testimony. for years, congress has looked at rewarding effective teachers. republicans believe in letting teachers teach, which means trusting the wisdom of those on the front lines, and not the wisdom of those in washington. the administration has put forth

a number of proposals for changing the primary and secondary outline for education. we need to look of things more closely so that we can move forward with reauthorization in a way that is responsible and serves the best interest of the students. there are ways that congress can learn from our partners at the state and local level, encourage innovation around the country, and removing the barriers that stand in the way of student achievement. we must ensure that our efforts do not undermine the teachers and principals to make the decisions. thank you for holding this hearing. thank you to the witnesses.

>> thank you for calling this hearing today. this comes at a critical time. i still hold hope that we can finish this this year. there is much work to be done. today will play a very major role. we really need to talk to our teachers. i do that regularly. teachers and principals work on the front lines of our education system and care about the students. a number of those professionals are here today participating in these hearings. i have met with many teachers since i left teaching myself 45 years ago. i got my master's degree at the university of michigan. some of these teachers are

frustrated by mounting federal requirements and shrinking budgets. more students are participating in these programs, which means less per student. we have to give our teachers the tools. there are two things we have to look upon -- look at. first of all, we have to look at the various methods of communicating to students. second, we have to look at subject matter. when i got my master's degree, i

was teaching latin. i learned some things about teaching, but i was also encouraged to dig deeper, to know my subject matter. >> thank you very much. i would like to not introduce our witnesses and welcome them. thank you for your time and expertise. our first witness is a the president of the 1.4 million- member federation of teachers. she will talk with us about how to support teachers in a professional learning environment and professional working conditions. our next witness will be dr. debra ball.

>> debra ball is the dean of the school of education at the university of michigan. she has received national attention for helping overhaul the university pose a teaching teaching- university's program, by giving future teachers more training in the field. she runs a project that focuses on mathematics instruction and

intervention designed to improve the quality of that instruction. she has given many lectures and presentations around the world. she has received several international and national awards and honors for her improvement of education. i welcome her. welcome. >> the next witness will be dr. pamela salazar. she specializes in research on instructional leadership, professional development and school improvement. she wrote a book that has been adopted by many school districts for principled leadership training programs.

mr. marcus winters is a senior fellow at the manhattan institute. he has written extensively on school choice and special education. he has performed several studies on performance pay for teachers. his research has been published in many educational journals. welcome to all of you. those of you have been here before know that when you begin your testimony, a green light will go on. about four minutes in, and orange light will go on. when the red light goes on, you should wrap up your testimony. we have two panels today. i am going to try to get through both panels inside of thhee hours. i do not know how many members will be coming and going. we have some meetings this afternoon on the oil spill and other activities going on. we will try to go through the first panel with everyone that

has a question. if we are not able to do that, if you do not have a question on the first panel, you can have your question on the second panel. the focus of these two panels is really about how we support teachers in the broadest sense. we are coming from a number of different angles. obviously, we will make witnesses available for questions or follow-up if the members want to do that, but i want to make sure we get both panels and prior to the other meetings we have this afternoon. with that, thank you for your time. you may begin. >> thank you. thank you for the invitation to speak about this. i know this has already been said, but i need to commend the

leadership for passing the local jobs for main streets act. education budget have been cut across the nation. we cannot perform when we are in this kind of dire economic downturn that affects schools, teachers and kids. 300,000 educators nationwide will probably be laid off because of this downturn. it is teacher appreciation week. we have launched a campaign of pink hearts, not pink slips to draw attention to these layoffs. we have buttons available for anyone in this room who would like one. look, let me get back to the matter at hand.

every child should have access to a great public education, but students who do not do well in school are not taught by well- prepared engaged teachers. we need teachers who are supported by competent administrators. we need to make the environment in which they are asked to teach safe. there must be shared responsibility, not simply top down accountability. suggestsn's approach that great teachers are born ready, willing, able and prepared for that role.

that is rarely true. we have to begin by making sure that teachers get good preparation. high-quality introduction of new teachers should be required in all districts. once teachers are in at the classroom they should receive ongoing, relevant professional development and valid evaluations. development and evaluations should be merged so that we do not simply provide snapshots but a system that supports teaching and learning. ultimately, this is not divorced from what students need to

succeed. i would also stress the other things we know are relevant as far as how a child performs. we have focused on ways to improve teacher development. we know we have to focus on school environment issues. we know there are ways to help ensure that teachers come to hard to staff schools. let me just focus on two little things, two things we have just done. take the contract and evaluation system. what it demonstrates, through collaboration and collective bargaining, that you can procure tools to create systemic and transformative change.

the new haven contract showed up yesterday in the "new york times." we have asked that to be part of the record. we believe that teachers centers that provide comprehensive professional development and assistance, and an opportunity for teachers to direct their own professional growth will help acutely. i want to focus on evaluation systems. the no child left behind reauthorization it should establish a pilot program that allows for collaboration and for a fair teacher evaluation system. the goal is to develop a more dynamic evaluation system and to learn from it. we have to take the time to develop these systems. ultimately, again, i go back to

what we just did in new haven. this is the best model that i have seen. we have used collective bargaining in a way to transform an entire district through the transformation of their development and evaluation system. i know that if you create the opportunity for us to create the pilots to do that, we will transform teaching and learning in this entire nation. thank you very much. >> good afternoon. thank you very much for inviting me to testify today. my goal is to explain what it would take to get effective teaching in all of our nation pose those classrooms. although this applies to the teaching of -- in all of our nation's classrooms. although this applies to the teaching of students, i am going

to focus on teachers. those who need a good teaching are the least likely to get those teachers. we actually do know how to change this, so i am going to concentrate on explaining to you what the elements are of what it would take to change this. let me make the problem is clear to you as possible. we do not have a system to supply skilled teachers to every classroom. right now, teachers are considered qualified simply by participating in an approved program. it does not depend on demonstrating that you can teach. imagine if we allowed pilots to learn at their stripes without assessing if they could fly or granting medical licenses to people who merely xl in biology. e. -- excel in biology.

we need to stop wasting energy debating whether teachers who rate -- who are recruited in one way or the other are more effective. what matters most is that the graduates of any program capable of effective practice. many people have ideas about how to improve teaching. some say we should make it easier to enter the classroom. some say we should fire bad teachers or create incentives to reward good teachers. though these sound good in principle, none are sufficient to solve the core problem that every teacher in every classroom should be good. there are two reasons why training is crucial. one has to do with the nature of teaching itself. the other has to do with what i will call a scale problem. first, as commonplace as it may seem, teaching is far from simple work. i speak from experience as well

as from research. doing it well requires detailed knowledge of the domain for which you are responsible to teach, and a bill of the -- and an ability to make it learn of all -- learnable. there is a difference between knowing how to solve a math problem and knowing how to teach it in fourth grade. it requires the ability to manage the classroom, to maintain data of student performance, to conduct productive discussions with 30 or more at sometimes unwilling young people, and to discuss their progress with their parents. teaching complex academic skills and knowledge, not to mention is considerably more difficult

than teaching basic skills. it is complex work and it requires more than being smart and caring about kids. my second point is best -- my second point is that no other occupation in the united states has the number of "client" that teachers do. there simply are not enough people to fill every classroom in this country. in the next five years, we are going to need many, many new teachers in due to a massive wave of retirement. some estimates that we will need 1.7 million new teachers in the next 10 years. we know what we need to do to fix this. we must establish standards for teaching.

assessments would focus on teacher's knowledge, their skills in working with students, and most importantly, student learning. they must have a consistent dedication to making sure that students learn. teacher evaluations do not, for the most part, focus on the ability to teach. we need to focus on high quality, rigorous training. there should be a curriculum focused on the highest level of professional practices and a specialized knowledge of the academic domain that teachers are responsible to teach. there should be feedbacc in practical settings so that teachers can be explicitly coached in the skills to reach a wide range of learners. third there must be a

professional assessment of knowledge and skills so that no one enters a classroom and prepared. in conclusion, students must have teachers who are prepared to help them learn, not beginners who are struggling with their responsibilities. allowing people to learn on the job is unethical. teaching is intricate work that can involve a high level of skill with appropriate training. we have not done that in this country to any approach. it is time to mobilize the expertise, knowledge and will to build a system of expert teachers in our nation's classrooms. thank you. >> good afternoon. it is an honor to be invited to testify before you today on a topic of utmost importance, educational leadership. as stated earlier, i am a professor at the university of

nevada, where i work with the fifth largest school district in the country. i am a retired high school principal and a former physics, math and computer science teacher educational leadership is a topic that i have a great passion and commitment to. i applaud the committee for considering this important issue as part of the reauthorization of the education act. research documents what educators inherently know. a strong principle is second only to highly effective teachers in producing student achievement. the renewed emphasis on school level outcomes and student achievement places the school leader at the center of all school of reform efforts. today, assistant principals are expected to be visionary leaders, building managers, disciplinarians, community builders and more. they are also the ones ultimately held responsible for

student achievement. therefore, it is a parrot of the we do a better job of preparing principles -- it is imperative that we do a better job of preparing principals. the national board for professional teaching standards has launched the development of a certification standard for educational leaders. assisting in this effort by the national association of elementary school principals, and secondary school principals, the national middle school association, the american association of school administrators, and representatives from higher education, district, state, and professional associations. i have the honor of serving as the co-chair of the committee that developed national

standards for this. they are cast in terms of the collaborative action that accomplished principals take to advance learning at the very highest level for each child. each principle recruits, promotes and retains accomplished teachers. they advocate for the profession and the need for their school. they purposely engaged families and the broader community in the school's vision. i am now working on the development of the assessment that will form the foundation and the rich amalgam of skills that will characterize the national board certified principal es. as school leaders engaged and reflect on their level of practice, for those who hold the responsibility of preparing

leaders, the standard now offers the profession a much clearer view of the requirements of professional leadership. as school districts seek to develop leaders that can lead a much needed transformation of our schools, a system of standards is hugely beneficial. board certification would define and validate the requirement to identify accomplished and effective, results-orienttd principals. it would create prestige within the profession. and those that meet the standards would have made a commitment to excellence in their schools and communities. however, if a school leaders are to meet the growing, ever changing expectations of this very demanding position, they require continued, professional

development, personalized to meet their individual needs. this is true of all school leaders regardless of their initial preparation or length of service. the educational challenge of the 21st century is to achieve high levels of learning for each and every student. as accountability becomes the norm, leadership becomes more challenging and demanding. in today's complex world, with new kinds of issues and problems, the ability of school leaders to improve the effectiveness of their schools is a critical element in determining the kind of impact that the school will have on its students. there are no shortcuts, but a serious examination of the leadership practices that can drive the quality and effectiveness of our schools is the most significant way that we can offer our neediest students and that you referred to the support that will help them

reach the high standards of excellence. effective educational success depends a quality school leadership. this means that it is imperative that we track, develop and retain the very best and brightest educational leaders to the profession, to prepare students for the expectation of an ever-changing, diverse population and global economy. thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. >> dr. winters. >> members of the committee, i appreciate the opportunity o testify before you today on the important issue of teacher quality. research strongly confirms what parents, teachers and school administrators have long known. the quality of teachers is the most important factor in determining a student learning in a given year. the difference between a student being taught by a good or bad teacher amounts to a grade level

of learning by the end of the school year. unfortunately, the current system fails to retain our best teachers. nearly all teachers are rated satisfactory or better. findings indicate that these ratings have little or no relation to a teacher puts a performance in the classroom. there is no relationship between whether a teacher has amassed agreed -- and math degree and is able to teach math. some teachers to get better over time, but some burn out and get worse over time. in addition, whether a teacher is better today than she was yesterday is inefficient to see whether she is better than the teacher down the hall.

credentials and experience tell us a little bit about teacher effectiveness, but those are not enough to determine teacher's salary. teachers respond to incentives by pursuing unproductive advanced degrees. it is common for school systems to determine the layoffs based on seniority. rules about layoffs are now coming into play as schools are finding it necessary to reduce their staff during this economic crisis. what this means is that many wonderful young teachers will be let go and several poorly performing older teachers will stay. 95% or more of teachers who

become eligible for tenure at received it. in practice, the due process is so burdensome and expensive that most of demonstrators do not bother with it. even if we were to believe that schools were capable of identifying and removing ineffective teachers early in their careers, the practice as it stands means that anyone not identified is incompetent in their third year will be considered competent by the 30- year mark. attributes do not lend themselves to simple layoff schedule some -- schedules.

we must better measured teacher's actual performance in the classroom and then retain or remove them accordingly. we need better teacher evaluation. the current evaluation system is based on standardized test scores. data analysis is far from perfect and it should not be used to make employment decisions. but it could help the administrators distinguish between teachers who xl and those who language or fail -- teachers who excel and those who languish or fail. we must streamline the process to remove ineffective teachers once they have been identified. unfortunately, local unions continue to fight hard against much of these changes. when it appeared that michael

blumberg was prepared to use test scores as part of teacher evaluation, teachers went to great lengths to make it impossible for him to do so. they strongly opposed legislation that would grant discretion to principles to determine whether teachers could stay in the classroom. some focus is on reducing class size. this depends on a single study in the 1980's. it was a very good study that found some evidence that student learning was greater in a smaller classroom environment. however, the results of the cost-reduction program have been disappointing. in california, it is had no influence on student proficiency. what is more important is to make sure that each classroom is

staffed with an effective teacher. we need to rethink the way we evaluate and hold accountable public school teachers. >> thank you to all of you for your testimony. how to proceed? i think this panel pose the testimony is compelling to the idea that -- this panel's testimony is compelling to the idea of breaking with the past. we should think about how people arrive at the decision to become a teacher and what happens to them after they enter the field. after all of the rhetoric, we

have to decide that this is a profession. if you look across the board at other professions, it seems that the training never really stops. if you are a lawyer, you have the continuing education of the bar. it seems that if you are a firefighter, the training never stops. for the police, the training never stops. if you're a doctor. it also seems that a lot of people enter those fields being trained for what they're going to do when they enter the field. and yet, in teaching, a lot of people can still walk through the side door. all of a sudden, having the credential is enough. we have enabled us to go on and on and on. to what extent the federal

government can change that is what this debate is about. you talk about the redesign of teacher training, but the steps you lay out are not what most teachers training programs looked like. you get your credentials, your major degree, and then people start talking about training you. when i looked at the things that you outline, it seems to me that some of those things must occur before hand. how do we back this up so that people come with a greater skill set? how do we develop those skills sets?

this is a very complex job. i think that is the point of your testimony. >> my argument was that it is crucial to ensure the we establish standards for entry into the profession. i think that can be provided, potentially through multiple pathways. the condemned to education or through other pathways. what is crucial -- that could be through education or other pathways. what is crucial is that we do not allow people to perform a skilled trade without it. you would not allow someone to replace your garbage disposal who does not know how to work on trains. on it drains.

some of the things people learn it would be things that they learn as they become more expert. my colleague mentioned the teachers do not improved with experience. much of the training provided does not enable increasing skills. if it were inherently true that people do not improve after three years, we would see that around the world. but we do not see that around the world. in countries where people work to help people become more accomplished teachers, we do not see it leveling off after three years. the kind of training available to teachers is often weak. the master's degree on its own is not valuable. it has to do with what is inside that degree or any other professional training. i think we need both to ensure the beginning teachers are

responsible to teach young people, but they must have basic skills in teaching, including managing a classroom, assessing student learning and communicating with a home. . .

>> the system that was change would require reprogrammed to prepare people to pass that assessment. that is not the system we currently have. >> dr. winters, in your testimony, you indicate that research shows that certain factors such as smaller class size, and i think you mentioned to tenure in there as a feature, have little impact on student achievement. can you tell us what skills are necessary in order to produce good teachers? >> the short answer is no. reducing class size has been found in a small experiment to have a positive effect. as far as the overall attributes of good teaching, i do not know that, i am not sure we know that as a profession. my view of the research is that

we know that there is enormous variation in quality of teachers, but very low of what we try to explain the variation, even things like the courses students have taken in college, it correlates some, not as much as we had hoped. a lot of the attributes do not explain much of that variation. i think that a lot of teaching is in eight, and not something we are seeing, that report -- a lot of teaching is innate. the matter why they are good at it, do the best we can to keep those people in the classroom. >> leading into this question, the have any thoughts about the difference between alternative certification programs and traditional roots of certification, in terms of

eithereazr quality of teachersr methodologies which are used? >> i think research on those things is still pretty young. so far, the experience has been generally positive. you do see wide variation among teachers to come to alternative routes as well. we see enormous variation in the quality of teachers to come for the more traditional routes. i think it goes to the point where some people are just wonderful at teaching. what we should be doing is trying to get smart people into the classroom and provide them with the trading. -- with the training. what we should be trying to do is through alternative certification routes and others is put smart people in front of the classroom, get the bad ones out and keep the good ones in. >> i guess it is generally true

for out the country. is there any experimentation, or has anyone looked into alternative methodologies of bringing people into the ranks to do not necessarily come up for the teacher ranks? is there any judgment as to whether that is successful or not? >> i have to tell you that in terms of research around the topic, i am not awareñkkm of an. i am sure that someone has done research looking at alternative routes to the principle. there are different certifications required across the state as to who can be a principle and who cannot. that is not the case in nevada. everyone does come from the ranks of the teachers. i could get information back to you on that, but i do not really have any permission on that. >> this is disconnected from other things you said, but you

said we need to look at out of school factors. that is true in terms of how we are educating kids, but i am not sure exactly how you intended that when you said it, looking at our school factors. teachers, or in terms of what we as a society should be doing with respect to educating kids? >> what we need to do is i think three things. today we are focused on the path to a great teaching and great teachers. us actually focused on it as much as we should today, there is a need to have a broad, engaged curriculum. chairman miller has been talking about that in the context of common standards and assessments that are aligned with common standards, but engaged curriculum, rigorous curriculum

that includes art and music and physical education but is deep in terms of social studies and science is very important as a lock in with great teachers and great teaching. the third point was that poverty cannot be an excuse for students to not have the opportunity before education. if you find ways to compete with poverty, schools and teachers alone will never be able to do this. i disagree with my friend marcus on the other side of the table, because teachers alone cannot do this. maybe in isolated circumstances, yes. what we have seen in schools and districts that have wraparound services, community schools for the schools or the hub for these out tides -- outside services like health care, after-school care, some social services, you see a way of being able to level the playing field for poor kids

and narrow the achievement gap. we need to deal with all three, not use our school factors as an excuse. -- out of school factors as an excuse. but we have proposed for an on shared responsibility, as opposed to just top-down accountability. teachers will say i need to lower class size so i can differentiate instruction among and between children. that is the import of class size. or i can identify that this child need some other additional support. i can do what i can do instructional league, but you have to help me get those other supports for this job -- i can do what i can do instructional ly. that is exactly what new haven has just done, which is why i am so fixated on new haven.

>> i really appreciate your recommendations to reform the way we prepare our teachers in this country. if we were to move forward with these recommendations, what is the federal role, and can we learn anything from other professions? a century ago in ireland or france or germany, very often a small village, the person most educated would be the priest, a lawyer, the physician, and the teacher. these were the professions -- can we learn something from other professions as we prepare teachers for their responsibilities?

>> i think that on the second question first, other clinical professions, in particular ones with young people -- i gave the example of flying a plane, but it may be more appropriate to think of professions where people work with people. a colleague at stanford university conducted a study of preparation in other professions to learn more rapid clinical preparation in other fields. in fact, they do much better at teaching the clinical skills and breaking themhu;ey down, naming, rehearsing, and coaching them and assessing people on them. i disagree with my colleague that teaching cannot be taught. it is dangerous to read to take up policy strategy that allows people to be tried out in classroom and replaced later. there are real children in those classrooms who are suffering under teachers to cannot do it.

when a child makes an error in elementary mathematics, you do not want somebody teaching in the classroom who is mystified by that era. you want someone who can rapidly o?/ r-e up with the difficulty s that the student is having an has 3 04 deleveraged things to do next to help the student learn. it's deeply dangerous to put vev÷people into classrooms who cannot quickly recognize the error is that kids make and diagnose them and move on. identifying when patients or clients have difficulties and have and strategies to deal with them. i cannot understand the strategy in which we think it is permissible to pit people in the classroom and hope that they are smart. those are real children in those classrooms. that is not a reasonable policy strategy. there are things the federal government can be doing in supporting more integration of

common content in the country. it is very difficult to prepare teachers when they teach entirely different content in different parts of the country. i want to close by saying one other thing. the research on alternate routes versus other teacher education program shows that they are very little different. one study shows a slight advantage to one over the other, but in no pathway our program are we preparing professionals adequately at the scale we need >> i was mystified, but i think it was because i was reading that math problem after a long jet trip. [laughter] >>1c yo.

i am a little confused. >>1c yo. chairman miller used the analogy of lawyers. he is a lawyer, i am a lawyer, and my first job out of law school was clerking for a judge in a court of appeals. i got a broad education of any kind of issue that came up. i was hired by a law firm, but i decided to practice on my own. having been doing this socratic method, and suddenly back to how to write a real estate contract, how to do probate. i had no clue, and nobody to help me, because i was on my own. what do you do? you go to the continuing education and go into classes and talk to people there and get the ideas.

to me, maybe i am missing something, but it seems like if you are getting a good education in education in the schools, and the new student teaching, if you are a student teacher, you are working with another teacher who can be a mentor. then i was a school board president, and we had the mentoring that was very important to our school. every young teacher had a mentor who went in and take them in the classroom so that they could see what they were doing -- taped them in the classroom. it seem like there was a lot of continuing education. we had days of teacher training. teachers participated. it seemed like to do all these things, these are things that probably should be done in school. i know stanford has a five-year program where a teacherrhas to

they get out.ear program before i see you were shaking your head about the student teaching. >> i have both taught and practiced law. dr. ball said this already. in medicine and law and several other professions, the deliberateness of the training7] is much more intense than what you have in teaching. so what you see in countries like finland and japan is a way -- finland spent a lot of time on the induction and recruitment and selection process of teachers. but what they do that is quite different than anything we do in the united states is the focus

on teacher development in school when teachers get there, in real time, with real professional development,.akx not off the sf from someone else. they do this by having teachers work together. it is excruciatingly expensive, because what you are doing is you are taking teachers working together, diagnosing what kids need, building on each other's practice, polishing the stone, thinking about the craft. like we do in grand rounds in medicine. dvlike we did in a bigm that i had the honor to work in. that is how teachers really learn the plea to teach. but it costs a lot of money, -- that is how teachers really learn deeply to teach.

>> do we need to raise the standards for getting into education to start out with? >> it is both the issue of who comes in to teach, but i am focused on, regardless of who is there, how do we help create the versatility, both in terms of the content knowledge and in terms of the modes of transmission of teaching, that congressman kildee talked about? what happens in finland, because of the value of teaching, you have some of the -- it has become the most attractive profession to go into. in the united states, that is not the case. the emphasis is that it is a craft that you learn. this is where i disagree with mr. winters. we are not that good.

>> we are not ranked that well, either. >> even with my law degree and all that, i was a blithering idiot the first few days i taught in schools. and ultimately, it was the craft, learning with others and understanding content, but also how to do the things that dr. ball was talking about. let me just finish by saying, we see good models throughout the country now, but our real obstacle is how to create both the capacity and replica ability of that, so it is not just individuals or individual schools, but how we do that throughout the country? >> i would love to sit here and have a long conversation with you, because i really appreciate

what you are saying. you were just talking about the capacity. one of the frustrations that i have had in thinking about this and having been a former school board member and number of years ago is that i do not think we have time to work on pilots throughout this country. i am not looking for the silver bullet, either. as we re authorize the fda, language regarding evaluation that inspires and also provides for the kind of tools that local school districts can really pick up in use, and that they can have some way of havinverifyingt what they are doing has some merit.

the first question we have to ask is, do evaluations matter? do we see that student achievement improves in schools that have what we might call as close as possible to a kind of state of the art evaluation? i don't know if those exist, but maybe they do. what rules of the evaluation process play in that? how can we do this, because to me, giving grants to schools, giving them an application process and demonstrating -- i think it is going to be a little like national board certification. i have been a big champion of that. we know that there are certain individuals who are going to seek that. we have to reach everybody here. what is.to it that we can do he in terms of the evaluation? i just keep feeling the push

back, we do not want any linked to test scores. local school districts control a lot of that, too. the way in which teachers prepare students for that would be more significant than the actual scores. help me out here. i would love to be part of writing something that really makes a difference in this area. >> chairman miller and i have had many conversations about this. maybe we have broken new ground on this, but in january, we talked about overhauling the teacher development and evaluation system and having as a component of devaluation both teacher practice and teacher standards, but also student learning. some people think about student learning simply a standardized test scores. that.

in your sense of urgency, we feel that as well. what we are trying to do here is create some good practice and some good templates so that actually districts and unions could use them. some of the researchers who helped design evaluation frameworks that we released that day said to us, allow for modeling. don't come up with your own models. come up with frameworks that then districts and locals will use. in fact, what has happened since january is that we now have, and we are about to submit a grant for 17 districts and local unions that are willing over the course of the next year to create this. we already have eight districts in new york and rhode island. congressman mccurdy has been very helpful in helping us figure some of this out.

-- congress lawman mccarthy. the goal is to create a tipping point to promote the real overhaul of this so that we are looking at what practice works and what does not. and how do we replicate the practice that works and jettison what does not work? but ultimately, if a teacher is floundering, how we help that teacher? if she does not make>#+l it, hoo we we were out of the profession? -- how do we weed her out of the profession? in three years from now, we will have totally revamped teacher evaluations, which i think is the critical measure to solving teacher quality. >>÷/&ç how do we do something in

those three years so we are not wasting that time? also to create the opportunity for some of the others to look at the things you are doing. >> with a brace to the top and the focus on teacher preparation and evaluation now, people are sharing information, the likes of which they have not beforehand. ultimately, if we just focus on a single test scores, just like right now, the antiquated five minutes evaluations, which are not going to do any better in terms of teacher support than we are doing right now. em:l>> thank you mr. chairman. thank you for bringing up the very subject of competing with poverty.

far too many of our?j;÷ nation's students go to school hungry or without proper medical care. many of them did not have someone at home to help with homework, or a safe place to go after school. i believe what you just said, that schools and communities need to be able to offer these services to children and their families, so that children are ready to learnsyññ when they enr the classroom. we are talking about teachers and how they -- how we ensure that teachers are the most qualified, etc. how can we evaluate teachers that have wraparound services b6l districts with those who do not? what are we going to do?

it will be the poorer districts that needed the most that will have the hardest time getting these. >> congresswoman davis said this. we have to build these plans -- regardless of whether a teacher gets the support he or she needs, regardless of whether they had the support of the principal, regardless of all this, every single day, a teacher has to try to do her best to create abu!y connectionn engagement with children. there is a way, and i know the chairman and others have been talking about using growth models in terms of accountability, as opposed to the current ayp, and that may be helpful in terms of this.

what we are also proposing is this notion of shared responsibility and 360-degree of accountability. if a school does not have some of the wraparound services or programs that teachers believe kids need, that is factored into account ability in some way, form, or manner. but we cannot wait for every school, as much as we are for kids to have these programs, we are not going to be able to wait for every school to have wraparound programs to be able to focus on what teachers do and how we engage with kids. >> so we do take wraparound programs -- we do take wraparound programs and tell

indeed tell us what you consider the standards to be, and will they change for every program? >> you have billed about wraparound programs in community schools. what we have proposed is that there is a bucket of services that schools should be able to either access and coordinate with other not for profits. the race for the top has some of this as part of the promise neighborhoods. we have said let's downsize that to actual schools. those services could include health services that could be paid for through the s-chip program. they could include social services and after school services. they could include services for parents, ell services, job

services. having a school open 18 or 20 hours a day, so that the school is really the center of the community. some of these services, say you had $100 extra. a school would then decide which service they could buy with $100. maybe they could not buy all of it, but they would buy what was most necessary. >> i have a question for you, mr. winters. what is an effective evaluation program? would one look like? i am part of the experimental b.g.e. i think there are a lot of things we need to try. i don't think test scores alone are the way to go.

they are limiting and they are noisy, but they do provide some important information that should be used as part of the evaluation tools. i also think that principle evaluations and even. valuations can play an important role in those things. there needs to be accountability on the principlals and the piers. -- and the peers. the evaluation system that we have now where 99% of teachers are rated as satisfactory or excelling is very of reality. -- very off-base of reality.

>> i really appreciate what you have had to say about the out o3 tried to focus on since i have been here beginning6p in januay 2007. i like the idea of schools as community centers. there is a school in cedar rapids, iowa, that served that purpose quite well before the great flood of 2008. they are coming back and doing that, and it is important for the community as well. beyond what we think of as normal school activities. i have some concerns about some of what appears to be assumptions today about where we are already. maybe part of that is because i am from iowa, and maybe we take too much pride in what we already do in iowa and how well we do it. i am the first to admit that

there might be some false pride there on my part and some others. i do have a question about your own research. there are programs that are in existence. they may be inadequate, but there are student-teacher programs, practicums, whatever the case may be. i want to ask empirically, and maybe you +5jdd forward some of your articles to me. i was an academic before i became a congressman, so i am interested to see the actual evidence for what we are lacking. if it is the case that this is true across the country, or particular parts of the country, as it relates specifically to -- are we talking about race

factors, ethnicity? what are we talking about when we talk about the inadequacy of teachers and teacher training programs? that seems to be the focus today. >> your question has to do with what kind of evidence we have about the inadequacy of our current system. >> that would demonstrate the problem we are talking about today. >> it is true that and apprenticeships that we have of -- referred to as did in teaching, no one has argued that that is not a good idea. mcclain is somewhat more detail. it matters -- my claim is somewhat more detail. most programs provide field our clinical experience. mentors need to learn how to

provide feedback to beginners. a physician who is a competent surgeon does not automatically know how to provide feedback to a medical student. i am describing the need to become much more deliberate about how we would provide more delivered, clinical training. now we have a situation where it is left to chance. the research arm stiff and teaching is highly inconclusive. the greek -- the research on it student teaching is highly inconclusive. it requires an ability to be analytic about a teaching act and tell a beginner, this is where it went wrong. the research which show that most of the efforts to evaluate these are to undetailed. we need a system that more

deliberately and systematically -- you could count on someone with initial training having learned some things. it is important to remember that the assessments for kids and teachers need to be improved. without the training to help people achieve, children will not do better only by being tested, and neither will teachers. i think it will drive a greater appetite for much better training. if we have really good assessments that are valid, we would build a market for developing good training, which we do not currently have. >> is there any concern by you on the panel that if we move forward in the direction i think many of us here think we should, that we might have the same problem that some of us argue we had with no child left

behind, that we create a situation where we have a one- size-fits-all model, we come up with some kind of new law or regulations when it comes to trying to train good teachers, that it will not be nimble enough to deal with different parts of the country or the state or whatever the case may be4:çq? >> mr. courtney will be the last questioner of this panel and then we will take the second panel and pick up with ms. clark. >> my question was in the same vein. we looked at the new haven contract in conn very closely

and we applaud the hard work that went into getting to that point where there is serious by in on both sides of the table in terms of a new way of approaching things. my concern is, looking at the blueprint, which obviously is a very unfinished documents. are you comfortable with whether or not they mesh or will it end up crashing contract? >> building a plane and flying it at the same time always has its obvious problems. i think in terms of education, we do not have a choice, because as dr. ball said, we are dealing with children every single day. by suggesting a change in the

blueprint by saying that evaluations are critically important, but let's create some pilots so we can create a critical mass at the beginning of this process, then other districts cannot buy into it, we think for the first time it will actually change teacher quality fundamentally around the country. i have seen programs in iowa that are absolutely terrific. we have seen programs around the country that are terrific, but what we are proposing here is pilots that do both teacher development and evaluation, like what happened in new haven. it is not simply a snapshot system. it is thh way in which you deal with the training piece that we have all talked about, that has éc.iñbeen totally and completely imperfect in schools so far.

that is the big picture in terms of a systemic change in schools. the point i am making about new haven is that they did it through the vehicle of collective bargaining. collective bargaining became a force for change and for by in, and they did it for a collaborative model. they met every single deadline. people were skeptical when the new haven contract was first negotiated, that it was just an agreement to have committees. what happened instead is that they have ever met every single deadline and the evaluation plan they came up with is a really good model throughout the country. what we would propose is to have an opportunity to incentivize pilots in teacher evaluations so that we would have good practice round country that one could look at, as opposed to what

happened with no child left behind. you saw a lot of bad practice, basically teaching to the test instead of a real focus on teaching and learning. >> but do you see that in the blueprint that was submitted by the secretary? >> one of our recommendations is to change the piece of the blueprint that talked about evaluation and to say of course, -- in our letter we said there is a critical need to change an overhaul it. in january became up with a proposal about how to do so. what is happening around the country is that in his zeal to change evaluation systems, people are going and doing the easy route, which is just to look at one test or. we have gone from one snapshot

of a principal coming in for five minutes a year to one test score. neither one of them works. we need to have this thoughtful, deliberative process that really fundamentally changes evaluations. we have to have a system that promotes effort on helping people learn to be better. we have a scale of such size that what we can do things in the internment of schooling that will matter, we have a very large teaching force and will have a need for even more entrancts. we have to immediately change the way we are approaching initial training and the investment process. we have to create a system that works effectively for young people. we are not improving it, and there is an urgent need to do

that. these problems require multiple forms of expertise. sometimes i think the distraction is who has the expertise to solve these problems. there are a lot of people of expertise for these problems. when we look for solutions and only one domain, we should ourselves in the foot. i encourage you to produce language that permits that kind of collaboration to continue and ave seenboration to continue and in recent years. >> that is a very good place for this panel to end. thank you, and thank you very much for your testimony and for your time. it is clear from those who got an opportunity to ask the questions that you have given us a lot to think about here with respect to our teacher corps.

>> today remarks by utah republican senator robert bennett. he will address the delegates along with seven other candidates vying for his seat. watch coverage at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> senate majority whip the durbin is our guest sunday on "newsmakers." that is sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern. >> homelands is the security secretary dan napolitano visited his seat today. she spoke about the response to recent severe flooding in that state. this lasts about 10 minutes.

>> we have been dealing with the impacts of the flood. we have had a wonderful response from the federal government. the man has been here since the rain started falling on saturday -- fema has been here sinceça+ñ the rain started fallg on saturday. : for the entire process,e had a chance to talk several times with secretary napolitano and she has been very helpful. she wanted to come down today to see things firsthand. we have been traveling around this morning. i think you know most of the people standing up here, but we are certainly available to answer questions. i would like to turn this over to secretary napolitano to give you a briefing on what she has seen and then answer any questions that you might have. >> as the governor said, this has been quite a large event,

disaster in tennessee. it was important to see with my own eyes what the impacts were, but also to see what the recovery efforts are, to make sure that the administration is doing everything it can. we are doing everything we can to link up with the quite impressive efforts already underway in tennessee, be it the volunteer effort that you see represented here, and the average of the mayor, the governor, and your federal representatives who have been very active here. i think tennesseeans can be sure that everyone is focused on this and paying attention, and now we have to work our way through this. the female administrator is here -- fema administrator has

been all over the state and reporting back to me what he is seeing. even as we have been traveling around today, talking with the governor and the mayor about other things that will need to be done in the coming days and weeks to set up information centers where people can get information in other areas of the state, to really begin thinking through the recovery efforts that will need to be made in terms of having small business, you name it. s)w,this is a big flood that affected a lot of areas across tennessee. some parts are dry and open for áhbusiness, and people should kw that. but other parts are going to need long-term help. in that regard, that we just give you a few things. as of 7:00 this morning my time

, there were 16,000 tennesseeans who had already registered for assistance with fema. more than 650 inspections already had been completed. the inspections are done so we know what the damage number is. more than $4.1 million h6g been approved for assistance to individuals. that is not the same as public assistance. the president has already signed every disaster wreck an accommodation -- every disaster recommendation that has been submitted. people watching this may want to know what they need to do to

register for assistance. the number one step, we cannot help if we do not know who you are and where you are. 1-800-621-fema, or go to www. fema.gov. or go to9áv m.fema.gov. i will hold this part up here, take a picture of it and put it on your screen, because that is the first step. all around this area have all

this information and more as we give the pledge of helping people with their housing needs÷ and other assistance needs in recovery from this flood. let me just bought and see what questions there might be. -- let me justtvíjñ stop and set questions there might be. [inaudible] >> your question goes to one of the more difficult issues. we will be able to provide through fema assistance only up to a certain level in terms of cash. we will be working with people right now on where they need to live. for example, a lot of people went to live with relatives or they are staying in a motel. we can help with that, but as soon as we know who they are,

who is out of their house, we will begin working with them and looking individually at what their housing needs are going to be. are they going to need rental housing for a while? is there house repairable or not? that sort of thing. there will be individuals who no doubt are going to suffer financial damage from this. i am not going to stand here and say we are going to guarantee that everyone will be made whole. we will do as much as we can in every possible way that we can. there are limits, unfortunately, but tennessee is going to be working with us. shaun donovan, the secretary of housing and urban development is going to be here. the secretary of commerce is going to come in.

that are coming in to look at what needs to be done not just by way of response, but for actual recovery. >> [inaudible] >> we have inspectors all over the state. we are working with the tennessee emergency management authority. they are helping guide us in terms of fema to make sure every county that has been impacted is getting help, is getting inspected. administrator fieldgatdacpfugatt telling me, if someone says a street is fine, that is not good enough.

i think fema will be here six months from now in terms of assisting with recovery efforts. but at some point in time, this will not be primarily fema. their expertise is what to do it immediately. but there will be these other efforts i describe with housing and with business development and alikthe like. i will have the fema administrator talk about that directly. >> we bring rest of the federal family together. part of this is small business

administration, and other federal programs. one thing that is very helpful is the irs. they will help adjustor current tax payments. you may be eligible for a return based on your losses in this calendar year. these centers bring to the rest of the federal team to match up with state and local officials on all the programs that are active after the president declared a disaster. >> [inaudible] ç3wd>> the president has spokenh the governor personally about this. he has been directly briefed on a regular basis about the situation in tennessee. valerie jarrett, who works with

taught to the governor every day during this flood, and there have been regular contacts, so he knows the extent of this. one of the reasons i am here is because the secretary of first on seen at the cabinet level, making sure we have eyes on the ground. i will be followed:>9kñ shortlyh a number of other members of the cabinet. these visits are designed to sit down and go through what we need to do, what we need to coordinate and collaborate on as we move from response to a long- term recovery. i have been very impressed with the response in tennessee. i have÷ been to a lot of

disasters. tennesseeans ought to be very proud of the response. is really overwhelming, the assistance already going on in neighborhoods and counties across the state. obviously very good leadership and very effective exercising teamwork already. these things were already under way before these floods hit. it cannot respond unless you are ready. you cannot just snap your fingers and have effective response. train people were in place. volunteers are out all over the state and all over national. we are very impressed with that. but we are now going to move from response to long-term recovery at some point. that is& whole federal family that craig just describe the need to be sent of, and what we need to

start setting people's minds to building back our homes and communities to where they were before the flood. thank you all. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> according to the ap this evening, ut center bob bennett's reelection bid has apparently come to an end. just moments ago he was ousted at the state gop convention. bob bennett is the first u.s. sitting senator to be voted out of office this year.

tonight we'll have convention speeches from senator bennett and the winner. that will be at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. senator bob bennett was ousted for his reelection bid at that state gop convention in utah. >> he got on the phone and said to me, judge, i would like to announce you as my selection to be the next associate justice of the united states supreme court. and i said to him, i caught my breath and started to cry, and said thank you, mr. president. >> learn more about the nation's highest court through the eyes of those who serve there in c- span is latest book, "the supreme court." available now in hardcover and also as an e--#xvbook.

book, to live or to perish forever. thanks for coming by. ." thank you for coming by this morning.ce u expand on that? guest: sure. sday morning, the taliban issued a credit for the times were attacked. the question is, why take credit for a flocked attack? there are a couple of things at play. there is a power struggle inside pakistani taliban. shortly after this the video was issued, an official spokesperson that was not us.

have an interesting power dynamic. the cond thing is largely a positive result of u.s. counter- m policy, in that y have an increased splintering within these groups. brand tegrity does not mean same thing in 2010 that it the 2001. you now have been taking credit the failed underwear in december. in lightt does it mean attack, particularly counter-terrorism efforts? guest: i think it bodes well. we have seen pakistan's u.s.ration with the dramatically over the past year. there have been a lot of as to why.

relativelyhave been sustained. the course of the last months, we have seen several we had the five americans from northern virginia who were arrested. now we have seemingly the pakistan government clamping down on associates of by sold shahzad. is it something about the calculus that has changed dramatically? i think something qualitative has shifted in the course of the last year. i think the influence is more muted than that of the army chief of staff, who has had warm relations of the pentagon since he took power two years ago. the generals influence over the military and intelligence establishment is much more significant and important than that of president zardari.

. . the role of central point. would you agree? guest: it is the last remaining bastion for a military stronghold. they are certainly south, but the armyas phed him and scattered them. these places, two years ago, or absolute taliban strongholds. absolute taliban strongholds. host: our guest is with us for the rainder of our program to talk abo the taliban's presence in pakistan. you can ask questions and get some responses.

you can also e-mail us. there has been a response to this effort from the president, eric holder, and others. talk about the response this event has had. guest: a think the u.s. response has been mixed. the details are emerging by the hour. at first, there was this dramatic, last minute realization he was on the plane. then we realized an fbi surveillance team had lost track of faisal shahzadof for several hours. i do think the u.s. response has generally been positive. you have to applaud the work of the fbi investigators who have been able to track this guy down in such a short amount of time. immediately jumping to the notion that he was a lone wolf and this was an isolated

incident was obviously premature. but i think the response from the administration was to calm the public. host: here is eric holder talking about the address. -- talking about the incident. >> terrorists are still plotting to kill americans. in february, the chief participant in the plot to bomb the new york city subway system pleaded guilty to terrorism violations. less than two weeks ago, we secured another guilty plea from his co-conspirators and revealed the role of a senior al qaeda leader in ordering the plot. three others have also been charged as a result of our investigation. these attempted attacks are stark reminders of the threat that we face as a nation and that we must confront. for the department of justice and our partners in the national

security committee, there is no higher priority than disrupting potential attacks and bringing those who bought them to justice. host: how would you respond to that statement? guest: it does show that al qaeda in the militants the seceded in the tribal areas are still targeting the united states. the question is whether the capacity is there any more. one interesting thing about the pakistani taliban is that they've been talking about their attempt to strike the united states. this was followed with a weird and mission in april of 2009 -- admission in april of 2009 they said it was one of their guys. you have to wonder if they are getting desperate and making weird admissions of responsibility.

host: how effective are the drone of tax -- attacks? guest: that is a great question. guest: it's a great question. one of the reasons i must suggest that faisal shahzad's threat was successful which set the traini facilities have been curbed. al qaeda can not set up the kind of jungle gym and training facilities that we saw in the videos shortly after september 11. i think the pakistani taliban -- i think the taliban at large, the notion of fighting in the name of a radical version of islam, against a foreign presence, whether it is the perception that the pakistani

government is working for the u., that remains. there is significant qualitative difference between the afghan taliban and the pakistani taliban. host: you talk about the new guard and the old guard. guest: right. a former spy showed up dead. it was a startling thing. pele have been showing up dead for 10 years and now on the side of the road. what was so startling of this particular guy was that i had met him several times. he desibed himself as a confidante of osama bin laden. he was very close with the old guard. yet, there was a new group of militants that killed him, made him read a forced confession. him read a forced confession. this does reveal that what

played well with the old generation no longer works. i think that process up radicalization among the g hyde groups in pakistan is really fundamental. this signals the next generation of taliban that have emerged. host: wilmington, delaware, on our independen line. caller: a professor who came to the delaware told the audiee that he was from maryland and he thought that the main reason everyone was doing the attacks was always the israel-palestine issue. when i was in pakistan myself, i kept asking this question. i'm just wondering. this was not his position.

i'm wondering, myself, having been to pakistan and also hanging with a lot pakistani here, and seeing how they are -- if it is a political ploy? guest: great question. i think there are a couple of different parts to the question. thank you for coming out to the university of delaware, a couple of months ago. israel-palestine -- like the crisis in kashmir, the fundamental grievances will be able to leverage as an indication that the united states is cooperating with non- islamic powers. i do not know that you can solve

israel-palestine tomorrow, like some people think. i think it would be a huge step, in the same way that i think resolving the crisis in kashmir would be a huge step. the agreement -- grievances have piled up. there was an audio report from osama bin laden that sounded very desperate. israel-palestine used to be the base grievance. of a sudden, he was tking about climate change, corruption on wall street. the grievances have expanded, so long as the recruitment is down a little bit. host: you mentioned the john kerry-dick lugar bill. g. culp i think the cynicism and skepticism toward american policy, the bill was intended to

support civilian institutions at the expense of just giving money to the army anthat in the pakistani government deal with it. yet, when this bill came out, because there were elements that tried to give up the civilian government influence overhe army's promotion process, the pakistani people were up in arms that the u.s. was trying to influence the policy. host: louisville, ky. republican line. caller: i was wondering if you could differentiate between the pakistani taliban and the afghan taliban. what binds them together? is it religious ideology or political ideology? if you hear so much about each one, and what are tir relationships and their differences?

guest: a fantastic question. i will try to trace the lineage. the afghan taliban are running afanistan before september 11. most of the leadership goes to pakistan following the american invasion. over the next several years, the al qaeda leadership also takes refuge in pakistan's tribal areas. in response, costumes -- postions are joining the taliban. the difference is the pakistani taliban have been giving refuge to al qaeda longer than the afghan taliban gave refuge to al eda in afghanistan. i think it is a serious distinction to note.

it means that the influence the al qaeda has had over the pakistani taliban has been more profound because it has been a long bear. long bear. the tactics, and objectives, i think are much more an arctic. there are much more destructive than the afghan taliban, what think are more nationalist. host: college park, maryland. caller:, i was hoping the speaker would be able to comment on the general outlook of the pakistani people on the role of the united states since president obama has become president against our previous administration. guest: it is hard forrme to comment too much on the public temperament. i live there in 2006 and 2007. in january 20008, i was deported

for writing a story. the next time i came back, i was chased out. my information about what the street is thinking at this point, it is a little distant. reading newspapers and talking to pakistani friends, there was a great amount of optimism that something would be different about the obama administration. in home, something has been different. in substance, in cooperation with the civil institutions, there has been a difference. they will melt, that the drum the strikes have increased. if the drowned strikes were a force of radicalization, that argument is now stronger.

drone the drones strikes have increased over obama. even though obama's does not use the same phraseology as bush, i think he takes the threat seriously. this is a very top priority for him. host: obama made the point investigators still the not peace to the complete picture of his finances. guest: the was something in "the washington post" today about how the fbi agents are trying to follow the money trail. he brought in $80,000 during his repeated visits to pakistan and back. the money trail is a huge question. question.