proposed comes from other proposals, and two-thirds of the mandatory savings come from all items that are in the president's proposal. an agreement is possible and is breaking el it. last week, we had a major development where a bipartisan group in the house bent in both directions. they said we have to do a deal that takes something from that meant the people who pledged that they were not going to raise taxes were bending back to accommodate the national necessity of doing that. democrats were going to do some cuts that were not the first thing they would choose to do if they were the only ones in charge. i think the question is why this would be a success if all we did was the minimum.

it will let us fight another day to keep our bond rating with the other two credit ratings who did not downgrade us as a result of the debt ceiling debate. it will show we can do something bipartisan. some savings will come from reducing spending. if we can get bipartisan on health care, that is a major step forward. it shows that congress can get something done. we predicted a 10% approval rating for congress if the super committee should fail. we were wrong for two reasons. it did not take super committee failure to lower the approval rating for congress to historic levels. polls showed reports for congress have fallen to a new historic low after achieving a new low the month before. the new approval rating was 9%.

avoiding sequestration may not seem like the be all and in all four people in washington. but for people back, have low expectations for what congress can do, this would be a tremendous victory. sometimes people veered left or right in the last election, but mostly they want to move forward. it is our obligation to help them do that. thank you. >> thank you, david. by a show of hands, as six experts who have studied the super committee, will they reach their goal of more than $1 trillion deficit reduction by november 23? raise your hand for yes. 1.5.

>> i think there may be a sellout but i hope they will not. >> we have heard a lot today about the percentage of federal spending and how is above the normal or average level. is that right or wrong? is there a spending problem in our government? >> the historical average for federal spending has been around 21% of gdp. does everyone agree with that? it has been lower than it is now. no question about it. the question is why it has gone up and if it really is just a spending problem. there is a problem of historical averages. and averages great and suggests things have been the same. that is not true. at the end of the clinton administration went budget was

balanced in 2000, it was lower. health care cost less over the last four years. those are fundamental changes to the economy that are the reasons we will spend more overtime unless we want to fundamentally change the social concept. some will say we should transfer the 42 states who decide whether they want to deport and old people health care. if they do not, that is up to the states. i do not think that is what the american people want to do. it is important to recognize that historical averages are when things -- one thing but things have changed a lot in the last 40 years. in 1930, if someone had said we cannot spend more than 3% of gdp because that has been the historical average for revenue and spending, that was true. but the country changed. we are on the cusp of that as

well. spending is higher than it was in 1960. to say that means it is entirely a spending problem ignores the bark of the country has changed -- ignores the fact that the country has changed. >> is this solely a spending problem? is there a revenue problem as well? >> we are trying to stop a dramatic change between the government and individual in this country. if we say we're going to elevate revenues to the new plan to a 25% of gdp -- if we were to bring revenues up to the level of spending has been the last couple of years, we would have a fundamentally different relationship between the government and individual where the government has more control over our lives.

there will be people whose job is to take power away from people. this is what has europe ahead of us in terms of being in complete meltdown mode at the moment. i think you would be a poor choice to go down that path. we have to get outside of this washington mentality. about one year ago, the american people made it extremely clear they rejected the move towards larger government. we saw one of the biggest landslides in the history of this country. it was driven by an anti- washington, anti-regulation impulse from the people. we have an elite believes people are incompetent in running their own lives. therefore, there are contriving to disregard the election and continued on the same path.

we could worsen the bracket creep problem. that is the reason you could look at the projections in some revenue will be higher so we can balance the budget if we allow the tax cuts to expire. that is because we under-measure inflation. it would hit people with enough reductions with a tax hike. we need to fundamentally change the structure of the programs so that workers are better off. i think sequestration compared to other things would be a huge victory. federal spending would increase every year. the american people would be disappointed in that. at least there would be real savings compared to the baseline. these other deals do not really reduce the trajectory of government spending. they largely disregard the mood of the american people. >> a brief rebuttal. then i have a question. >> he basically described the

strong man. nobody is suggesting we go to 25% of gdp for revenue. of course spending will go up year to year. we have more people. inflation goes up year to year. the idea that we need to literally cut spending down to something lower over the next 10 years is fantasy. it is not realistic. there are five plants essentially. everybody from here over thinks we need to have spending cuts and revenue. many of those revenues have been described in terms of spending. spending through the tax code is economically equivalent to direct spending. i am in agreement on that. if you cut the mortgage interest deduction, that will result in

increased revenue. there is an imbalance. there is an imbalance in the national debate about revenue versus spending. one side says it has to all be spending. the other side painted as socialists says we have to do spending and revenue. that is the debate. that is why we have this weird situation where people in the middle are being painted as far left. >> if interest income is taxable, the expense should be deductible for neutrality reasons. >> i want to make a correction. one thing you will not find in the plan we did is any kind of a tax increase. the only thing on the tax side of the ledger is the ethanol credit. it is a refundable tax credit.

it is the type of credit where we literally write checks out of the treasury to people. that is different from other things that are reducing taxes. i would make two points. the first is only three times in our history after world war ii of we collected more than 20% in revenue. maybe 25% is not the right number. most on the left are advocating that taxes collect 10% more in revenue than the historical record of 23% of gdp or in that range. the other point that everyone seems to forget is that we have a textured exists -- tax trigger that exists as well. from a tactical perspective,

there is a push to have a balanced plan come out of the super committee that includes revenue increases as a way to make everybody happy that seems to make nobody happy. but we already have a tax only trigger. reductions iflude we wanted to. the real challenge on whether the super committee will come together and do this, i do not know the answer. we should have a great fear that if they are not successful, we will have a joint effort, the bad kind of bipartisan effort to undo the automatic spending reductions that are supposed to happen to undo the second round of deficit reduction. that will undo all the things we

were concerned about in the first place. >> your organizations have line item budget cuts. you really drilled down to specific levels. how has members of congress and the public responded? what is the response of the people? >> we have had positive response. when you show people these programs, just about every program has a constituency. if you go into the specifics about going from certain numbers, people realize these are not draconian cuts we're talking about.

when you explain to people about other programs, and you realize these are reasonable issues. that is part of what we have tried to do in bringing together a lot of things. you have to spread the pain. if you try to pick a winner or loser, if you try to make everybody a loser in this. they were very specific proposals. these are abnormalities or changing the code. we say to get rid of them. we have always been for a flatter simpler tax code. these will have to be part of it to get there. it is not just about raising revenue. it is about going to a better code. part of my hesitation on raising my hand as i think they will come up with something. you announced it would be $1

trillion plus. they could come out with $600 billion and the rest could be in sequestration. they could come up with any number and it would be tied to that. i think there is going to be a punt down the road. maybe we will do tax reform in the future and there will be savings. they will deal with entitlements and taxes. there are certain ways to do this in a budget reconciliation manner. i think there will be as hard. along those lines. -- i think there will be a hybrid along those lines. >> some of the highest response we have ever had on an issue from our members has been to our common ground report.

from our perspective, it makes sense. americans do not want to raise taxes or cut programs. in washington, we say everybody wants their cake and are hypocritical. what we have found with our members across the country is that for the last four years, they've been hearing from both sides that washington is broken. special interests run the show. there are tons of waste, fraud, and abuse in the system. they say they want to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse. when we come up with programs or subsidies, people say that is not what they were talking about. when you talk about education, health care, environmental protection, food safety, people say that is what they want tax dollars paying for. they are in favor of programs

they see are beneficial. they are against programs they see as special-interest giveaways. that is why we came together. >> i am an optimist. i think most people here are optimistic. why were you the only one to fully raise your hand? >> that is a good question. it is hard to see the optimism. because of the noise and rhetorical back and forth, it does get mind numbing. i understand why people just want to go back to sports. at the end of the day, i think members of congress want to do the right thing. they want to make progress. they may not do it in the way that we want them to do it. that is democracy. nobody gets the final say in everything.

the bottom line is if we do not do this, congress is going to look like more of a failure than it already does. and 9% approval rating is lower than any other industry, profession, or anything else in this country. that is really low. they need to do something to improve their public image. that is why i am optimistic. >> i know you will join me in thanking them and their organizations. you have done the hard work. on behalf of the members of ending spending, i want to thank you for joining today's debate. you can read more about these reports at endingspending.com. thank you and have a good day.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> this weekend, the reactionary lined author of and the columnist discuss the history of conservatism. rice recounts her years as national security adviser and secretary of state. former president bill clinton's thoughts on the current state of the economy and his plans for recovery. look for the complete schedule and sign up for schedules in your in box. >> every weekend, the people and

events that document the american story. this weekend, collaborator- conspirator or innocent boarding school owner? the retry her on charges she was involved in the lincoln assassination. jeb on his time in prison and life after release. the boston university professor on cold war policy. look for the complete weekend schedule. you can get complete schedules in your in box. >> on tuesday, public-school teachers testified on possible reauthorization of the no child left behind act. educators said they encourage a better process and a outlined the positives and negatives of the legislation. the senate is expected to vote on changes by the end of the year.

this is two hours and 25 minutes. come to order. >> we have held 10 hearings on the full range of issues covered under the law. we have held numerous stakeholder meetings and participated in lead the negotiations. that resulted in the bill voted out of committee two weeks ago. i believe the bill takes several important steps forward. it resets the national goal from students obtaining the fit -- proficiency to moving towards the riding from college towards

a career. by closing the loophole to insure that title one schools to their fair share of resources. incentivizing states and districts to develop rigorous teacher and principal evaluation and support systems with the goal of continuous structural improvement. it provides a laser like focus on turning around the bottom 5% of schools and our nations dropped out factories, high schools the graduate less than 60% of students so that real change occurs in the schools. students to attend have their eye to the metric three set on an improved course. we will hear from key stakeholders in the debate who are impacted by the laws that we pass in washington. i am eager to hear their perspectives how we can provide states and schools with the tools they need to help bolster the succeed. i think we have provided some of the tools in our bill. i am sure there are others who think more can be done.

i know the current law is not bringing about the improvements in student achievement that our country needs and that our children deserve. we must reauthorize to get out from under the ineffective no child left behind act. i expect our participants will discuss the things they like and things they would like to see changed. the goal today is to have an open discussion that informs the ongoing debate on the reauthorization. i think all of the participants for being here today. i will now turn to senator enzi who has been a strong work on -- strong partner on the reauthorization work. >> thank you. last month marked up of the elementary and secondary act was a major step forward in the process. it has been stagnant over the last four years since reauthorization lapsed.

i expect there will be many more changes to the bill to gain broader support from members on both side of the aisle and further improve the draft. marking the boat was an important step in the reauthorization process. this is not to say there was not a lot of work that occurred before hand. we have received testimony from over 70 witnesses, including the secretary of education, state and district representatives. the committee posted a website where people from across the country could express views and solutions with left from constituents as to the concerns and changes needed to improve the law. we are holding this round table to get input on the bill. we want to know if we are developing fixes to problems identified. we want to hear about what else we need to do to improve the

bill as we move forward. i want to thank the panelists. each of them come from different backgrounds and can provide a range of observations on the current wall and draft bill. today we will continue to identify problems on the ground with the current legislation and how we can create policies that provide flexibility for innovative approaches in the states. i am interested in hearing what they think should be retained as we move forward. there are many criticisms, but there are positives weekend point to as well. it has moved the conversation toward greater transparency and outcomes. invited parents to take a more active role in their children's education. by signing a light on the children rather than just the schools and making sure the

data is broadly available to parents, teachers, and taxpayers, they could have access they need to to information to make decisions about children and not in schools. that is a profound development and one i am committed to retaining as we move forward in the reauthorization. no child live behind push-to address shortcomings in our schools. it also placed strict rules on how education agencies address deficiencies within schools. in the bill we considered, we removed most of the federal mandates and asked states to intervene only in the bottom 5% of schools and those with the largest achievement gaps. parents and teachers will know how their children are doing because the information will be reported for every child. we want results to follow the child so that subsequent teachers can make a difference. we have told stays they must take the lead by returning responsibility for accountability to determine what

makes the most sense for their students. i hear the concerns of many that the bill does not include performance targets and other objectives. having the goal of students entering college without the need for remediation is a goal that requires intensive planning. states will intuitively need to design rubrics that get their students on this path. they do not need federal micromanagement that says how and when they should reach each milestone. we have learned no child left behind did not handle this responsibility well for one-size accountability systems that focused on schools. this bill attempts to remove the oversized federal footprint and return it to the states where it is most effectively implemented.

as i stated during the market, i do not support 100% of the bill. i would have supported a much smaller federal role and fewer federal programs. i know the chairman would have reported greater federally designed accountability. that is the essence of working to get something done, a bill that will include the broader congress, stakeholders, and those interested in better instruction and a more prepared work force moving forward so that actions can be taken instead of just wasted debate. this is another step in the process. we will be further informed as more voices are involved. i continue to support less federal role, fewer programs, and greater transparency through reporting to parents on the child's performance. we need to place more emphasis on seeing that each child is getting the education we promised. i was disappointed in the move. i encourage my colleagues to work together to improve the

bill if we truly plan to move the legislation to the president's desk. thank you for working with me on this hearing. i look forward to continuing the policy discussion. thank you. pass. thank you very much, senator enzi. let me a moment to introduce our participants. some senators like to weigh in with their introductions. i'll go down, i'll start on my right, first rick hess, mr. hess is the author of the education comme comment, the director of education next, research associate on next is john schnorr president of the board

of directors. he has developed education policies on teacher and principal qualities. after school programs. chartered schools and preschools. and i would now invite senator paul to introduce the next person. >> i'm pleased today to have pam gisselhart, she's gifted and talented teachers and one of the great successes of our kentucky public education. and i really glad that we able to have this hearing to talk about the bill before it's final, to get your input and your understanding and your input as to how we can change and make no child left behind less of a federal burden on teachers and prince pals and all of our educators. i thank you for coming. >> thank you, senator paul. >> next, we have tom luna.

mr. luna, he'll serve as president beginning in 2012. next is katie, senior vice president for government relations with easter seals. she does incredible work with easter seals, i can attest to that over the years. she's responsible for easter seals federal and state public policy activities. co-chair of the consortium. has expertise in both disability education and early childhood education. next, i would ask senator alexander. >> mr. chairman, we welcome charles seaton from memphis. he's after a career or 15 years in nonprofit juvenile prevention

program, he decided that he wanted to work with children in memphis and he works in the eighth grade with exceptional children, special education children and i understand that he's involved as tennessee teacher and principal is right now in the teacher/principal evaluation process. welcome. >> thank you very much, senator alexander. next is -- i would invite senator hagan for the next. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm proud to have an opportunity to introduce an old friend of mine, a proud north carolinian, one of this country's foremost education leaders, dr. terry greer. she has -- he has experienced the public education system from all levels. a graduate of east carolina

university and vanderbilt and as a teacher, coach and a high school principal. i first met dr. gear in 2000 when he became the superintendent of my hometown. during his eighth years in the county, dr. greer led the district as it cut its dropout rate in half. to less than 3%. increased the high school graduation rate from 63% to nearly 80%. received one of the largest investments from the center of creative leadership to help schools leaders. today, early college institutes across the country are wildly seen as one of the most effective ways to steer our low-income students on a path of success. >> then dr. greer continued his track record in san diego, he helped reduce the dropout rate

by 60%. in 2009, dr. greer became superintendent of the houston independent school district, the seventh largest school district in the nation with more than 200,000. houston, his initiatives continued to produce results for schools and students. and last month it was announced that the houston independent school district landed 87 schools on the 2011 of the state's high-performing schools, by far the leader in urban school districts in the state. so, i'm pleased and honored to welcome my old friend, dr. terry greer to this committee. thank you. >> thank you very much, senator hagan. next is -- sorry mcmikulski

couldn't be here today. she is teaches public education, current currently teaches at a school for students are medical fragiled. in addition, she also serves as a resident advisor for new special education teachers. and works with students of autism. next to amanda, mr. henderson, the president and ceo of the leadership conference, he also heads up the leadership conference education fund. prior to these roles, mr. henderson was the washington buerau director of the naacp. >> i would like to welcome today, allen thomas, president of madison high school in

richmond, kentucky, vice president of the kentucky association of secondary school principals. this year, he was the kentucky principal of the year. and he has spent time working in his school on focus and finish program. which identifies struggling seniors. we're very happy to have principal thomas here with us today. >> thank you very much. thank you all for being here for this very important discussion. >> mr. hess and mr. shur i'm told you might have to leave early. thank you. before we start, let me explain the format of the roundtable. i'll ask a question of one of panelists. that person will answer. if one of the panelists wants to respond, take your name tent and

put it on its head like that. so, i know to call on you. if a committee member wants to ask a question or a follow-up or an intervention, i ask them to do the same. so, we usually have a lot of fol whox want to talk. i'll recognize someone and we'll continue the conversation. it won't be like a formal hearing, although it's being recorded. we'll try to keep the discussion flowing. hope the result will be a good in depth conversation regarding the bill. i just also ask that everyone to refrain from giving speeches. if they're a couple minutes long, that's okay. but long speeches. so, given that we may lose you early, i'll start with mr. schnur. can you tell us what the strengths on of the bill or how

you think it could be improved? >> thank you so much. it's an honor to be with you. you're tackling one of the most pressing priorities for country and the blend of addressing education as both a national priority and a state and local responsibility is delicate one. i understand there are issues at play on this bill. i have been in dozens and dozens of schools around the country working to improve low-achieving schools, urban schools and rural schools, i think we have some lessons emerged from those. when we looked at the schools, we analyzed, we have schools that are making dramatic

progress. kids who many people in the society don't think achieve, we have actual examples. we're getting dramatic progress. we have leaders from schools -- we have nalszed the difference. one, in all of the schools that have been progress, there are high expectations what the kids can achieve. specific expectations. for success in college and career. secondly, there's a focus on the school on a constant improvement on teacher and feedback to improve the quality of teaching regularly in the cool. because teachers aren't just born. you have some great teachers. teachers who are working at it can make dramatic improvement when there's the proper feedback. third, we see cultures of intense cultures of high

expectation and personal responsibility. for all kids. you can't legislation late that from the federal level. the kind of culture that can drive high expectations and fourth, we see adequate funding for the teacher program. it makes an enormous difference to help principals make improvements. schools are struggling for that little bit of extra money to make improvement. fifth and finally there's leadership. leadership at the local level, which is inhibited from too many regulations. i think it's a big issue that you are rightly addressing. what i think can improve the bill, the requirement to college and career-ready standards are

so important. having somethinging is, most of these schools don't have these expectations. the second, the competitive grant programs focused on talent. on principals and teachers. the pathways program, trying to train principals and teachers for their institutions. third is the prioritization of low-achieving schools. if you got flexibility, that's a priority in this bill. finally it's important that you got to fix some of the prescription and the mindset of no child left behind. to address leadership at the local level. two issues, two significant concerns about the bill that i would pay a lot of attention to if i were in your shoes in the senate, working on improving this bill, first, lot of discussion about teacher and principal evaluation, i realize some say that should be

mandated. i think i would recommend improving on the current bill, by putting in place a very substantial incentive. not a requirement. a very substantial incentive. perhaps taking as much as 50% of the title ii program to support competitive grants. design and use these systems. someone is building on senator alexander bill. the incentive is there but could be large. you could put up enough funding that every state would be able to get funds. only 42% of title ii right now is used for teacher professional development. i think you could get more funds through this approach to get professional development. right now, title ii isn't working very well. state-driven systems on a competitive basis you get a lot more bang for your buck. i think there needs to more press on the performance

targets. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> you gave me five things, high ek peck takes, cultural responsibility. accurate funding and leadership. what i understand, under cultural and personal responsibility comes the subset of families. in other words, we always focus on schools. we know what influences a kid's ability to learn a desire to learn is what happens outside the school. so, what role does the family play in that list of yours? in those successful schools. >> it's huge. as a dad of a 6-year-old and 4-year-old and 2-year-old, i walk my kid to school every day. the schools that we have seen, driven big results do find ways to really engage parents in

taking responsibility to drive improvement for kids. most parents want the best for their kids and a lot of them don't have the support they need. i think especially are driven by the leader of the school and the teachers they enlist. >> senator alexander? >> thanks, mr. chairman. i would like to thank all of you coming. for making this hearing happen. let me take what mr. schnur said and go to seton from memphis. the bill would be improved with a larger incentive for teacher and principal evaluation. memphis is currently going through a teacher/principal evaluation. almost every teacher is involved in it. and, that's the result of a

program that raced to the top that had an incentive for states that wanted to do to teacher and principal evaluation. what's going on? what's your experience there? how are teachers and principals are responding to it? wh what's role should the federal government have in regulating it? >> good morning. thank you to the chairman for having me here. we in tennessee are actually, i believe, setting the standard nationally, and hopefully, people will start paying attention to what we're doing with regards to evaluations. we know that if you want something you have to inspect it or evaluate it. so, we took the lead with accepting the race to the top, we decided that we were going to look at putting a good teacher, an effective teacher in front of

every young person that we have in the state of tennessee. memphis went a state further and we started looking at a number of evaluation models nationally that were being used and memphis city schools developed or redeveloped, retooled a model and we're using it now. every teacher, every principal, whether they're teaching a student, so that means, administrative personnel, also, are being evaluated. they're looking at a number of issues. they put a rubic together that looks at the actual art of teaching and measures those skills that we believe are effective skills to teach. and it also looks at culture or the teaching domain, where you're at. and i think that we have -- we have seen that, it's caused us

as teachers, myself included, to re-evaluate exactly how i'm doing and try to put those high-yield strategies in front of myself. >> you're a special education teacher, is that right? >> that is correct. i teach special education. it's caused in no child left behind has done a good job of focusing on attention on those areas of special needs children. but, i think -- we see in tennessee, that with have created a culture that is data-driven as well as personnel-driven. we're able to look forward. >> thank you. before i call on the next senator, i think what senator bennett -- let's go to mr. greer. you wanted to have an intervention on this point? >> yes, sir. hit that button. >> thank you so much. good to see you. in houston, we believe that

teacher and principal evaluation is just too important to leave to chance. it has to be fixed in this country. as a school superintendent, i have been leading tri ing distrr district. student performance is not very high. but evaluation writings on almost everyone is off the scale. it has to be fixed. we have to have a teacher and principal evaluation system in this country and in our school systems that give our employees a real, honest picture of what they're doing. last year many houston, we implemented two new evaluation systems. our teacher evaluation system will contain a weight of 15%. as well as will our principal evaluation as we finish it up this year. this past year, as a result of our efforts, we retained 92% of

our highest per fforming teache in houston. >> one thing that -- yes, sir, senator alexander has gotten in my head about, how tough it is to do evaluations. we don't really have the metrics, if that's the proper word i can use. are there a lot of different things out there? you said that 50% in houston were based on student performance. whatever you're doing in houston, you said is working. is there a template there for the rest of the country? i think i have been reading articles about tennessee and they're trying to adopt some kind of evaluation. it's very difficult. >> it's difficult work. as we proved in houston it's not impossible work. when you retain 92% of your best

students and relace 50% of your lowest performing teachers in the year that's proof that it's not impossible. we had over 2500 teachers involved with us in twopg our teacher evaluation systems. >> they were involved in developing this. >> yes, they must be. it's critical that they must be. >> if you had it on that paper, i would like to see what you use for other metrics. >> a lot of it is pedagogy, classroom observations. >> do you ask students? are students involved? >> students aren't involved -- >> do you think this's important. one of the best people to evaluate teachers is students. >> it's fascinating. we know several things about teacher evaluation. teachers know who the good

teachers and parents know who the good teachers are. we required all of our principals in houston to go through 35 to 40 hours of teacher evaluation documentation appraisal training. >> mrshgs luna had his hand up next. >> thank you, mr. chairman. in response to senator alexander question about evaluations and incentives, and at some point i would hope to be able to have a discussion also about idaho's state chiefs view about the lot, the good parts and the other parts. but when it comes to evaluations and incentives, we know that the most important factor, once a school -- once a child enters a school, by far the most important factor is the quality

of a teacher in the class room, than the money spent or the technology, the most important factor is the teacher in the classroom.

>> we are ahead of the curve when it comes to incentives so that we do not leave it to chance as to whether every child has a highly effective teacher every year they are in school. >> senator bennet. >> i would like to thank everyone for being here today. thank you for teaching. we deeply appreciate it. senator alexander, i spent time

on the phone with your excellent commissioner of education in tennessee hearing from him about the evaluation system. he sends his regards. he said they have the best system in the world. since i support both of the amendments to the bill, i wonder if you could talk from your perspective. no one has spent more time in as many schools as you probably have. from your perspective, what is the importance of the performance targets? what should that look like in the bill? >> the people in this room have more expertise on legislative issues. from a school perspective, i

think it is of vital importance -- kids across the country need support from outside the school for higher performance. there are many things conspiring. from the school perspective, all of these things conspired to lower expectations. teachers and principals benefit from the public setting goals. they want to do it. there will be a lot of people being naysayers. having support is important. requiringk performance targets is important. there can be a lot of flexibility for states. i think it is a great land of empowering states -- blend of

empowering states. we are launching america achieves. we will convene a panel of people including teachers to put recommendations together for what the goals and targets should be. i think that can inform the debate. somewhere at the government level, there needs to beat a drive to ensure targets and transparency, in my view. ure their targets in my view. >> thank you very much. now, i got senator paul, mr. seaton and senator isakson. we can probably sit here for the next two hours to discuss

performance targets and evaluations. there are other aspects of the bill that we would like to get to, perhaps you'll bring up other things, i don't know. perhaps we can have each of them quickly mention what they like and don't like in the bill. >> let's go to ms. dansk. >> good morning. >> i wanted to respond to your question about how it was created. in baltimore city, we passed a contract where the teachers are paid for performance. we went through that process of creating a rubic, it took about a year. we had some family members working together through many drafts to create a program that showed what highly effective teaching looked like. senator alexander question, about whether or not the federal

government should have a hand in it. the autonomy our school had in creating it rubic was fantastic. i do teach at a school for students who are severely disabled and medically fragiled. we're looking at creating our own rubic. it was so specific. it had footnotes and explained every detail. but for a lot of students, those details aren't going to apply. having that autonomy to go through that process on its own for our student pourp lapulatioo ensure we have highly effective teachers in the class room. >> i was wanting to speak to the teacher evaluation incentive. i just wanted to say that, there

are already is an incentive as far as national boarder certification in most states. there's incentive pay for that. as far as the evaluation, i think the evaluation definitely needs to be done on the local, state level, because, it's so different and for instance, in memphis and in rural kentucky, and i think that's one of the great things about your bill is that it does put more emphasis on local and state decisionmaking in all areas. but as far as teacher quality, teachers are -- well, i shouldn't use that term, because that's different in this bill, as far as evaluation, teachers wants to be value waited, because teachers want to improve and that should be the purpose of evaluation is to improve teaching.

rather than to find fault with teachers and things like that. that is the purpose. and if we can have this where our rubic and things like that, give us the needs that we have as teachers to help us improve that's what we're looking for. we want to avoid incentives and things like that, that cause competition between teachers. and that's a real concern for us as far as teacher evaluation and incentive. because in order for schools to be successful, and in order for our students to learn, all teachers and all school personnel must work together for the education of the whole child. we don't want to start -- i think i'm speaking for all teachers in that regard. we don't want to start anything that causes a competition between teachers. because we do want to be able to collaborate and work together and be the best that we can be. >> thank you very much. i think senator enzi made a

great suggestion. i would like to start with mr. hess and go down right now, since we finished with senator paul, mr. seaton. >> mr. enzi made a good suggestion. let's start with mr. his. mr. schnur, you had your shot, we'll skip you. mr. his, what are two, three things that you like about the bill and what you don't like about the bill. >> sure. i appreciate the opportunity to be here, mr. chairman. senator enzi and members. for me, actually, unlike mr. schnur, i don't are have much time spending on the ground. i think if we look back a half century of federal effort to improve schooling, some stark

lessons stand out that are rarely kind of taken into account. we often spent time talking about whether the federal government should or should not be involved in education. when we go back to national defense education act, we had the federal government involved in some way. for me the most useful question here, what is the federal government equipped to do well when it comes to american education? i think the federal government is horribly situated to improve schools and teaching. schools are enormously complex organizations. what we have hard today from several of the folks on the ground from mr. luna and mr. grier, how much improving teach accountability, improving teacher evaluation is how you do it. given this design of the american federal system and the complexity of state education agency and local education

agencies, is no matter how well intended our efforts trying to spell out improvement models, trying to stipulate programs. efforts to specify evaluation models. we're going to wind up with more regulation and case law and compliance than we are with fulfillment of the intent of law. i would encourage us to be as cautious as possible in trying to spell out remedies for teachers. there are some particularly useful elements of the law. coherent vision of the federal role, there are public goods that the federal government is uniquely equipped to provide an education. one, robust and reliable transparency, both around student performance, around outlays and expenditures and around dising a rating this how

kids from everywhere are doing. the federal fwoft i think has a charge to provide constitutional protections for vulnerable populations. i think title i is an effort to do this. to my mind the 5% target that's spelled out in the committee bill is reasonable. jack walsh, when he ran general electric, used to have a mindset, they were going to try to fire the worst 10% of the employees. he thought that 10% was a reasonable target. it encourages that it's not unreasonable so long again, as we keep that focus on encouraging states to address it not trying to stipulate models. third, there's a role in the kind of mr. schnur eluded to for

state, union and local leaders. often, even when you have superintendents like mr. grier or farsighted union leaders, they get pulled back by their kons studeconstituent constituents. they the answer to what's in it for us? we can go out, bring a spotlight and bring home dollars? a chance to leapfrog into the 21st century. fourth there's a crucial federal role when it comes to basic research. i think senator bennett's forthcoming amendment is useful on this front. we must keep in mind the federal role, is to really figured out how do we leverage technologies and not getting the federal government involved to require

models. >> as far as -- i'm sorry, in regard to what's positive, first of all n your statement that senator enzi made, was that no child left behind was ineffective. i have to agree with that. not the reauthorization of the no child left behind. as a educator, just the connotation of the term, no child left behind, it really is demoralizing to us at this point. because there is so much focus on teaching -- i mean, testing, testing, testing, that we have no time to it really has become that way within the schools. working with gifted education, i run into this all the time because things i want to do with my students, the teachers don't want me to take them out of the classroom because they're

addressing particular standards that's going to be tested. for instance, i was [ inaudible ] going to view an open heart surgery, live open heart surgery, and one of my teachers was taking a -- giving a practice test to practice for the practice test to test for the -- practice for the test. i mean that's the way that it goes. these students are testing all year-round. and it takes so much time from instruction and as long as we keep our standards and our groups set up like they are -- i think the gap groups are effective, we want to look at those gaps, we want to be sure that no child is left behind. that needs to be our concentration. i was so thrilled when no child left behind passed because i thought, hallelujah, now we're going to see that every child learns every day. what we're doing in no child left behind is we're leaving behind most of our students because our students that have special needs are not being able

to be taught the skills that they need to be taught. our fmd classes, teachers really, really genuinely cared about the students wanted the students to learn skills they could use in their life skills. they can no longer teach those skills because they have to address the standards. these students are going to be tested on the standards. gifted students are left behind totally because they are already proficient or distinguished and so teachers don't feel that they can use time, their time to work with these gifted students so consequently test scores of our gifted students are getting lower and lower and these are -- many of these are the future leaders of our country and we're not meeting their needs. so those students come to school and go home and have not learned throughout the day. the real concern of mine, i do work with gifted students, it's

what i hear from the special ed teachers and their concerns that they have that they can no longer -- they deeply care about these students or they wouldn't be in these jobs, they couldn't be in these jobs, but they cannot address the needs of -- that these students really need in their classrooms. we have even had an instance where we had a terminally ill special needs child and tried to get an exemption for testing and could not get that even with a doctor's note saying that testing just the process of testing, would be detrimental to the child's health. we still could not get an exemption for that child. and their scores were figured in our accountability. we have a student that has a four-word vocabulary, that's all he speaks and one of the phrases he uses or the terms he uses, i don't know [ inaudible ] he says he can say yes, no, mom, and hell no. that's all he says.

he's in sixth grade now. that's all he has said throughout his schooling. he's supposed to do a portfolio. yes, it's an alternate portfolio. people say we have alternate portfolios, but how do you do an alternate portfolio with that? >> thank you very much. mr. luna. >> mr. chairman, just one point of clarification, a concern was raised earlier that the fact that incentives could create competition in schools and that could be a negative impact. just so you understand, in idaho, when it comes to student achievement we only go down to the school level and so actually, fosters collaboration and teamwork amongst all the teachers in the school because they're working together to hit their students hit an academic goal. all of the teachers receive the financial incentive, not just a few teachers in the school. when it comes to no child left behind, reminds of the clint eastwood movie, good bad and ugly, a little bit of all of

that in the law. i think the good part is it brought us -- this was ten years ago, it brought us to a standards based education system where we were accountable for every child and had to have a standardized way of measuring student achievement. the bad part of the law was it was a one size fits all. in a state like idaho, which is a rural state and rural communities within that rural state, it was difficult to implement the law. the ugly part is we had a system where the federal government set the goal and then they prescribed to the states what programs and processes we had to use to meet that goal, and if their programs and processes didn't work, we were held accountable. and so, you know, that was the ugly part. i think this law, this reauthorization, has kept the good parts of no child left behind, in fact, i think it's improved upon going to a growth model because if we're serious about making sure that every child's needs are met, then a growth model demands that a system not only focus on those

students that aren't at grade level but also the students that are above because you're obligated to show academic growth for those students also. today once they hit proficiency you're it tempted to not focus as much on students that are as proficient or higher and focus on kids below proficiency. the other thing about the law, it recognizes the leadership the states have stepped forward and taken in improving education. states chose to work together to develop a higher standard to hold all of our students to called the common core. it wasn't because it was federally mandated. we chose to work together to create the next generation of assessments not because it was mandated because that's what's best for our students and we chose to develop the next generation of accountability. so you have 40 or more states that without any federal mandate or incentive, have developed a higher standard for our students. we've -- we're developing higher assessments to measure our students and we've come up with

our own accountability plan that has had quite a bit of influence on the law that's been drafted. so i think it's a tenth amendment issue, right, and i think it's recognizing the rights that states have and the responsibilities that states have, and i'm comfortable with that more than ten years ago because states have demonstrated they are more than willing and ready to step up and hold ourselves and our schools to a higher level of accountability. >> very good. thank you. miss neas. >> i wanted to just say a couple things from a perspective of easter seals and i think our perspective students with disabilities in general have greatly benefited from the elementary and secondary education act because the law requires their academic achie achievement to be measured and reported. as a result, more students with disabilities have been afforded the opportunity to learn and

master grade level academic conte content. that has been huge for our kids. the whole notion of they get a chance to try. one of the things -- a number of things we like in the senate bill. the notion of states to adopt college and careers -- career ready standards and an assumption of high expectations. we also are very pleased that the build bill does not codify the so-called 2% rule which for us has allowed people to apply very, very low expectations to achievement for students with disabilities. we're very pleased with the elements that promote universal design for learning throughout the bill, access to multitiered systems of support including positive behavior, interventions and the notion that early learning can begin at birth and then this bill promotes those things. there are a number of things that we're very concerned about and look forward to working with you to improve them.

the law -- the bill doesn't change this notion of subgroup size. and as a result, right now, less than -- about 30% of schools have enough students with disabilities to meet the subgroup category. so 70% of schools don't even measure -- don't have enough kids according to their subgroup size. we know that lots of kids, their progress isn't being measured and reported. the law requires 95% of kids to be assessed so we understand that not every kid is going to be at school every day but we know that we need that data on subgroup accountability. we really want at the end of the day for all kids to have access to the general curriculum and all kids to be held to high expectations. i've spent the last four days with 350 easter seals people who are around the country and i have had story after story after story of families who are told

what their kid couldn't do, and they came to us and we were able to help them figure out what they wanted to do. so what i would plead to this committee, don't put in barriers that make it hard for kids to have access to the general curriculum. before no child left behind, before the secondary education act for kids that have very significant cognitive disabilities we used to hear over and over again what they were taught was their colors. and i get a family that would say, this ip, we've got goals and then my kid is going to learn their colors, yellow, red, green. next year, the goals for my kid's iep are colors. my kid knows their colors. we need to move on. and no child left behind, the elementary secondary act has given us a form that says every kid deserves the opportunity to make academic progress. so i -- my plea to you is let's continue on that to make sure that there aren't barriers put

in place that disallow kids to have access to the general curriculum, access to the supports that they need to learn, and that one of the things we need are teachers who know what they're doing who are committed to these kids that will help them learn and the tools to help them do that. >> thank you very much. mr. mr. seton. >> thank you again. one of the things, yes, we do need federal involvement. we need your money. and in order to say we need your money, you need to be able to have some involvement in the guidance of where and how that money is spent. i do believe in tennessee, that we are moving forward and the culture has been created by no child left behind that looks at the numbers that looks at data and we're willing to change and update our strategies on a regular basis. there are three things that i want to talk about. evaluation, real quickly. it has to happen. in the military they used to

say, inspect what you expect. so evaluations will cause us to look at how we're going to accomplish the things that we need to accomplish. leaders, we need leaders. a lot of times people think that becoming an administrator in a school system, you teach 10, 15 years, three or five years, and you can just become a leader. leaders don't happen like that all the time. so there needs to be something that's -- this guy collins wrote "built to last and good to great" big-time business books but they look at how to be effective over the course of time and how major companies have lasted, and then what they did to last. we need to be able to take those same types of data points and benchmark what it takes to be a good leader in a school. and we need to look at the top 5% of schools as well as the bottom 5% because those bottom 5% of schools are our dropout factories and we need to address

that with accountability. i think that no child left behind pointed us in the right direction, but it didn't give us the resources that we necessarily needed to make those changes. so, as i look at what you are talking about, we have a program in memphis called cradle to career and it looks at education from birth to your career. and so the college readiness program that you all have incorporated, i applaud and i think that we, as educators and as a family of americans, need to get together and we just need to kind of accept the direction that you all have given us. i thank you for this time. >> thank you, mr. seton. again, what's -- what's good and what's bad about the bill? mr. grier? >> thank you, senator. first, we want to say thank you for continuing to have an accountability component in there.

focusing on the bottom 5% of our schools that are persistently low achieving schools that have an achievement gap and allowing states some discretion in developing an accountability system in their state i think is all positive. we also would like very much that we no longer have to set aside money for supplemental educational services. in our district this afterschool tutoring program has not yielded any results. we actually have had vendors that would give students rides to movie theaters in stretch limousines for signing up with them. last year in our district we created our own tutorial program and our turn around schools we reconstituted four middle -- five middle schools and four high schools and we tutored all sixth and ninth graders in those schools in math every day, one tutor per two children, and at the end of the year, we had twice the academic gains that

the harlem children's achieved last year. we know that good tutoring with a good curriculum that is organized and that can occur during the school day, can pay huge dividends. based on our own experience with turnaround models, we would like to really encourage you to modify is the one that where -- the current legislation limits the schools that reclassify as persistently low achieving to only use the closure and restart models. we believe that repeat classification should only prevent the lea from using the same model they used during that initial classification. we also would like to caution the committee on the additional reporting requirements that we fear may be attached to our parental involvement and the successful safe and healthy students initiatives. we worry that potentially a large portion of funding allocations to these reforms will go simply into reporting

mandates. we don't need that type of additional bureaucracy. we just don't. finally, one of the things that concerns us in houston and it concerns a lot of our colleagues, my colleagues, and a lot of the large school districts this issue around compra billty. we would love to work with you later to, perhaps, work through some of this. but the way that you would come in and determine the formula around compra billty is problematic. >> which is in the bill. >> which is in the current bill. needs major attention. >> what's in the current bill that we have, now the law. >> current bill we have. >> i wanted to be clear. >> just a huge issue, particularly in a district, for example, like houston, where in turning around our nine lowest performing secondary schools, these are schools that were tagged with the label of dropout

factories, we went this past year and raised almost $15 million from private sources. we lengthened the school day by an hour, added a week to the school year, we hired all these additional tutors. that costs more money, so to do that and bring those outside dollars in and now all of a sudden those are there in the bill's current language, if we had to use the compraibility formula these schools would be penalized for our efforts to go out and raise additional dollars. another thing that bothers me that -- an awful lot is the school superintendent, is it simply costs more money to turn these schools around and i wish your current bill had some type of set aside. in the title i revenues we receive, that would be required to be spent on those schools and people can say to you, well, you have the flexibility to do that. yes, you do. you often don't have the political will to do that.

and that's very, very tough, because you're then taking money away from another school to -- insert in your lowest performing schools. i don't have the magic number in terms of what that set aside should look like, but we set aside 1% for parental involvement. some people argue that's too low. but it is a set aside that requires us to spend money to make sure we can engage our parents. these schools that are so low performing, it takes more money. i can promise you one of the things i'm more concerned about than anything we've talked about here today and i don't know how your bill addresses this, is the human capital that's required to address these 5% schools. quality principals, quality teacher in every classroom, those are easy words to say. when you get out and you start recruiting, our nonturnaround schools, we recruited nationally. we offered 20 and $30,000

incentives, stretch goals, $5,000 signing bonuses to get principals to go into these schools. we didn't have anyone from our highest performing schools lined up to go into those schools. no one. we recruited 70 principals to hire nine. we hired those nine principals and after a year we replaced four of them. it is just hard work. and this whole issue around turning around these lowest performing schools, the biggest issue that we'll talk about is the issue around human capital. >> thank you very much, mr. grier. miss danks. >> thank you, again. something i really liked about the bill was the idea that each state would be adopting the college and career readiness standards. i think having those high expectations for all of our students is very important and going to get our students ready for the 21st century work force or college or whatever they end up doing. something that i think has been missing for far too long from many of our standards are life

skills standards, standards that address those skills that our students with the most severe cognitive disabilities need to master to be successful after their high school term is finished. we focus a lot on the students that are typically developing on what they're going to do after high school, but this other population is i think left behind but not having those standards so that teachers know what to teach so we can effectively measure progress towards those standards and we can be sure that those students are ready for whatever they may be getting into when they're finished with high school. we -- everyone says that we assess too much. i think that we assess ineffectively too much. i agree, we have a lot of practice tests for the practice test to take the real test. i think that's completely ineffective. if we were able to adopt some more effective assessments that provided teachers and administrators with the data necessary in order to inform our instruction and improve our instructional strategies so we can push our students to those

higher levels, then we would be able to assess quickly, efficiently and more often that data would be collected immediately. i know we've talked about computer based assessments. those often are able to give us more quick results and provide them -- provide them in a way the teacher can use those the next day to inform their instruction and make better strategy decisions. something that was always a struggle with no child left behind that i didn't fully understand how it was addressed in this bill are the highly qualified standards. i know when i came through teaching i did come through an alternative certification program and the highly qualified standards was a lot of paperwork. no one ever came in my classroom to be sure that i was highly effective but my paperwork was in and that's all that mattered. i feel like we're missing the target on that. anyone can turn in transcripts but not everyone can be a highly effective teacher in the classroom. we've talked about the evaluation of teachers and

principals. with that evaluation comes support and guidance and so i think that is a huge piece missing in those -- in that highly qualified standards discussion. just because a teacher is highly effective one year with a new student population or at a new school, they may not be highly effective. i think that continued support to help our teachers grow into better instructors is going to be paramount for our students' success. >> thank you, miss dankss. mr. henderson. >> thank you, chairman harken. senator enzi and to all the distinguished members of this committee, i want to thank you for inviting me to this important bipartisan roundtable discussion on the reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education act. mr. chairman, i have been uncharacteristically quiet this morning and i would hope that gives me, perhaps, an additional minute to lay out both the things that we like about this

bill as well as those that pose a concern. let me say at the outset i think all of us seem to agree that no child left behind is in need of significant improvement. i think we would also agree that the global economy has imposed new demands on our nation to improve the quality of public education available both k through 12, but also post-secondary education. and the fact that our workforce is going to be drawn from an increasingly diverse population, of individuals both native born and immigrants in our country, makes this not just a moral issue, and that is improving education reform is a moral issue, but it's also a national security issue. the fact that this committee is taking seriously its responsibilities for a deeper in this area is extremely important. there are things about this bill

that, indeed, represent improvements over current law. i'm going to outline them very briefly and want to talk about the other things which pose concern. we are very pleased that the bill requires more equitable funding within districts. i would disagree with mr. grier with respect to the responsibility of the federal government to use its leverage and its resources to help encourage improvement in this area. i think the bill does improve the efforts of dropout factories, which are those schools that represent a significant part of the schools where individuals dropout annually and for african-americans and latinos and native americans, we often lose, perhaps, as many as 50% of our high school graduating class annually. i think the bill does a great job in providing college and career ready standards. i would agree with miss danks

that there is improvement there. i'm pleased about the importance of data collection to ensure that the subgroups of boys and girls aren't masked and that interventions can be targeted more effectively. i think that's important. we think the s.t.e.m. courses available to underrepresented groups is an improvement. all those things represent significant improvements and we were especially pleased with senator franken's efforts to provide additional protections for students in foster care. it makes a significant difference. those things are, we think, very important. but unfortunately, from our standpoint these improvements are overshadowed by the bill's albeit perhaps unintended, but nonetheless, historic retreat on the accountability question, and because of this retreat, dozens of education and business organizations, including the us chamber of commerce, have

determined that we cannot support the bill at this time. we have issued a statement to that effect which i would request be entered into the record of this discussion this morning. now, we are troubled by several provisions in the bill, so let me see if i can just outline them with the sem brevity i did those things we like. we are concerned that the states would be required to take action to improve only a small number of low performing schools. that is the bottom 5% of the schools in most states, and that while the bill does identify an additional 5% of schools with achievement gaps and those considered dropout factories, the bill does not require these schools to make any significant academic progress and prescribes no interventions. moreover, it allows each state to decide which achievement gaps merit attention and which do not. in the remaining 95% of the schools that are not among the

state's very worst performing public schools, large numbers of low achieving students will simply slip through the cracks. obviously that happens today. but that is not the measure that we use to determine whether a newly reauthorized elementary and secondary education act is responsive to those problems. and many states these students will be low-income students, students of color, those learning english and students with disabilities. the bill also does not require states to set targets for significantly improving high school graduation rates, despite the fact that as i noted that every year, about 1.3 million students drop out and only a little over half of the students of color, including african-american, latino, native american and southeast asian students graduate on time. finally, for english language learn learners, the bill eliminates

objectives which is a critical accountability element for the title iii program. finally, the bill weakens requirements in the current law requiring that low-income students and students of color be taught at a higher rates by inexperienced, unqualified, or out of field teachers. we know we can't close the achievement map and also need to close the teacher inequality gap. i don't have the experience of many of the teachers and principals who work on the ground every day, but i am a board member, a trustee of the educational testing service. the educational testing service is a non-profit corporation, has launched a series of symposium and seminars focusing on ways to close the achievement gap and then i think highly academic and a deeper dive, they've identified a number of elements that lead to actually reducing

the achievement gap between students, but all of them are based on the core principle of accountability. it is indispensable to advancing the common goals that we have about closing the achievement gaps and maintaining our country's competitiveness in the global economy, so i think it's fair to say and without hyperbole, that the provisions in the bill that we have focused on with greatest concern really represent the de facto end of a national accountability system as we have come to understand it. and while i believe that this notion of providing flexibility for individual school districts and schools may be important given the context in which it is raised, it is not appropriate to offer flexibility that, in effect, represents an end to the establishment of national standards that have been the significant -- in fact, arguably the most significant -- driver

of the improvement of public schools that we've seen over the past decade of no child left behind. so with that in mind, sir, thank you. and i appreciate the opportunity. >> i thought that was very thorough, thank you very much. mr. thomas, you've got the hammer. >> thank you, senator. i really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today and i just want to say as a principal i love my students, i love my job as principal, i love working with our students every day and our teachers every day. in looking at this there are two or three things i would like to mention that i think are positive and things we can certainly work on. certainly i think as everyone is in mind, we're looking out for interest of students and so some good things i think are in the bill, in the recommendation, would be the student growth model. you've heard that quite a bit and i think that's a real positive thing to get rid of the punitive ayp sanctions was very effective and we appreciate that effort. we are also and it's been a lot of my work has been based on the college and career readiness standards. i think that's a good start there as well. i do think that it's important

with the college and career readiness standards that we look at what our states are doing and allow the states to determine what those standards are. and in kentucky we've begun that work and are certainly very appreciative of that opportunity to set the standards as a state. there are some things with the reor authorization that should be looked at and thought about thoroughly before we move forward with anything. once again, locally determine what our college and career readiness standard looks like. in addition, approving some assessments for our students with special needs based on their accommodations set forth in their ieps. i think our local arc, the release committees, can determine what those assessments look like, and in so doing, there's going to have to be a removal of the 1% cap on some of our alternative assessments for our special needs students. an example of that would be, if you look at madison central high school, we are about 1750

students and if you take 1% of that, for alternative assessment, that would be 17.5, let's round up, 18 students. and at madison central our severe disability students we have three classrooms, ten students each, for a total of 30 students. we're looking at an accountability that doesn't include the entire population that could have an iep that says they should be on an alternative assessment. i would like there to be an alternative assessment, remove the 1% cap and let the committee determine that would be really good. an issue that we find we struggle with at least in my district and my previous district, is the highly qualified part of the reauthorization. whenever we look at the highly qualified, it's very burdensome. our teachers struggle -- we struggle to hire special needs teachers and as we are all very

well aware, the -- some of the best teachers don't come through a natural path through certification and so we would like some alternative ways and not really put the burden on the highly qualified mandate about the testing. to be highly qualified we want to get highly qualified teachers for all of our students, and special needs is one area we struggle in. we want to have high standards and put the best teachers in place there. but to do so, requires a very burdensome testing process. we would like to advocate for some local decisions there on what that highly qualified status looks like. and then lastly, just simply as a principal, i was very fortunate a month ago to come to capitol hill and to petition on behalf of principals across the united states, but certainly as the met life nassp principal of the year from kentucky i have to talk about the four school turnaround models we have that includes getting rid of the principal in each one of those models if they have been in

their position for more than two years. and, obviously, you know, i think there are certainly principals out there who are poor principals who need to be removed, but certainly if we just put one assessment or if we put one measure on those principals and remove them, then it's going to be quite difficult to keep some of our best principals. a really good example would be in our home state and in one of our counties principal has been there just a little bit over two years and he is in the bottom 5%, his school is. we want to turn that school around. and he seems to be doing a really good job, and if you look at their college and career readiness standards, they're doing very well, but based on the sanctions listed by the 5%, he's got to lose his job. so, as a result, i cannot support the four school turnaround models and i would like to ask for a fair analysis first to determine whether the existing principal is making gains and use some alternative measures to make those gains.

thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. thomas. let's see. senator paul a. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the chairman and ranking member for having this hearing. i continue to learn more about the issue every time i hear more about not only no child left behind but various ideas. i think it's a recommendation for the hearing that we have a packed crowd. we've had standing room only the whole time. i think it is good. i, for one, see problems as a physician, you try to diagnose the problem, you try to fix it. and we should continue to look at that as a problem solving orientation for this. i do think that there is a large philosophical sort of debate and battle that is part of this. i hear ideas from people who are probably republican, democrat, liberal, conservative on this panel and a lot of them are good ideas. to my mind it's not whether it's a good idea, but where it gets

instituted that does make a difference. mr. grier has ideas, mr. seton has ideas, they all sound good but once we make them universal, i would probably vote for mr. grier to be superintendent or mr. luna to be superintendent of their school i don't want them to be the national superintendent of schools. it is a difference. how much is it federal? i think the most part, this is a philosophical point, the farther we get away from the local school the worse it gets. the farther we get away from local government to national government, the worse the oversight gets. i don't know that we can judge who a good teacher is. i think miss geisselhardt is a good teacher but i would have to know more, sit in her class and look at that. i would have to judge on how well her students are doing. it's complicated. i don't think i can ever know whether she's a good teacher or not. columbia, kentucky, is different than memphis, different than houston. so my argument for is to keep in mind that there is a philosophical question here on local versus federal and i think

we're coming together in understanding that maybe federal overbearing or federal overreach in education hasn't been good. and that it some times makes people a number. people talk about special needs and special education kids. to put a number on them makes them some sort of percentage as a mistake. i don't know how i can tell whether 17 or 30 is right for the school district in richmond, kentucky. i think we shouldn't have numbers in our bill that say, you know, i think we all are concerned. i don't think mr. thomas is not concerned about special needs. he's concerned about being judged unfairly or his school is. i think we've gone a long way in the right -- a long way towards fixing some of these problems with ayp, with the yearly progress, but i still am concerned that we still have the testing mandates, which will have people practicing to do tests to do tests. i don't think we've fixed that. i think that is still a problem that should be and could be

fixed and i'm glad we're having this hearing because we still will try on judging schools but we've determined the way we've been judging schools wasn't very good. so somebody can help me out if i'm wrong on this but i think we're going to judge the bottom 5% the way we've been judging schools. the problem is my kid goes to a public high school and it gets awards from forbes or "newsweek" from being one of the best schools but it's being told it's failing from no child left behind. 37 states want out. that makes me think the law is not very good and we need more

dramatic changes than what we're addressing. i guess my question is, is how are we going to determine if our model is not working for determining which is a good school now, is it a good thing to keep the 5% judged that way or do we need to reassess how we do the bottom 5%. and i would like to start out with mr. thomas and see if he'll make a comment on that, but then i would be more than welcome to hear other folks on this as well. >> thank you, nor paul. i just think it's very difficult when you use one measure to determine what your school is going to be successful as. under the old law, certainly madison central high school has never met ayp and, therefore, we have struggled historically to meet that standard and, of course, the standard as it rose became quite frustrating. however, whenever we look at our new model, madison central high school is in the top third of college and career readiness. so whenever you're using just

one kind of goal to determine what's meeting that standard, it's quite frustrating because it becomes one target is successful, another target is not. it's kind of like what you're mentioning about your local school, is that according to one standard, they're a very good performing school, but according to another standard they're not meeting that. that's the issue that i struggle with there as well. is that we use -- we need to use multiple forms of assessment if we're going to do that, not overtesting, i'm not advocating for that, but let's look at the school wholistly and see what we're doing. >> i'm sorry. everybody. okay. might as well just continue down the line. i assume all of the ones up to respond to what senator paul said. >> absolutely. >> mr. hendricks. >> since we are there, let's just go this way. >> thank you, sir. let me respond, senator paul, if i might to your opening observation that this discussion we're having today involves primarily a philosophical

difference about whether the states are the best laboratories for establishing significant reforms for education. and whether the federal government may, in fact, have a role to play. i don't think anyone is advocating the nationalization of public education. the supreme court as you know has already addressed that issue in san antonio versus rodriguez, 1974 case, which has acknowledged that public education is not a fundamental right under the constitution. with that same supreme court sought to examine early efforts to implement a state's rights philosophy with regard to public education and found it deeply wanting and offensive to the constitution because the results of the effort did not provide simply just an equality of educational opportunity, but significant investment in those communities that had the least

amount of political power or influence, or were tainted by racial bias which was evident in a number of the states that spoke most loudly in favor of states rights in public education. the decision in brown versus the board of education established, established a federal interest which no child left behind essentially sought to vindicate by ensuring that the use of federal dollars could be an incentive to improve the quality of public education available to students. that principle hasn't changed. it has been a bipartisan consensus that included people like senator alexander who as secretary of education sought to implement similar efforts and george w. bush who, in fact, signed no child left behind into law. this is not about a philosophical conversation about how best to educate students. it's about the practical effects of the failure to recognize the

constitutional interests that every student has, to a quality public education which was not being adequately served by state law. and so under the circumstances, i don't think this bill represents an extension of that principle. i think it represents a fair representation of where the principle stood. i've expressed my concerns about the accountability system because i think under the guys of reform, the provision in the bill go too far to negate the legitimate federal interest that we recognize exists. so rather than weakening their federal interest given the history of bias and discrimination under the state system, if anything, we should be look to reinforce it in a more significant and positive way. so i don't see this as a fif sofcle debate at all. i see it as a practical debate effecting real life students and the consequences of a failure to educate them properly. >> mr. grier. >> thank you, senator harken.

as i understand the bill as it's written today, the bill doesn't just address the 5% of the lowest performing schools or the schools that have the largest achievement gap. it also gives states the option of identifying additional low performing schools in their states. and i think that states are to be commended. whether or not we get into a debate about whether or not some states are different than the other, i happen to believe that states ought to have some flexibility in that arena. as i also believe local school districts should. when our state told us last year we had four low performing high schools, that they labeled dropout factories, quite frankly we had three or four other high schools that had -- we had some input, we may have decided, perhaps, needed more attention than two of the ones on the list. they were identified by one narrow definer, and so how

you -- how you intertwine all that local flexibility and the state flexibility, i think is important. it's often more difficult to do than it is -- than to say we ought to do it. >> now, i'm going to -- skip over one, two, three. i know that both mr. hess and mr. snor have to leave. it's 11:30. i will go to those two and come back to the three. mr. snor and mr. hess. >> i you just got word i was able to move my meeting back as i have longer to get back to new york. >> then i'll get to you later. okay. mr. hess. >> yeah. remarkable powers. move meetings from anywhere. thank you. i would like to say a couple words about senator paul's question. and then really just a couple other points i would like to share with the committee. one, is i think senator paul's precisely right. one of the design flaws in no child left behind was that one of its great strengths plaz

henderson indicated it took a national x-ray of where students were. it told us how students were performing in a give point in time. the problem with that and the way it was used is an x-ray doesn't tell you the cause. knowing that students of this demographic profile and this community are at this level of achievement in reading or math or science does not tell us whether that is due to the schools' performance, whether it is due to their home environment or whether it is due to their prior years of schooling. one of the problems with that x-ray that no child left behind took, was we tried to then use it as the basis for identifying whether schools were performing adequately or not. i think that was a profound design flaw. many of us pointed this out close to a decade ago and it is very healthy to see the senate wrestling with this today. the superior alternative to try to identify the 5%, again recognizing there's going to be murkiness whether it's the exact 5%, is to focus on how well

those students are faring in the course of that academic year. we want to look at how much those students are learning and things that we deem essential in the course of an academic year. that is the right essential starting point for whether schools are doing their job well, again because i think it is an imprecise science, because i think no matter how well intended federal interventions may be, they are unfortunately likely to do more harm than good. i think it is not useful to try to prescribe models but i do think as picking up ten cents on the dollar for state and district outlays it is appropriate for the federal government to insist that states be identifying and coming up with strategies to address these. a couple other points i would like to make real quick since i unfortunately am required to leave. one, i think we've heard a number of what i would regard as terrific suggestions and practices about how to educate children in schools and districts. i think the mistake is to imagine that when they are good ideas well, need to try to then promote them and encourage them

from washington. it's not that -- there is one question which the senator pointed -- senator paul pointed out, the fill sofffill soffic question, when mr. grier is trying to drive school improvement in houston what he is doing is working with a teacher unit headed by houston federation of teachers, he is working with a district over which he oversees control, working with a board, working with employees who report to him. that is profoundly different from what the senate or house are attempting to do in writing legislation. all esea can do is empower the u.s. department of education to issue regulations attached to funding which then must be funneled through state education agencies, then picked up by school district superintendents and at the end of the day, what we wind up with are rules, regs, case law which create enormous and often unanticipated compliance burdens. just one very i think evocative

illustration, is robert bob did a couple years as a detroit financial manager. one of the crazy ideas he tried to promote was the idea they ought to be moving title i dollars out of substitute teacher funds and field trips, into early childhood literacy. the state education agency told him he was not permitted to, that this was in violation of federal guidelines around title i. the u.s. department of education said that was incorrect, that he was actually consistent with the appropriate interpretation of the law, but that's what happens when we try to write laws from washington and wind up at books on the state and district, we wind up creating enormous and unexpected hurdles for people trying to solve these problems in schools and districts. just two other really quick points. one, let me say that when it comes to school turnarounds, teacher evaluation, i have enormous respect for what mr. sner is talking about, mr. luna, mr. grier, but decades of experience in education and out of education tell us it's not

whether you do it, it's how well you do it. there are three decades of research, for instance, on turnarounds, total quality management, corporate reengineering, in the best case scenarios these work 30% of the time. to imagine that we can identify some models that we will then require folks to use, and imagine that is going to increase the likelihood they would succeed, i think, is just to -- just to allow our aspirations to exceed what we can actually competently and usefully do. to give one concrete example of i think particularly on the teacher evaluation front, what i am concerned about, you may have read or heard about new school models, hybrid