next, google's vice president meghan smith talks about teaching science and engineering and how educators might change their curriculum to make the fields more enticing for students hosted by the american association for the advancement of science this, is 45 minutes.

from mit. these are impressive, but she also brings many aspects. she started of for hum

to encourage collaboration. the organization is dedicated to innovative things around her bio says she is an entrepreneur. the last two titles i want to emphasize. she not only have a lot of amazing ideas but knows people .ell i would like to introduce you to my friend, the keynote speaker,

megan smith. images i want to show you guys. it is great to be here. they queue for putting this -- inc. you -- thanks for putting this together. i want to note as we start that we have this weird problem. whether it is more of the , for someical areas

is pulling people in. i wonder what is going on. i think it is an open question. preparing them and motivating them in some way, that is happening. countries we are limiting it for them to come and create more value and innovation and create more jobs i'm being here. our approach is not working. want us to think about it today.

i am not an education expert. i am a mechanical engineer. i have gone to work in extraordinary projects. i want to cruise through some andgs i think have changed areas we might consider. indicative of things we want to change. red is english. you see spanish, portuguese. if we google search, you can think of it in an internet way.

this has never happened before. it means we can really think differently and are available to each other to solve problems and to collaborate in extraordinary ways. i wanted to flip a couple of images of things that show that. come adjacent. they just finished computer science undergrad degrees. this is the same we have in silicon valley. this is where techies gather.

this culture is emerging throughout the world. i/o, we haveoogle not only the people who physically gather in san francisco, but we have more than one million people who are considered partners all around the world. i think about the amazing ted conference, ideas worth sharing. like thisa movement where people are meeting twice a day. extraordinary momentum. these guys are part of that world, so we are connected to them. i had a chance to go visit them.

of content.dea everybody knows wikipedia. this is a similar idea. knowing only about 30% or 40% of has maps.hazmat -- do you ever get the experience where you look at the map and there is a line. the people who live here just draw themselves onto the map. this is what people did for six months. as we think about daunting how arees of education, to do theseting

things, to cause amazing things to happen? is the activity happening, people are putting themselves on the map. on the beginning of google book search. they had the idea of these are all websites. the idea was to scan them and make them searchable in the catalog way. one thing i would have never guessed is this tool. york timesew article. now every word is adjacent. scholars can search for trends.

this is a search for women in english books. it does not really start until the modern renaissance movement. is another one that became adjacent. satellites have watched our planet since the 1980's. there is an amazing we can use for issues with the planet. is an image from a small area in brazil. project where they have taken the data for all of these and make them live so they can run against

these in figure out what is abouting, so thinking data being adjacent. we work on extremism. the idea is to find people who have gone the wrong direction. former extremists and 20l continents survivors and had a conference. these people have met, and they are visually connected. people have been through a lot of difficult experiences.

they are now working to solve problems. now we can work with people to help our youth. it is a way to think overtly about the resources to help our youth not go in these directions. violence against women. a billion rising was the program they did on valentine's day last year. millions of people working on this trying to change something together. i will jump into some vacation stuff. as the globes pins, -- spins,

there is europe, and there is africa. have 900 million talented people who are not in our conversation. i found this image. it is that color because it is planned. astonishing lack of getting infrastructure in theire. the good news is it is changing. you can see the explosion through all the market regions. an attrition in markets.

most of these are text and voice and not that up. data. we are doing this project to fly balloons. we are flying at the stratosphere level. the idea is to network and provide access to rural areas. provide conductivity. people are enjoying the internet at copper pricing for the first time.

really interesting for countries that suffer from corruption. tribes, so people can actually police their own communities for the first time using these technologies. people do not always know because it is used during crisis response. this tool, have seen but people are texting to others and posting, and people could rescue people underground. it was an amazing new tool invented in nairobi. you can see new media companies

emerging. trends that isr interesting, and east africa they told me some of the london ad agencies are outsourcing all over the world, especially to kenya, so if you are going to london and being presented an agency, three or four percent may have come from another country. greatest changes is to see how much the ngo is being affect did. -- affected. you can see them running a youth soccer program.

the idea was to live in a shack and see who was around. he was able to get you in see -- unc behind him. people come up underneath them. the network is allowing them to rise. i wanted to start with the most extreme. kids who neverny get to have a teacher. project. simple they have taken these people and loaded them up.

nobody could read within miles. he gave the tablet to the kids. they did not tell them anything other than one adult how to use the solo charger -- solar charger. the question is could they teach themselves, and could they join us. this year we had thousands enter and winners from many countries.

these areo education, incredible teachers we were able to ring together. how do we help our master teachers help us? interesting, because the faculty gets excited, and other people are deciding. i love the stat in waiting for of then that says 80% teachers are good and 50% are astonishing. the teachers disrupt us. we need to figure out how to do

that. figuring out how to integrate is going to help us a lot. here is one teacher who just started teaching. it is an amazing accomplishment. there are moments when you are slowly making progress. there is energy, and you are going somewhere. i am so glad he started, because he kind of gave us a kick in the pants to say let's go. i really encourage people to watch this talk, so this section is about her civilized learning, so instead of having to go to

bess and sit still and lectured at you move the content. it could be personalized. instead of a lecture, why should ?t be that way could we shift it so more kids learn? could we flip it? this is st. louis. .t might as well be football it is amazing. one of the main thing is, how we going to leverage this technology, and how are we going andet hands on design

theater and performance into the classroom so it is much more fun? if we think back to the new tech knowledge he, you can remember the moments when it was. you did a project, and you realized, not only is it fun -- only what i do and not what you do but what i do. her daughter is in the same class as our older son. is from their third grade class. i love their teacher. as her goal, in effort there is joy. teach theshe has to

class, but that is her goal. about this, we want the kids to love learning and love being involved. they no longer have science classes. it roger it's time. it means we are actively doing projects. -- they call it raw object time. -- project time. using superheroes to learn social engagement. it is less about content. it is about learning to learn and collaboration, academic passion, working with each other . it is going to be the 50th anniversary of the i have a dream speech next wednesday, and

i think it is amazing to reflect back on what martin says. he had a dream that his children would not be judged by the color of their skin but why the contents of their character. if you think about 21st century skills, they are about content of character. are you able to learn and not filling their heads, but let's teach them to love this. they are going to live 100 years or more, so we can teach them how to be engaged. another critical thing is around inclusion. we talked in a way that only gets a certain group of kids excited. that is not a good idea.

they put their best on computer science he a 50% women. they have more people in computer science. it is attractive, and they have more people minoring in it. girls said, it is not interesting. i do not want to work with those people. those are the stereotypes. they addressed all three. the first one was the kids did not understand why this had impact on the world. a lot of kids said, i want to work on poverty. they are talking about how we write apps and do things, so

wey walk in and say, how can get the medicine to them? explain why and then you get to the puzzle. the second thing, that was for kids to have lots of experience. the goal track was the kids who have no experience. a lot of them said, i am not going to be good at it. who areched kids showing off. the showoff kids gained a lot, because now they are not going .o be considered arrogant it helps everyone. they were up against the law of challenges.

they got internships. they are up against stereotypes. 1 menren's television is 3- and boys against girls on screen. charactersalmost no on television. huge sexism.inst it is insidious. everybody gets butterflies, but the boy gets a microscope. it is not even accurate. while a g is pretty balanced now. have been working on

visibility. these are women in computer science. most people have no idea who they are. to be able to go back and fix and tell the kids maybe when were a minority, but they are always there. i just heard about catherine woman,, an astonishing born in 1918, african-american scientist who went on to calculate the project three four alan shepard's flight, john glenn's flight, why don't we know about her? she is amazing. john glenn said, i want to make it before i checked

go. there werem to know a lot of women who were not able to fly. we have been doing a lot of work at google. the women who are making the products upfront. created a sub series about women at google. is the kind of environment i work in. this is what i am talking about. this is project time all day. this is what silicon valley is. it is so fun. we are a little more hardware.

, he likens it to willy wonka. if kids got to do this from elementary school, we sometimes think about this. some kind of breakthrough technology might make it more successful. billions of people waste so much time driving. texting epidemic. so, how can we use technology to actually have the car drive itself? that is moonshot thinking. and maybe we cannot get there right away, but you can begin. so, we have ideas and prototypes.

by the way, in terms of prototype, the first prototype was built, not in a month, but in an hour and a half. they just ripped it apart and put it together? why couldn't school be like that? why couldn't we do design thinking? we have a little thing i borrowed from improv which is, when we are working on something, let's say, "yes, and," and make it a place to celebrate moonshot thinking. often, we are looking historically at who made it, but let's celebrate people who are taking crazy risks. try to move the world forward in moonshot radical proposals. last, i guess i would end, i think it is so important to help kids find their passion. what is your ex?

instead of asking kids their major in school and college, you could ask, what is your problem? what are you solving? what are you researching? following that, i was lucky to take a class with an amazing teacher and he always said, you guys are great performers, but you have to find your passion. if you find your passion, you will be unstoppable. that is what i encourage us to do. all of this death needs work, but it is going -- all of this stuff needs work, but it is going to take all of us. let's go make it happen for everybody. thank you.

i believe we are going to do some questions. >> hello, thank you very much for that. not to be a cynic, because i love all of your ideas, but i also come from the classroom. how do you implement what is your passion and peer problem- based learning and all sorts of stuff in the current culture of testing, testing, testing on math and reading. >> i totally agree. it is a nightmare, right? and it is a mistake. it is interesting.

one of our engineers just came back from vietnam. he found that they are teaching computer science in second grade. he went to an 11th grade last and the kids were programming. he went back to google and said, what levelou think this is. he said, level one. half the kids in the class were getting the problem. we need to do a few things. the people who know best are the teachers. we need to put ourselves into a position to listen to the teachers and help them help us solve the problem. like every industry. because we -- they have the solutions. it is almost like, instead of more research and work, we need

to be journalists and go and find the best teachers. i met the governor of delaware recently. he has some very interesting programs around learning circles. it reminded me a little bit about microloans. i think your point is completely the issue. it is amazing to me. we are just so stuck in the way we are doing things. i think it is between 15-30% of the top university graduates tried to do teach for america last year. dartmouth was at 15 %-18 %. maybe there is some other way to get that energy. i don't know what the solution is, but i know we need two thirds yes ann's and get the teachers to do it. one thing we do a google is

survey ourselves every year. i would love to see that done in the teaching community. what is the pulse. what is working and not working? >> thank you very much for your comments. in terms of textbooks, and having more information about minority groups, how do you get that wedge to the textbook companies that are making all of that, who are producing all of the information that kids are absorbing? >> i think we should measure it or demand it. it has been incredible to me to begin -- the reason why i started this. i was in 10 downing street, and a bunch of our entrepreneurs over here went and worked with entrepreneurs over there. all of these kids got to come to 10 downing.

there was a portrait, and somebody said, of course you know the lady loveless. i said, of course i don't. she was the founder of my industry. she did the first mechanical computer. we need to go get these stories. i did something with women tech makers. we are finding the first digital programmers in the u.s. were women. during world war ii, there were women called computers. they would do ballistics trajectories. six of them were given wiring diagrams and told, figure this out. and they did. they went on to higher grace hopper, who am piled the first who invented the first compiler. these people are completely unknown to us, to our youth. that is a problem for boys and

girls. i think part of it is going on a discovery and then thinking in moonshot thinking. is it getting to the textbook folks, getting teachers to have a bigger voice, or getting hollywood to make more films about these girls, which i hope to do. >> any other questions. >> you mentioned the saturn rocket going to the man after so many technological innovations. can you single out any particular educational technology that you think would be worth putting all that effort into, like 10 man years, 100 man years, that would really change everything? is there a particular technology that you think would really deserve all this focus and attention? >> the web. the web has everything and each other.

what is so interesting about the web is that it is the content and us. extraordinary things will happen. as you have all different kinds of contribution -- even wikipedia. most of us surf wikipedia. some of us edit a little. some people do crazy amounts. somebody wrote a story about the making of the oxford english action area where somebody and a psychiatric ward wrote an amazing amount of words. where they don't have teachers, they would get to juggle teachers. they would have each other. -- get digital teachers. they would have each other. there is an open standard for online learning. these guys had a small group of friends in mongolia who took an electronics and circuits class.

m.i.t. for many years has been putting course materials online. these kids wanted to continue. so, they took the online course and made up their own class and figured out how to do it together. kids will start interacting in ways that will blow us all away. teachers will start interacting in ways that will blow us all away.

i really believe networking the network, bombing the network of us -- plumbing the network of us will really make a massive difference to everybody. >> thank you. >> i work on technology and learning here. to me, one of the biggest impediments is child protection, safety and privacy. you say use the web. that is not hard to do. but making sure a kid is talking to another kid and not a grown up pretending to be a kid, and that the things they are sharing are not going to compromise their safety, that is a pretty big hurdle.

>> i think there are two things to do. one is to have very particular websites that you greenlight. for example, there was a site called e-pass, which was an amazing community of classrooms. it was classrooms network. you knew it was classrooms. the team that does youtube.edu has stuff that has been look that by people, blessed and green labeled for use in education. you can think through very cleverly how to do that. craigslist was good early on in having simple buttons next to the pages that said, this is in the wrong place, this is inappropriate, this person is doing something commercial, and letting the immunity help you police. with kids, you just go an extra step. one of the best teachers in our country is in palo alto, california. she is a journalism teacher. she teaches 500 kids. she has completely flipped the classroom. she has a proposal for a media literacy course, a six month lass, think of it as freshmen english, that is really reading

and writing for the web. kids would be able to have a blog or a twitter account to learn how to use this medium in school. i think both more fencing and policing type ideas, but also educating kids about the world, the physical world and the digital world. we need to educate them about both. by high school, we should be letting them know where they should and should not be and help them become powerful. not only about the web stuff, but also in stem, i think right now there are about 60 million kids in school and there are about 1,000,000-3,000,000 getting these kinds of classes. we need to make sure all the kids have access to it. >> thank you. >> across our whole company, there is a huge amount of work

going on in education, kind of being smart about what we are good at, which is platforms, and then using teachers. i would say most of the real innovation in education is happening on youtube. some of the apps where people are using platforms to share. one thing i think is really going to change this country is

instead of kids being told, don't look at that paper, don't copy, is being told look at that paper. work together. and then search itself just to find great resources, that is where i think most education innovation -- there are a couple of specific groups that do a lot of stem outreach. we ourselves are trying to get the hollywood industry to have better stereotypes about our world. we are working with some great people to get computer science into all of our schools. we need all kids to be able to be digitally literate and know how to code. we want to see them all as makers. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013]

>> i have been writing for years now. the pc heat. peaked. fiveles falling now quarters in a row. some of this had to do with , but even asdown , pcsdities recovered,

heat. -- peaked. what is happening is there are for whichnarios people used to grab their laptop which are more easily done on a tablet. >> a look at the public's view on public education. panelists discuss some possible changes to address concerns. a half.an hour and

>> welcome to the discussion of .he gallup poll i am your host for the afternoon. i would like to talk a little we haveut the work done.

billions of people waste so much the people who have a college degree and go into the workforce are not as engaged as some of the folks who are less educated here in america. we have been puzzling about that one, trying to figure why we work so hard to keep people in school if they are graduating into workplaces that are not so engaging. we also heard that over half a million americans in k-12, plus a bunch of college students, about st hopeful. about two thirds are engaged.

almost two thirds of them are pretty happy in life, which is good news. there is an engagement slide that starts in middle school. but you are pretty engaged in elementary school. that engagement slide makes school a hard place to be for a while. that kind of balance is off later in high school. what is happening with those students during that time is something of great interest to us, so we have been trying to dig deeper into those numbers and make sense out of what might be causing this engagement slide, or at least might be related to this engagement slide. one thing we are trying to make sense of his american teachers and how engaged they are. one third of american teachers

are engaged at work. you heard me say two thirds of american students are in gauged at school. in terms of involvement in an enthusiasm at school, teachers are less engaged than students. when we look at our children, one big driver is being at a hopeful school. being at a hopeful school looks different than being at a less hopeful school. kids at these schools believe the future will be better than the present and they are able to make it so because they are surrounded by teachers doing a hopeful job. we will talk about this for about the next hour and 15 minutes. many of us, including myself, will forget that there are people behind these numbers. we will forget that there are people behind these numbers. for this poll alone, we talked to 1001 americans, asking them about what they thought about public education. they are representing us. they are speaking for us. so, that is important to remember. i believe it is also important to remember that when i talk

about engaged teachers, we have millions of people out there who have dedicated their lives to teaching. they are not as engaged as we would like them to be, but they are happier than most. and we did find very hopeful teachers this year. i would like to introduce you to one of them so you can put a name with the numbers. the name of that person is mary hopkins jones. today, she was given an award. she is the most hopeful teacher in america. mary. [applause] so now you have a name to go with some of the data you hear gallup talking about all the time. we looked for america's most hopeful teacher, and we found her. you will hear from her later on the panel.

we also want to remind you that there are other folks behind the numbers and a whole bunch of kids affected by decisions we make as policymakers and educators. if we can get to know mary a little better and also some of her children, i think it will keep -- give us that reminder that we need to picture names and faces behind these numbers. >> each and every year when i am given that classroom, i know that these students are destined for greatness and i know that they were given to me for a purpose. i am hopeful that i will help them to find that purpose and help them move forward in their goals in life.

>> teachers see talented kids and say, that is great. you want to be an engineer. you play the piano nicely. she takes it that next step. she encourages it. >> marion spier kid. she inspires them -- mary inspires kids. she gives them hope for what they can do, not only when they graduate elementary school, but when they graduate high school, when they graduate college, when they go out into the world. >> her first year teaching, she said something i will never forget. she said, the children will remember this year with me. >> she taught me the value of hard work and dedication. >> my parents are both immigrants from el salvador. i started with little to no english. she created an environment that was welcoming to all students. >> as a teacher, i have an issue that they build that confidence within them. look deep inside to find what you want to be, and i will help you develop that. >> she works at a school that was -- we saw high poverty when i was in elementary school.

that did not discourage her. she had the same expectations for us to succeed as any other teacher would. >> you see children rise to the occasion. they are standing taller. they fulfill their dreams. they see, i can do this. >> she has impacted the type of

person and the type of teacher that i have become. >> i set some goals to bring him my grades and to succeed in school. >> she helps us get better in that subject. >> she takes it another step further. she put scaffolding in place. she gives the accommodations to help children realize they can reach that goal. no longer is it just a wish. >> she helps them to develop that path way of thinking. next step high school. next up college. next a phd.

it is whatever you can imagine. >> she gave the message that in order for us to succeed, we have to work hard. it was going to take a little bit of work and a

lot of dedication, but we could get through it. >> she gives them confidence to move forward. it gives you a growth mindset. it allows you to sail to the highest height that you can. everyone needs hope and everyone has hope. >> thank you ms. jones for such a wonderful year. >> you are the best i ever had. i will never forget you. >> you have made me into the person i am today. >> congratulations, ms. jones, on winning the most hopeful teacher award. >> congratulations. [applause] >> so today, i do, i want you to analyze the results. i want you to critique the results.

i want you to discuss them. i want you to share them. but i never want you to forget that there are names behind these numbers. there are people behind these results. the highlights of the results, my codirector of the poll. [applause] >> we had an opportunity this morning to participate and share with mary in this award. i should begin to tell you that we believe one of the most important findings of this year's pole and the last two years is that over 70% of americans have trust and

confidence in the men and women who teach in public schools for he very reason that mary and it is all americans, not just parents or teachers, all americans. the sample was conducted in may. the sample is weighted to represent the current demographic of americans in the united states. let's begin and talk about the common core state standards. we led off with a few of these questions. of course, i think all of you in this room know that 45 states plus the district of columbia are voluntarily implementing the common core state standards. it is arguably one of the most important initiatives in education in our time. the first part of the initiative was launched in june of 2009 as a bipartisan partnership between the national governors association and the council of states.

recently, there has been controversy over whether the standards challenged local control. e decided to ask americans about the standards. first, we asked americans if they had even heard of common core standards. we were surprised to find that only 38% indicated that they had only -- that they had ever heard of them. among parents, it was slightly higher, 45%. then we asked some follow-up questions. we asked to see how much knowledge americans had about the standards. whether they were required by the federal government. many americans thought they were, which is not the case. whether they were based upon an amalgam of state standards, which they are not, and whether there are standards in all the academic areas, which there are

not. we ended up asking this question, whether americans thought the common core would have an impact in helping students learn global skills. you can see from this that there is relatively lukewarm support for the standards. only 41% of americans thought hey would make inferences. in general, regarding the common core state standards we discovered, number one, a lack of awareness, number two, a lack of understanding, and number three, only lukewarm support. let's talk about testing and eacher evaluation. there has been a significant increase in student testing in our nation's schools, mostly as a result of federal legislation, no child left behind. we asked americans if they believed this increased student testing has helped, hurt or made no difference in the performance of their local

public schools. only 22% indicated that it elped. 36% indicated that it had actually hurt the performance at their school and 41% said it made no difference. when we last ask this question in 2007, we see a shift. in 2007, 28% said it helped and 8% said it hurt. we have seen a shift in just five years with a larger percentage of americans believing that the increase in tudent testing has hurt. related to that question, we asked last year for the very first time, a question -- let me read this one. this has to do with teacher

evaluations. some states require that teacher evaluations include how well students perform on standardized tests. do you favor or oppose this requirement? last year, we ask this question for the first time. that is the lower bar, 2012. a majority of americans, slight majority, 52%, felt that they supported the use of student standardized test scores in evaluating teachers. but in just one year, and that is the upper bar, you can see that that opinion has changed relatively dramatically. ow, 58% indicated that they do not favor the use of standardized test scores for evaluating teachers. following the tragedy in

newton, connecticut, we wanted to know how safe people felt students were while at school, and how they felt we could improve student safety. we asked this question of parents only. you can see that parents do not worry about the physical safety of their children while attending school. in the middle, you can see that if parents are concerned about the safety of their children, it is a concern with other students as opposed to intruders. and then finally, on the right, the chart shows the response to this question. let me read this question to you. to promote school safety, some school districts are considering adding more security guards, while others

g increasing mental health services. which do you think would be most effective? you can see from the chart on the right that by almost a two-one margin, americans believe that increasing mental health services would improve school safety over adding more ecurity. these charts focus strictly on security and safety. we asked americans, and we used a scale of 1-5, strongly agree, strongly disagree, whether number one, school should mploy armed security guards, number two, whether teachers and administrators should be allowed to be armed, and number three, whether schools should have screening procedures similar to those used in other government facilities. lou -- blue shows agreement. orange shows disagreement.

you can see that on the top chart, americans are evenly divided on employing more armed security guards. on the middle bar, you can see that americans strongly oppose allowing teachers and administrators to be armed, and on the lower bar, you can see that there is relatively stronger support for implementing security procedures in school similar to what we have in other overnment buildings. switching topics, different styles of schooling. americans are becoming more receptive to different styles of schooling as well as different types of teaching and learning. the chart on the left shows that american support public charter schools and that remains relatively high at 70%. when we first asked his question 13 years ago, support

for charter schools was slightly over 40%. in just 13 years, that support has increased quite a bit. for the first time this year -- i am a little surprised we have never asked this before, but for the first time this year, we asked americans if they support allowing parents to homeschool their children. looking at the chart, you can see that 60% of americans do indicate their support. furthermore, an overwhelming majority of americans favor having public schools provide services to homeschool children, including services for disabled students, opportunities for students to attend public school part-time, and opportunities for students to participate in public school athletics and extracurricular programs. turning to the chart on the

right, we asked americans their response to allowing students to choose a private school to ttend at public expense. attendance at charter schools this year increased by 80%. 21st century skills. this is one of the passions shane has, and others. we asked if schools should teach skills like critical thinking, communication, setting goals, cooperation. within education circles, these are referred to as 21st century skills. it was not surprising that american support teaching of these skills. what was surprising was the level of support they have, particularly critical thinking and communication. what is interesting for us,

these are the very kinds of skills associated with the common core standard. if americans knew more about the common core of, based on their embracing these kind of skills, we think that would be very helpful. the last slide we have therefore you, before we work with our--we have there for you, before we work with our panelists, we asked americans about the president's three priorities, to make college more affordable, invest in early childhood education and redesign high schools. far and away, they support number one, making college more ffordable. and again, there is much more information in this report. the entire report is included in this magazine. one of the things we do, and we

have been doing this for 45 years, is, in the report, we provide you with the question that we asked americans verbatim. that gives you a chance then to ake a look at that question, how it is phrased, and do you accept the responses you see based on the phrasing of the question. we believe that is very important. the other thing we have managed to do, because we do this every year, or have done this every year for 45 years, we've routinely go back into our archives and pull out questions we have asked in the past. that gives us a chance to ask those questions again and to see trends in public opinion about education. certainly, i mentioned public charter schools. the other one on testing, even he one on using standardized

test scores and teacher evaluation. with that, i am going to ask our panelists to come to the front. and while they are coming, i am going to take introductions. we have maria ferguson, who is the executive director in the center on education policy at george washington niversity. we did not assign seats. i apologize. what was i thinking? i taught junior high school. i know better than that. sorry. we should have little tikes, right? little nametags. sandra boyd, chief operating officer at the cheese. merrow, education correspondent at pbs -- chief off rating officer at achieve. john merrow, education orrespondent at pbs.

and most important, or in -- our most hopeful teacher of the year, mary hawkins jones. i am going to take the prerogative since i have the microphone of asking the first question of all the panelists. as we learned from this poll, most americans have never heard of the common core state standards, and even those that have heard of them, many of them have misperceptions about the standards. we see that there is really only lukewarm support for the standards. my question is, is this a problem, or will it work its way out as the standards are implemented in the newest estimates are used? >> i think jim shelton should take that.

>> i think that is only a problem if we don't address the issue. first, as the new standard start to -- as people start teaching them and we start to assess them, communities are going to find out that their kids are not prepared. when they find out they are not prepared, people are going to react. my skid -- my kids are not scoring very well. all of a sudden, my child's school does not look so great. in the context of not knowing anything about the standards, the second issue is there is a healthy diet of misinformation proactively being spread about the standards on both sides. this has been a full contact, everybody in the game opportunity to spread misinformation.

you can expect that there will e a push back. without people understanding what the standards are, what the benefits are, what bill schmidt has done looking at states with the highest correlations with the common core standards, their students have the highest probability of doing well, that kind of data is not out there. our voice is muted on it. there is not a clear set of folks able to take the message out in a strong way. even though parents feel very different about it, i do worry about misinformation in the general population. >> let me pick up on that. i think you are exactly right.

let me try to get some context. i think there are reasons why the results look the way they o. it is not as if common core was branded. in the 19 states that have appeared -- that have adopted the common core, common core does not appear in the standards. they call them something else. they have adopted the standards long the way and are implementing them on their own timeline. that is another challenge. states are all over the place n terms of implementation. as of the last school year, when you would have asked these questions, there were only seven states that were fully implemented in k-12. not everybody is using the moniker common core.

on top of that, you hear a disconnect. common core is this thing that is a political football. i am 100% sure if you had asked me 10 years ago -- well, it would have been different in virginia because virginia has a catchy name, sol. you're not likely to forget that. it does not mean what you think t means. but parents did not usually know what the standards were called. every state has raised expectations significantly in the past couple of years. there are good reasons for that. only a quarter of kids who take

the a cte are ready for college -- take the act are ready for ollege or the workforce. that is a good bar for parents to understand. the bar has been raised. results may look different for a while, but the goal is the right goal. we are not doing anybody any favors i giving false information about how prepared we are. -- by giving false information about how prepared we are. >> as a classroom teacher, i work in the state of maryland. i have lived in tennessee, arkansas. i have friends in north carolina and all over who are educators. we talk about the standards. we talked about the common core. there are a lot of different names, but overall, it is the expectation. i think the message we need to get out there and make it the forefront of education is that

our expectations are changing. we need to let parents know that expectations are changing. each state may have a different name for what they are trying to accomplish in the curriculum, but it is the same goal, to increase the expectations in order for our students to thrive in the future. once we get that message out and we are allowing parents to see that -- because, you know, if i would have looked at common core, i might not have said oh, those are the new standards. because you have to be involved in the educational arena to understand that. i feel that once we get it out into the media, once we have our meetings with our parents and continue the conversation -- with our parents, we can have a meaningful conversation. also, our students have to understand that expectations have changed. they are our message carriers. we want them to go home and talk to their parents.

we want them to say, things are being done differently than they were in the past and show them that there is a new expectation. >> i do think our standards are pretty low educational he. there is no question that raising the standards is a good idea. that said, i think the common core faces an uphill struggle. the name is a problem. in america, they could not call them national standards or federal standards, because americans don't know the difference. they probably should have called them american standards, but they couldn't, so they called them common core. the man with the bully pulpit, secretary duncan, cannot use his bully pulpit because that reinforces the belief that it is washington doing it all over.

every time he opens his mouth they lose support, which is a shame, because he is a very likable man. the real challenge with the common core and why i think it is not going to go away -- you guys have a real battle -- but i think the testing process is a built-in contradiction. the federal government insist that the data be able to be used to judge teachers and principals, but the common core standards, the skills and capabilities are things that have to be judged by teachers. a machine cannot test whether students were well together. -- work well together or if a student can't speak persuasively. we have to trust teachers to do that, and the tests as designed do not trust teachers. nd if teachers know that those

cores could perhaps be used to fire them, they will go right back to the drill and skill and all of that stuff. i say it is a real heavy isk. >> i will add something that touches on what everybody has said. we are trying to figure out the difference between the heat and the light right now, what is an issue versus really what is not an issue. the people who wrote the standards, the people pushing them through, the districts implementing them, teachers, terrance, all the way down the line, the strategies for six -- teachers, parents, all the way down the line, the strategies for success is unique for all of them. people don't understand

testing. there needs to be a very strong effort to help people understand what these are and what they are not. because every step of the way it is confusing for a different reason. >> that is why the poll results are fascinating, because the poll results indicate that the public trust teachers. but the policy makers and they insist on do not trust teachers. unless we work that contradiction now -- >> i would say, first of all, i want to say, i think what mary said is right on, which is, somehow we have to get people to understand that all standards are is a legal representation of our expectations of our children, and if we do not figure out how to align our expectations to what life is really going to expect of them, we are going to see them pay the price.

when we get that message out there, it resonates with parents. i want to contrast the broad audience poll with a poll done specifically of parents and how parents think this will make a difference for their kids, how they think it is actually important, how they think it is important for them to know how their students are doing, whether their kids are meeting standards, and all of these things are important. i think the reality is that what all of us are trying to do is figure out how you create a system where you trust but verify, that provides the information back to the teachers in the classroom and the students about what they know and don't know and what they need to do to get better. what the school is doing well and not doing well. what the system is doing. what the state is doing. we can influence how to provide support, how to provide resources, and where we are working.

we cannot act like this is simple work. it is not. our tests are never going to assess everything we need >> the question is how do you come up with a system that is balanced enough, assessments that are good enough that when you put them in context they meet the needs that we laid out? the first generation will not do it. it will be a start, something really important. it will create a context that will be much better, i think, when pittsburgh started deciding to share the detailed information and feedback on who these -- how these kids did. no information attached to it yet, but they were hungry for the information. they engaged with each other. when i spoke to teachers and they get together and talk about the data, they are excited about having that information in front of them. they were very excited to have the information.

we have to figure out how to use that to create a very different type of context. it's easy to understand why people think it is distressed, but when people look at the ability to provide that kind of information, they think it is just a "gotcha." there are some people who seem to enjoy the notion of punishing people. that's not what it's about. >> i'm going to pick up on something you said that i think is really important to distinguish the creation of new assessments and the standards from the purposes from which they might use and the development work is incredibly hard and incredibly complicated. i'm not surprised at all by the results from gallup on the tests and i don't think you would find anyone out there where the annual tests are being given by states. there are few people who say that they are great instruments. if you are a parent, you are

lucky to get results by the end of the summer. they don't seem to be connected to your work. if you are a teacher, the kids are gone. they don't help you or give instruction. unfortunately, there with multiple-choice instruments which are are, obviously, easier to spend time a lot of test practice and that sort of thing. the challenge of creating new assessments to really match the promise of the standard is a lot more critical thinking that allows them to show their work, ave a lot more writing, much more complicated and it's really hard work. that work is being done at least by the assessment consortium with teachers, with higher red faculty. it's a collaborative effort. everybody wants to get to the point for these tests are meaningful to teachers and meaningful for kids and will tell kids and parents whether they are on track or doing a good job. if you look at some of the

ssessment items, those assessment and sample items and if you look at the released items, the other consortium, they are not the kind of items that are going to be easy to drill and kill over. you cannot learn how to critically think two weeks before a test. really, for such a critical moment in time, to really move the field, i think the question is whether everyone will hang in during the transition and be serious about the implementation or whether we are going to get the struck did by, frankly, some of the things that maria talked about. >> let's open it up for your questions. you have had a chance to see. i started my career as a junior

high teacher and you see already that i have clearly lost my skills because i did not have a seating chart. i have further evidence of that because -- ok, we do have roving microphones. ok, good. i did not check with joseph on that. we want to open it up for your questions. here is what i ask -- one, wait or the microphone. c-span is recording and streaming. we will not be able to -- we will be able to hear your question clearly. secondly, introduce yourself and tell us your agency or who you represent. and then feel free to either direct or question to the panel or to one or more of the panelists. finally, one last thing, if you have a statement or a question, keep it as concise as possible to we can get in as many as possible. here we go. tom. nd we have one right here. blue tie, third row.

>> first of all, thank you for this session. it's a very interesting. i'm with the national school boards association. words are important. it strikes me around common core, i hear a lot of confusion really about standards and curriculum. a lot of people use these terms interchangeably and we know that's not right. i am really struck by the results. the public asked about the elements in the common core and it suggests that words are a problem there so why would be interested in your reaction and if i could just sort of take that same thought and change subjects just a little bit, i wonder what the results are on charter schools, to what extent the public really understands what charter schools are and with that level of comfort about how they operate in how they are funded and so forth. >> a quick comment on the

charter school one. i found a really interesting. there was one finding that they believe the quality of education in a charter school is higher than the quality of education and regular public schools and i really thought about that last night. did it feet off the question before that talked about the question that charter schools are not constrained by the same regulations and maybe there was some sort of correlation between quality education where one a school is free to do what it wants but it really surprised me. i'm actually curious to know what others read into that. i have not really made any conclusions of my own. >> for me, charter schools come a it was an answer to a question i have always had. terrence want something different. if is a clear indication when a parent -- parents want something different. if you ask them why they placed them in a charter or a private

school, they say they wanted something different, better, more. the expectations are higher and the children will get something more that they are not getting n a public school. looking at the assessment and saying we need to make changes, we do. we do need to make changes. one thing we do need to do is make sure that parents are getting information through the year instead of just at the end. having one test at the end of the year to tell your child was proficient? how about knowing at the beginning of the year, this is my benchmark, this is how we continue through the year. the parents are better informed by giving them information continuously than at the end of the year. i will not see my fifth graders again. i wish they would come back and visit, but i won't have the opportunity to discuss with my parents how they performed and hat we could next. if we had an assessment that was continual and i had the

information that i could sit down with the parents and let them know with what we could improve, that is was some of the schools are providing, ontinuous information, keeping them informed about what their children are doing and how they are performing. >> my sense is that result represents the year earning parents. they know things could be better. i spent a lot of time in charter schools when i was in new orleans for six and a half years after katrina and it is almost entirely charter schools down there. charter schools are probably the good ones, where they have a high bar to get a charter. some places just hand out the charter like halloween candy. and arizona, you get a charter when you cross the border. when you set a high bar, those schools are nowhere near as good as they could be because everyone is ruled by test scores.

they have this same there is all this imagination and alent, but they are ruled by doing scores at the end of the year. the parents know that things ould be much better. >> i want to switch to the rest of the question because i do think that the words are really important. the disconnect between the importance of critical thinking and communication to parents, ow much that is a part of what the new standards actually emphasize yet the relatively low opinion of the new standard says there is a fundamental disconnect. unfortunately, that is not uncommon. unless you're close to the work of education, close to frankly any issue, most people are misinformed about a lot of things. if you ask people what percentage of kids actually have to take remedial classes,

i bet it would be wrong by two or threefold, more optimistic than we ought to be. we should not be shocked that people don't have a lot of information that we do need to recognize that we have not closed that gap. i want to follow-up on that there is a fact between -- there is a difference between ignorance and misinformation and there are those who are concentrating standards with what you actually teach. i keep tabs on all of the different groups to be able what people are thinking on things. it was supposed to be a joke among but basically the story as the nfl takes the obama approach to standards, but really what it was, it said every team is going to use the same playbook which basically was clearly an analog with curriculum,

notwithstanding. sitting back i said, really, every field is 100 yards, every touchdown is six points, etc. it lets us be clear about what winning and losing is and in that context you can have as much diversity and innovation that you want because everyone is clear about where they are headed. thank you for such a strong and compelling argument for having standards that are high and, in some cases, common, but that common misunderstanding is something that i think is going to be a problem if we don't fix it. >> one thing we found in our polling and we ask the same first question, knowledge about the common core and we get about the same results but then very quickly with just a reef description of the common core, people who did not know nything, the core five, they said it sounds good, 77% and the pole last year says like that should be the goals for

our schools, so i think there is an openness and certainly people want to hear, especially if you are a parent, what to expect for their children. what will my child learn this ear? are we on track? how are we going to get them there? that is really what the standards discussion is about. the most important thing is that at least in our polling teachers, despite all the stuff about testing and how the results are being used, are overwhelmingly supportive of the common core. they have had the chance to dig into it and really like it. the more they'll know about the common core, the more they like it. that to me is really encouraging. parents are going to get most of their information from teachers and that's a good thing. that is who they should get the

information from and i think over time, the parent gap will close. it remains to be seen. > another question, yes? back here. >> from george washington university. can you hear me? >> yes. >> i wanted to see what you think people think about the common core little differently. we have had 30 years of tandards and high-stakes testing. we are still being told we are going to hell in a handbasket. are people just weary about all of this?

the parents now are the ones who went through that in school. they went through the various standards and high-stakes testing themselves as children, so was that one problem? when the poll was talking about 21st-century standards for employment, we continue to see jobs going overseas to cheaper labor markets. parents and citizens are snappy about this. maybe we should perhaps think about common core in terms of not human capital but emocratic citizenry. >> who wants to jump in? >> tough one. i think it really does get to the question on the idea of messaging and how anytime you're asking people to do something that is hard, different, or knew you have to take into account all of the issues that you just raised -- their own history, their own experience.

we all have an opinion about it. testing probably has a branding issue akin to a root canal. most people, the idea of being tested makes them nervous him especially when they think about their children and they are concerned about fairness. you have to think about the history and where we have come, but i don't think it can stop you from moving ahead with what you have to do in the hope is that it makes you a lot smarter about how you do it. yes, there has been 30 years of conversation about standards, form, and testing. let's look at that, think what has come to pass and let's use it to our advantage and as sandy said, they do support the common core. they just released a survey as well where the majority of tate education leaders the

train has now left the station and it's how well we do in getting there. >> for the train to get apparently where it is supposed to go, if every american adult could spend just one day and a high school and see how mind numbing it is, that might win the day for the common core. we had a piece on the news hour last week and a middle school in new york in an english class and you saw what was going on. it was fascinating. you saw that there were kids in the middle arguing their points from the text but on the side, they were passing post-its to the team. that used to be called cheating but that is part of the deal, working collaboratively. people said to me afterward, that's kind of fun. the teacher was going around

and judging how they were working collaboratively, but as i said, if you could get people to see and go experience in american high school, it will tell you that the 30 years of school reform made things worse probably. >> here is what i think of the difference of time. i'm a little more optimistic. in the past, we said standards were important but you have to have test at the end, good luck. good luck, state, district, school, teacher. this time, the attention is being paid at every level to implementation and thinking about professional development. we are not there yet, by the way. what good lessons look like, teachers working together as part of a collaborative team to do lessons that reflect on the common core and the way the market has changed with open educational resources, i just think the implementation piece of it is that thing that is the most promising. if we get it right, having just

the goal of having the test at the end that is a disaster for everyone in the middle and we actually paid more attention to the implementation -- >> have you read the standard? >> yes, i have. >> were you able to stay awake? >> what we did at our school, the leadership team, we took it apart. as part of the leadership team, my principal wanted us to be able to have a conversation with our parents when it aimed to the standards. when i first looked at it, i went to the internet and i was going to download it and i said, no way. this is not going to happen. then whenever we started getting information, now it's time to read this and we take this section. we took it in parts in order to analyze it digesit.

we been doing this for several years now. >> you have to do it in parts. >> this year is the first implementation year for fifth grade. i have watched my colleagues. i've spoken with my colleagues. i have gone up and sat through the grating and reporting. even though it was not for me last year, i went to the class. i sat there and listened in order to get the information and then i started having conversations with the parents last year talking about the fact that this was what we were going to do in the fourth grade teacher started having conversations but this year in fifth grade, they have already had conversations. they already know the grading s going to change. >> you are not trying to do it as one shot. >> it cannot be a one-shot deal. this is a process. if we get the process correct here at the very beginning and if we take our time to make

sure that we are pulling all of the parties and, one thing we don't want to forget about are the students. the students have to understand that we are going to ask different questions. these are how the questions will be formed later. people often ask, you are teaching to the test? and i say i am teaching to life. no longer are we going to ask the question, if you're going to ride on the bus and you have this bus, how many people would fit on the bus? now but if you have a bus, a van, a car, which would be most cost efficient? i asked that once before and i was playing to plan a family reunion and we were all going to drive in and i knew that it would be more cost-efficient and i proposed the question to my class. these little fifth-graders saying things like you should take the metro. and then someone says you should not take metro because then you have to --

this course in the classroom started them just thinking about what it would be and i told them, cost-efficient, looking at cost, the overall cost, which is going to be the best? if we get them to start thinking like that and having them programmed within the learning itself, it's part of learning. like the classroom that you visited, it was exciting. it makes them want to come to school. we will not have the attendance issue. i don't want to go because i'm not learning anything. they don't feel my connection when they go to school. if you make it real and you are showing the parents that it's real, an application for life, not just for the end of the year when we take that test. >> that makes me the most hopeful advocate in america. >> up here, coming back behind you.

>> i'm with the national education association and i'm really enjoying this conversation. my question to the panel is how do we actually promote and support the importance of a well-balanced education? being a science teacher, i'm well aware of resources being diverted but even though i have a bias toward science, the same thing holds true for performing arts and social studies, so how do we address that? thank you. >> good question. i was thinking about that very issue, not just science, but band, sports, art, all of these other subject when we were watching the video, no one is talking about standards and assessments in this video. they talk about all of this other stuff and this experience that the students are having and what goes into that to making it and it's a combination of exactly what you were talking about.

i think the legacy of no child left kind with the teach to the test mentality and devoting limited resources to getting this test is to what they need be is going to take a while to deconstruct. i hope that schools and districts will be able to figure out ways to do a range of things. there are new science standards coming up the pike that they will have to deal with as well. our survey data of state leaders constantly shows that resources of how states and districts use their resources is the most vexing of all problems. i don't think there is any easy answer to that question. ok, john has the answer. >> there's an easy answer but it is not simple. >> the way we measure a school should have a set of questions. how many times per week does the student have physical education?

the implicit answer is more is better. how many times a week do they have art? music? we don't ask those questions when we measure and rate schools. what is the teacher turnover ate? how often do teachers get to watch other teachers teach? if we start asking those questions, implicit is that those things matter and it is a process of education. unless we measure what we value, as i say, i think it is simple thing that would not be easy to do and it just seems to me we ought to be rating

schools. we spend all of this energy trying to rate whether he or she is a good teacher, we should be rating the unit am of the school and you can set some criteria for what matters to you. ok, do both of those things. we need to measure what we value and then have an argument. what do we value? what do we care about? > i agree with that. by definition, when you go to the federal level, the idea was that you could not make it too big. you have to pick a few things but if they start asking about all of these other things we have a problem. i think that is probably true. the question is what kind of accountability and where should it sit that looks at all of these other things? i'm going to have a different take on what our problem

is. no child left behind had a lot of problems. i think one of the bigger problems we had was a flawed hypothesis. the flawed hypothesis was, and is still, that the best way to do better on your reading, writing, and math scores is to just do more of the same old reading, and matthew were doing before. i have been in some fine schools that did the double down strategy but i have not been to a great school yet that did not have a well-rounded curriculum, that did not pay attention to how they were engaging students that did not have some outstanding program. maybe they did not have a ton of them, but outstanding extracurricular around art, music, band. they have very focused attention on what they are doing to support teachers and how they retain them over time. those schools that are great and manifested in even the best test scores, they have those attributes.

as we begin this work, we could very easily once again have people with a very different set of indicators that still operate off of the same basic hypothesis and make the same it mistakes again. >> i think what you're saying is really true. i think the reason for the focus on math and english to begin with, they are foundational subject and they are the two that you could get tested on as you enter a community or four your college. those subject to the gateway to whether you get to go to credit-bearing scores his -- courses or remedial. the way to reinforce english and math -- not just english and math but the broader curriculum so you begin to see, for example, in the next-generation science standards the connection to math and science. they are really excited about

how they can reinforce what is how ning and other lassrooms. they will use the mathematics and do really big assigns context at the same time. we will see math and english scores improve not just because there is more math and english but it is a broader-based curriculum reinforcing each other. >> in order to do well in school, the first thing you have to do is show up. for many kids, there are lots of reasons you show up in the school. you show up for that art class where you get to excel. you have a coach, team members that you know if you want to play, you have to perform in this way. >> they should no longer be called extracurricular. they should be co-curricular. ords matter.

recognizing that they are not the main thing, we have to pay attention to what role they play in allowing us to create the kind of context for students to really excel in the main thing. that is what i'm saying. >> may i? you posed a problem to your class about a family reunion. was a real problem. if you look at the calmer and core, the shepherd has eaten more sheep, blob blob -- blah, blah, blah. when you all look it, you had to go to school because that is where they kept the knowledge. that's not true anymore. there is flowing down. the job at school is very different. it is to help kids sort through this 24/7 information and figure out what is true so school should be teaching kids

how to ask questions but most of them are answer factories. the common core may begin to address that but it may not be radical enough. we send kids to school. you went to school to be socialized. today, there is an app for hat. school has a very different unction. you have to help kids understand technology. 80% of parents and what they were worried about was bullying by other kids and that's a staggering thing. that happens when kids are not kept busy, not cap energized. e said quite correctly, with the corners and so on, they are energized but in a lot of classes they are not and that is when idle hands to the double's work. that is where the common core may make that up so we do not have all of these answer factories where they are teaching kids to sift through this stuff and figure out what is true.

>> i make sure to keep my students not busy but engaged, engaged in learning. that is what encourages them to come to school everyday. when i do science projects and and we do science every single day, i tell them tomorrow we are going to make mystery meat. and they are like, what's that you code your have to to school to find out. when i did this particular lesson, we were doing liquids, solids, gases and that is where the mystery meat came into play. we have a dental appointment and it's been on the books for two months. can you do mystery meat tomorrow? this child was engaged. we've been talking about solids, liquids, and gases for a while, but this engaged the

child and i could not go to the dentist because i had to see what this was all about and then to talk about co-curriculum, students go to school for different reasons. some students even come to school to have lunch but making those identifications and encouraging them, showing them ow to connect to other things, football, it definitely ties in with math. one thing i do with my students who play soccer, we talk about the density of the grass and the role it plays in how the ball moves across the floor. when we did this, they decided they were going to play on the opposite end of the field to get density was different. it's not all crowded together. they got it. but when i do a density less than class, the eyes were all glazed over. ok, that didn't work. we have to try something else, but soccer gave me a new idea

as a teacher. >> question over here? >> i was in the department with no child left behind and it really was a dipstick with the two subjects and did it not plan on being what it became. if we had teachers like you in every, the common core would become exactly what we wanted to be, but how are we going to help teachers develop the content knowledge and the pedagogy to really implement this, particularly when the fear of teacher evaluation is hanging over their head? what can the department do? to try to help with this instead of suggesting that they might lose their money if they do not implement teacher evaluations. >> the secretary have already said on record the worst money we spend is on professional development and it is not well applied to give teachers the

skills that they need and usually when he is in front of audiences of teachers and asks them how much they think we spend, they cannot believe when they say to win a half billion dollars that we in our resources. the reality is where this is going to happen, where we will be able to make the difference, that is going to happen at the system and school level. schools and systems getting ready to take apart the standards, really understand what they are, understand what resources they are providing to make sure that they are well aligned and not just with the label on the front to align the common core. it's going to be being the opportunity for teachers to see those who already have many of these pedagogical skills and understand well enough to be able to teach in these ways and

it will take all of the have the skills. and, understanding the content well enough to be able to teach in these ways and it will take these resources. you can access these resources when you need and these three- day workshops will not cut it. we are trying to transform the way that people do their work for the first time in generations, the way that teachers need to teach is not the way that teachers have been taught. it will be completely different. they have very few models to use, even, of what this is supposed to look like. i think that we, as the federal government and the department, would play a role and being much more thoughtful about what we ask for resources to deploy. it would be easier to do this if we could get a reauthorization. being more thoughtful about how our resources go out in the stuff. we have been having great conversations and debates that

were thoughtful in their proposals around labor and flexibility. i think that as they have star to do the work they will go for the renewal of those waivers. we'll think about how we build out the support systems stop that will be important to be articulated. the reality is, the work has to happen. it will not happen with us. we will be facilitators and cheerleaders and invest our states into the ecosystem. it has to happen in the field. question, susan. i was part of a discussion earlier this week where we talked about research around the common core and what we studied and how we will valuate whether or not it is successful. someone made the good point that it is when you take evaluating teacher practice first tomahawk before looking at actual student outcomes. until we have evidence that teacher practice is changing and

that teachers are getting the training and support that they need to embark on that change, there should be no expectation that student outcome will improve. teachers, principals and district leaders. these are people who are critically important to this process. unless some sort of investment ash we cannot just look to our friends at the department who are doing everything they can -- there have to be others that come into play. the job of doing that is overwhelming. huge.is new york city provided training for several hundred teachers. new york city has 75,000 schools. it is a big, big job. >> where are we? elizabeth? >> elizabeth with investment,

thank you for coming. i want to pick up on a couple of things that were said was schools. teachers need to do the work in different ways. this is different than the whole itself. >> you have the microphone. >> my question is about the thinking about tree-service. what will it take to improve the system of recruitment and bringing people into the system so that they are capable of teaching. with that, other educators that are in informal education settings. what are other ways that those people would be assets are smart >> i do not understand your question. >> what to require him pre- -- teacher prep. are there ways to engage non-

formal educators? thank you for asking for clarification. >> ok. i'll answer it. ir the pre-service question, can tell you, but i need more time. ourhers, yes, we love summers, but no teacher has the summer off. if you want to provide me with time to sit down and digest information, i will take advantage of that time. during the school year, there are a lot of things humming up. in my head, part of me is thinking about how i will arrange my students, i have to set up my classroom. the other part of me is thinking that this conversation is enlightening and i want my whole school and county to take part of this. having that time, we need more time. we need more staff development time to sit down, as we have

done with our leadership team, working with a common core and getting a greater understanding of it. it takes time. we had to put the work up front. we have to put more work on front in developing our teachers and getting others inside. we have to let them know that they are a part of education. people get their education and they leave and become engineers and all of this. what can you give back? if you are a journalist, you can teach a writing session. if you are a dentist, tell me how your profession ties in with teaching now. back?an you give encourage the outside community to become teachers and coming to the classroom and take an active role in what we're doing in the classroom today. >> on the issue of teacher prep, i do not -- some of my best friends work in education -- i would not look to them for

salvation of the leadership. most of the men and women who are teaching are in the classrooms and what we need to .o is get teachers better 15 or 20 years ago, the meeting years of experience was 15. .ow, it is two years we have more to life in your teachers. we're driving out teachers. provide professional development that you all talked about. education may follow along or may not. my own view is that we ought to treat education like the british soccer leagues, they are relegated to a lower tier if they are not doing well. they are not put out of his

this, but, that is another subject. >> i have to agree with the point that john makes. that's what we know is our teacher preparations are not working for us already. there is a great opportunity to say that we need to rethink the way that we prepare teachers. we know that they need different ill sets and they had before. we know the schools that are available to them and the way that they are able to teach is so different and that, at this particular moment, whether it is the traditional or alternative strategies, my sense is not that that is happening. people are that ofnking the equivalent putting a label on a textbook.

we had to think hard about what we're asking of those institutions. everything we need to know today is on the video. listen to the kids that mary talked about. the relevant question. is reaching out to what they want to do. this,g is, why am i doing especially when this is hard. this? i doing is, once you know what is important to them, you need to say that this is going to help them, and they will believe it. -- our world is inherently challenging and interesting. somehow, we make it boring.

we may get boring when we take into school. when i talk about high school, the two things that people say is not surprising. the first word is, "boring." and that, it is too easy. it is too easy. they want to do something meaningful. we used to talk about rigor, relevance, and relationship. , relevance, rigor. they also matter. aboutudents talk relationships. they also want to know how this matters. me do a quicket -- we have one more question. 20,000 educators across the country, we publish a great

magazine. that we people know have a wonderful partnership with gallup to better understand americans opinions on schools we sponsorknows that the future educators association that is the only program in the country that operates with high schools to recruit the next generation of great teachers. the last question will be from the new director, dan brown. >> thanks. hi, everyone. ok. quick last question. i'm certified. i'm full help. -- i am full of hope for the common core. it feels that the time for debate has passed. it is what needs to happen. fallact that it could

parts and that it is an uphill battle, that is not acceptable. that feels like a really huge emergency. the data from this poll indicates opportunities for people in this room to recommit to being active in promoting why this matters. communication, criminal thinking skills, these are things that are needed in life and are popular and americans want them. the common core of core. it is about articulating views and that is what is at the bottom of most of the standards. do you see this as urgent as i do question mark who needs to do what to make sure this thing takes root and that bad actors and misinformation do not win the day on this?

>> when i get out of government, i will have more to say about the bad actors. , as a teacher and ambassador, i will expand on your question. honest, i'm not as concerned about the common core as i am about people backing away from more rigorous standards. and notnew standards following through on the assessments. or, if you're following through on the assessments, not following through on this course. that is what i am worried about. there's a tremendous opportunity to use the various channels that we have. we wind up in rooms where we are talking to each other, like this. what needs to happen is -- the reason you should disconnect between parents and the general population is because we have a

distinct and vested interest in what is happening. they are closer to it. we have to find a way to reach the people who do not stop there are smart people in this room. i know you have expertise. we need to figure it out. the mostaid, i think sincere and honest person i know cannot talk on this issue and not having a negative impact on it. someone else has to do it. >> you asked if i think it as important as you do, i do not think that i can get there. it is important that standards are raised. it is complicated. is a marvelous moment in time. judging from the time -- poll.

teachers that has been ongoing has taken a turn for the better. the highest level of trust for and the highest grades for schools ever. people have flipped on using tests to punish teachers. that is a moment that educators can take advantage of. , there is atoken disturbing data points in the poll. said that they do not think that students should be allowed to move at their own pace. it was 30% in 1980. the more people say that kids should not be allowed to move at their own pace, i find that disturbing. because, if there's one thing that we know, kids are different. , it the technology today

allows kids to move without being judged. you do not want a multi-move the same pace. to use theem technology that allows that. the common core calcified his age segregation, then, we are in big trouble. educators need to watch their language. they should never use the word rigor. "challenge." rigor means harsh and unyielding. kids respond to challenge. we need to mobilize his technology to allow the kids to move. that is with the common core seems to excel at. you have to say that this is what is going to happen. worth reminding

ourselves how the common core came about and why. that states work together and on their own because of their business communities. that theytelling them are not doing well enough and not enough kids graduate from high school. those who do graduate from high need to have remediation before they can do any kind of credit-bearing work. only 25% of kids are ready for college. that is the reality. we are not doing right by our kids and that is the problem that we hope to solve. ands a big thing to take on it is the goal-setting.

it was done by looking at standards from around the world. it was research-based. states got together and went through that k-12 standards are -- wentg extraordinary through that. k-12 standards are something trordinary. we're talking about fundamentally changing the status quo. we're expecting more and hoping for more. giving kids more opportunities. it strikes me as interesting that the fight against the common core is a fight for the status quo. that we areinking doing well enough, we can go back to what we were doing. i'm with you. i hope we will all figure out

how to get this thing done and not lose a generation of kids. i add one more slice to this? i'm looking at this from the other side. there are a bunch of urgent things that i have always felt needs to happen. the common core has started this. most americans do not understand the public education system. they are naïve about whether or not we have standards and how public education is funded. the controversy of the common core in the test have made people pay a little more attention and learn a little but more about our nation's public education system. the difference between public schools and charter schools. what that really means. why kids are funded in one way and kids in alabama, where my are funded and

other way. there is a laziness -- it sounds like i'm being harsh -- but, people need to learn a little bit more about the system and the details of the common core, in order to put it all together. >> thank you. ins next comment will get me trouble, i fear. we have done this for several years. shane, you will agree that this is the best panel that we have ever had. thank you very much. [applause] please do not tell other panelists. i would like -- before i turn it over -- i would like to thank people at dell university and all of your support in making this partnership blossom. we love it.

a wonderful senior scientist out of the omaha office. she lopez and all that he does. greg patterson. he does a great job. b director of communications, ashley kincaid, will all this together and we thank all of you. we thank c-span for covering this today. we really appreciate this. ith that, shane, i'll turn back to you. 1940s and 1950s, george and ophelia would sit around talking about education. hopefully was in iowa schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse. is one of the best conversations that i have attended in a long time. please enjoy our reception in the atrium.

i want you to remember that there are names behind the numbers and people behind the results. thank you so much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> we have looked at the public and private lives of people who served as first lady.

as in moving to the modern era, will feature the first ladies in their own words. >> the building of human rights is one of the foundation stones on which we build in the world and atmosphere in which peace can grow. >> i do not think the white house can belong to one person. it belongs to the people. whoever lives and it should preserve it and enhance it. ladies istwo of first live on monday nights on september 9 at 9 p.m. eastern. on monday night, we will conclude the encore presentation of season one. >> next, the voting rights act of 1965 in how the supreme

court's recent decision to strike down a provision of law could affect voters will stop this discussion was part of the southern christian leadership conference and is a little bit more than two hours. voting has been called the right that fundamentally supports all other rights. in a democracy, the right to .ote is fundamental yet, there is a question about whether or not the right to vote is fully protected in the united states constitution. one of the elements that has changed this 15th anniversary celebration from a celebration to a real demonstration and is shelby freedom versus holder. a recent decision by the united

states supreme court that caused them to question and determined that section four of the voting rights act is no longer constitutional. come as a shock to people who watch the court. it has been in the making for some time now. apparently, unfortunately, our country is moving away from a majority area and ideal, where we expand the right to vote, to where we our history contract and make smaller the right to vote. a is especially dangerous in country where there is no national religion and no national language. we speak many languages and are many colors. there is no one race. we have a flimsy and ephemeral set of ideals that we believe in .

one person, one vote. equal protection under the law. due process. our national secular scripture. that is what we say we believe and that is what makes us americans. it is frayed. that is what we are here to discuss. we are with the right to vote. some of the issues we want to cover is the impact of the decision, the infamous new north carolina voter id law. carolina andth other jurisdictions started to flex the muscle that was given retraction -- let you know that section five requires that all voting changes cover -- are submitted to the department of

justice for pre-clearance. you know that shelby versus holder said that there is no more section five pre-clearance. let's not be naïve, section five is unusual. it is unusual to have something that is punishment before it happens. if you have a client, i do not care what kind of record to have, their proclivity to commit robbery does not subject them to arrest and prosecution. those jurisdictions that are covered by the voting rights act have been so egregious and systematic and evil in their desire in their persistence in suppressing the vote that congress added section five because they could not stop them any other way.

you have to send your laws up before and he cause you cannot be trusted to run elections on your own. we have a brilliant panel and i will get out of your way. jimmy carter said something that was instructed to me and will aid you in your understanding of what can be a complex issue. he said, i do not monitor the elections. we know that jimmy carter has gone all over the world monitoring elections to make sure that they are fair and just and that people's will is expressed. he said that he cannot monitor u.s. elections because there is no uniform set of election ross is and procedures. that, to some extent, is what i hope to discuss. we have an illustrious panel. to make sure that we get into a conversation and not just a lecture, i want to ask john conyers, the founder of the

congressional black caucus. so many accomplishments. titan ofgislative congress. congress canat the theshould do to address system of voter suppression that we are experiencing today? mathis, thank you and i am honored to be here with this distinguished panel, many of my colleagues are here as well, to -- sony people representing so many people representing the organizations and celebrating his 50th anniversary. and get out of the rugratsh, we have made

-- progress. people are as determined as they were 50 years ago to turn the clock back and that is what they are working on. in some places, they are doing right well. by the way, there are some states that need to be watched more carefully than others. i am on a committee ruless trying to draft for shelby versus holder and we will get there. one thing i want to point out to we have looked at a

way to do this without trying to fix up the shelby county decision. , sometimesou know people create their own backlash and give us opportunities that we would never have had. whoe are people watching are being disenfranchised from the vote because of shelby versus holder. we will make sure that no one forgets it and we're noticing that a lot people are now humming ford and -- coming forward and saying that this includes them and that they will be cut out because of section five injunctions ahead of time to stop all of these states that need to be preclearance before

they can change any voting rights laws. nine states. my brothers and sisters, let me have some skilled people and some of them are on the committee that is helping me rewrite the law. we have federal observers that have not been taken away from us . we have federal election monitors who are still in the department of justice. that there saying is civil rights department of the department of justice is that we want to make sure that we do not diminish the domestic department of justice budget because we and we areesources

going to need more lawyers in the civil rights division protecting voter rights than ever before because we are more atrt now than ever before but these folks are willing to do. cutting out early voting. states that stick out like sore thumbs. north carolina and nevada. there are others that are doing it. cutting out and reducing registration -- early .egistration, early voting lots of little things that show you one thing. reduce the can we number of people voting? that is what they are about.

of them aress some not making any bones about it. we have an opportunity to point out that this is not going to , it will affect a lot more people. one of those groups is hispanic americans,mexican- puerto rican americans and other latin people who are being affected in the same way. after all, once you start looking at who it is that you are trying to cut out and go after them, you sometimes get the wrong people. the way weo not look are supposed to look. it is in that sense that i join you here with these organizations that have brought us together to celebrate and to

andmber 15 -- 50 years ago remember the great job that lays ahead for us. i thank you very much. >> congressman john conyers from michigan. ranking member on the house judiciary committee. you mentioned something that was important. i would ask sheila jackson-lee to respond to this. this is not just about race and african-americans. you represent houston. what is the lay of the land him up from your perspective, in texas and how are people feeling about eric holder suing texas? >> there are some who believe that they had a birthday party and others who were not invited. much.ou so very let me express my appreciation

for the broadness of this audience, reflective of those who were here in 1963 will stop this is the audience that marched hand in hand. people from all walks of life and all racial and religious backgrounds. we are women and men. we are asian. america is all about. the idea of the voting rights act being undermined and to theted is a statement world that we, too, almost two are different and bring different ideas to the table are not equal. postureou to be in the that you are six, seven, or eight feet tall. we, too, are america. i am honored to be with a man who chairs my committee.

"ranking."logy is we need to do better than that. frankly, we were able to be part of the legislative construct of the voting rights act of 1965. we must honor those -- [applause] >> woo! woo! >> i will get the dr.'s question answered very quickly. i wanted us to honor him.

it is an exciting place to be.this -- hillary has known brother john and we have found our way onto the judiciary committee. acknowledge those who speak about those who were there in 1963. i want to say that i am glad that he was around and he is cool -- here today. we must honor reverend jackson. [applause] >> when people are mired in depression, they realize when they acquired change. they remain available.

the powerless, on the other hand him a never experience opportunity -- on the other hand, never experience opportunity. is toddlesome task organize our straight into compelling power so that the government cannot delude our demands. >> that's right. >> we must organize nonviolently to make sure that government listens to our needs. aboutwer our question texas, we are joined by our latino mothers and sisters. we are in the struggle right now to assist them with comprehensive immigration reform. the problem that we face is, it seems that, after the voting which create the

opportunity for barbara jordan to get elected to congress from -- which created the opportunity for barbara jordan to get elected from congress for those who do not think that we need the voting rights act, and misconstrue the shelby case. they say that it is ok because we have high numbers of turnout and we have an can american president. -- african-american president. they use the registration concept. that is backwards and not with the intent was. tax, intimidation, the , it was the jellybeans not the turnout. what we have is the shelby case

that decided its decision erroneously. descent byn -- the dissent byas -- ginsburg was marvelous. 2006, i that we did in had the honor and privilege to be on the committee at that time. this to my republican brothers and sisters and my brothers and sisters who are not in this room who are anglo that we can do this again. it is not a question about registering or voting on one occasion. it is a question about sufficient basis to support pre- clearance. who believes that there is sufficient indication

that pre-clearance should still exist. not enough of you all. how many people believe that there are barriers to voting? the supreme court was wrong. what has happened in texas is this, in the midst after the supreme court decision was tuesday, a gay before i was in court -- day before i was in court in texas where they were closing down the last independent and successful african-american school district which had a latino population of 60-40. numbers were going up and it was solvent. they had a bad reputation and minutes after the decision, they

were thrown out of court on a winning case and we got the texas voter id law. latinos, by the thousands, were the reason that voter id was not pre-cleared in the first place. law has been determined by the united states department of justice to id,rvene on the voter because it was a construct to pay and to go to the dps office to get it. no dpsounties, there was office and thousands of latinos would be deprived. they have taken our redistricting case and i have been redistricted every year i have been in congress. if you want to realize the crisis that we are in, i know that some of us will talk about texas, herena and

is a headline from the chronicle. this is a huge and paper, as i left thursday to come here. one of our local cities wants to turn the clocks back on districts. right now, the city council has voted in the affirmative to take districts.gle-member they say that they do not have to worry about anybody telling them they cannot do it. brothers and sisters, if you do nothing questions of education and criminal justice. let me have you understand dr. king's words, when you organize power, you have to have someone to implement it. voting, you have the dilution of the power.

what we have is a crisis in texas and south carolina and georgia. know they say, if they come for you at night, they will come for you in the morning. we have to do the voting rights act in place because it is a construct and vehicle that dr. king gave birth to, if you will. is happening in texas thank you very much. -- in texas. thank you very much. -- yale ndergraduate. comes fullye, she prepared for this task today. talk about the incursions on the right to vote. the intent of those who are pushing these changes.

they say that they are not doing this because they do not want black full to vote and because they have racial animus in the heart. they say that they are trying to make sure there is no voter fraud in our election process. hank johnson, johnson, we should start screaming. >> we did. >> not loud enough. >> we knew this was not about fraud. what is moving his agenda so hard and fast? you are a member in congress and represents georgia. in 1988.kson delegates what will it take to get bipartisan support for some of

the solutions that are available? >> my response to your question economics that motivates these efforts. -- i was playing in just a second. it is an honor to be of assistance to jesse jackson. i had to share with you that i will never forget that happened in the 1980s -- sometime in the early 1980s. it was in the basement of the antioch baptist church. it was the rainbow push activity. gathering.ng, small joe beasley was there.

cameron alexander, the pastor, was present. a number of others. it was a small group. reverend jackson came to speak with us about what he saw overseas. somewhere -- i don't know where it was -- it -- maybeia, i believe it was, maybe it was -- i am sure it was in asia. it must've been china or, perhaps, somewhere around there. you had visited the sweatshops --re women were hard at work working 16-20 hours. indonesia is where he was. story ofold us the these women working and slaving

in the factories to produce goods that we, here in america, enjoy. he cried. women as he the told us about their plight. wasways thought that that an indoor moment -- important moment. he cared so much and this was an international thing. these were not black woman. it was an international situation that he was pointing out was in the 1980s. we are now 30 years down the line. still with us and still leading and reverend jackson is the way. still talking about the same issues. i appreciate you so much and i am honored to sit here beside him today.

you know, the march on washington in 1963 was largely -- largely about the discrimination that african- americans experience. the state demands of the march were the passage of meaningful support rights legislation, the elimination of racial ,egregation in public schools protection for demonstrators against police brutality, a major public works program to promote jobs. discriminatingws -- against his rating -- against discriminating,

a minimum wage. a district for the district of columbia, which has a black majority. as a result of that march and other events, the civil rights passed by4 legislators who were voted on by the people. people had a chance to exercise their right to vote and enacted policies that should have opportunities,t economic opportunities and civil rights and liberties for everyone. back?o we have, looking

we have a situation where voting , most, civil rights fundamental civil rights are out-of-tack by and control supreme court. we have public education being dismantled. --they used to talk about school vouchers. -- they used to talk about school vouchers. you have show me your papers and stop and frisk that have transcended the original issue of police brutality. we're talking about a public works program.

women talking about that for a long time and we need real bad to put people back to work. affirmative action to address the centuries of disadvantage that has been heaped upon african-americans. affirmative action has been gutted, just like the voting rights act has been gutted. $7.25 is not a living wage. we are fighting for increase of the minimum wage. mention the off and theof these jobs dismantling of the union movement. dc,re still, in washington

in a situation where there is taxation without representation. so, what has happened with that right to vote? we have either not voted or voted against our own economic interests. basically, working people and people from middle america, white folks, voting against their economic interests because we have been paid against each look like we it are responsible for everyone else's inability to make a living when, in fact, the wealth has been redistributed to the top two percent. -- they think that

they can keep like folks from voting. from voting.s they hurting the ability of everyone and all working people to exercise the right to vote. this gives the opportunity to create alliances and to really stretch out and move for a more equal society. so, that is my response. i'm glad this is happening. >> i think what i hear you is that, to the extent 47%, -- the proud >> which is the 98% -- >> we want affordable housing. we work hard every day.

if we do not vote our interests. those things will not be part of the american dream you have a surety middle-class -- american dream. you have a shrinking middle class. some people want to keep it that way. >> yes. me ask you, you are 18 observerver -- a keen -- observer. when i want to know what is going on in congress and cannot get to washington, i read his e- mails and feel like i am there. he is laughing because i'm telling the truth. perspective on where the congress is now and how likely it is to get bipartisan support to roll back some of these measures. that john lewis's

legislation, which has 170 something sponsors, could go somewhere? >> is this working? >> we can hear you. >> i want to thank janice for pulling this together. thank you. thank you for the long-standing work of the national rainbow coalition and the ongoing work that makes sure that we get these issues right. ourave to recognize who storm troopers for civil rights are. to sit deeply honored among these people who provide leadership for us every day. from hank johnson, sheila brown, the dean of

the congressional black caucus, john conyers. remiss without recognizing the great jesse louis jackson and all he has tenure fromof his the very beginning. reverenden with jackson down in the ditches, literally. streets,en in the those hamlets, the cities across the country because he would work until he would fall over and we would have to carry him back to the hotel in the night. give the reverend a big hand. thank you so much. thank you. as we talk about what is on capitol hill, i feel like jonah. i feel like that weekend fishermen in front of jonah. i had the storm troopers to

fight this fight all day and every day. i did to help provide some coordination throughout the that you willhope go to the table in the back outside the door. is sample letters and a form to fill out. this will be a great discussion but only one points to pause in this fight to organize and re- organize for this fight that we're going to have to have when congress gets back into session. these forms so you get the kind of action that janice was just talking about on capitol hill. we can win these fights if we are organized. these pieces of legislation we're talking about our bills that we have gotten through in much worse circumstances. we have gotten more done, quite frankly, if we had fulks who are not our friends leading the

house and the senate. with a friend in the senate and a friend in the white house, we can win this fight. [applause] you talk about the pieces of legislation, there are two bills that have been introduced that we have to discuss. one modernizes the election system. what we were doing prior to the attack from the supreme court on the voting rights act is moving august 20th day in 1963. here in washington, where martin 13 juniors -- martin luther king jr. day that i have a dream speech, we recognized that it was the 100th anniversary for the emancipation proclamation.

1963. 28

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i am currently a u.s. district judge. i share those experiences as a federal trial judge and see the defense system at work every day. prior experience in the u.s. attorney's office. i join the committee in october of 2010 and was appointed in october of 2012, just in time for the worst budget crisis that has faced the judiciary in general, at least that i can remember. as many of you know and has been referred to, the reduced spending level that was approved

by congress for fy 13 combined with sequestration resulted in approximately a 10% cut in federal defender budgets that all had to be absorbed in the last seven months of the fiscal year. that required reductions in staff as well as less visible but nonetheless damaging cost- cutting measures such as cancellation of training and investigative services that are so important. the prospects for fy 14 are equally bleak. we prepare for the likelihood of the continuing resolution rather than a budget. in order to prevent further unsustainable damage to the defenders, the executive committee authorized a temporary emergency reduction in panel

attorney hourly rates of $15, as well as a deferral of the payments for fy 14 into fy 15 for as much as four weeks. defenders will be held to their staffing levels which means they will continue to be underfunded by as much as 10% but they will not face the worse case scenario of 20% or more in their budget. none of these measures are good options. all present the real prospect of a diminution of the quality of representation. i fear that some of our best and most experienced lawyers will leave the defender officers or resign from the panels in frustration at not being given the funding that is needed. i am speaking as a former prosecutor. i understand the importance of

providing skilled, smart, dedicated lawyers to have the resources to match the department of justice when it brings a serious charge to a citizen that he cannot afford to hire counsel. the impact of these budget cuts is hard in human terms on lawyers who face layoffs and furloughs. the effects on their clients is more important and our mandate to provide an effective defense. when lawyers are overworked and cannot build the relationship of trust or do not have the funds to hire an investigator or expert so they can develop the facts and knowledgeably advise their clients on the best court

-- course of action. what can be done? recognizing the many difficult issues facing the country. the conference will be working very hard to obtain increased funding from congress, where i do believe there is bipartisan recognition. we welcome all of your support in that effort. we depend on friends like so many of you here today. we appreciate tremendously the willingness of our defenders to continue to provide the best representation they can manage under difficult circumstances on this 50th anniversary of the criminal justice act. i take heart from the outstanding efficacy that has been demonstrated by the defense community.

they are not shy about standing up for their clients. with support from groups like those here today, i am confident that they will prevail and i thank you for giving me the opportunity for making a few remarks. [applause] >> thank you, judge blake, for your service and for those comments. i know that many in leadership now had no idea what they were getting into when they signed on for it. we are happy to have you here. we have a few folks take a seat at the table. do we have david? there he is. great. what we have next on the agenda

is an expert panel. each of these individuals has dedicated their career to the principles of the right to counsel to the principal of equal justice for all. i am going to give you a brief introduction and biography. by the nature of their extensive careers and experience, i will have to be brief and leave out a lot. i would like to introduce norman riemer on the far left. they advance the mission of the nation's criminal defense bar to ensure due process for all. norman practiced law for 28 years.

he was a criminal defense lawyer throughout his career. he is a recognized leader of the organized bar and a spokesperson on behalf of reform and we are proud to have them here today. next is mr. thomas giuliani. he is counsel to the justice center at new york university's school of law. he works with defenders to introduce holistic practices to secure the right to counsel which can reduce mass incarceration. pretty much everything to do with the defense function, he has had a lot to do with it.

he also served a decade at the neighborhood defender services of harlem and works to train defenders as well. we are happy to have thomas here. next we have miss kate clark. she works at the administrative office at the united states courts. she served as director of strategic services as a consultant on leadership and management issues for nonprofits. and finally, to my left mr. david patten, attorney in chief for the federal defenders of new york, where he served since july of 2011. he worked at the federal defenders in new york as a trial attorney in the manhattan office. he served as adjunct professor at the nyu school of law and the

university of alabama, and he is also on faculty at gideon's promise, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the training of new public defenders. let's welcome our panel. [applause] and to build on the introduction of the history of this program and the right to counsel in federal court, but the current challenges facing us today, i would like to turn first to

david patten and have him describe what is occurring in his office. >> thank you, jeff. thank you for putting together this program. i have to say in this 50th year of gideon, there have been quite a number of events celebrating the work of public defenders. we appreciate the appreciation. i want to briefly describe the work that we do on a day-to-day basis. without an understanding of that, it is hard to understand why these cuts are so devastating and tragic for clients and for all of us. i had the federal defenders office for new york for the southern and eastern districts of new york. that covers all of new york city, long island, and five counties north of the city. we have a total of 38 lawyers. that compares to roughly 300 federal prosecutors in that same area, not to mention countless state, local, law enforcement personnel, agents, civilians.

in our best day, we are vastly outgunned. we do not have parity in our system. when we start talking about 10% reductions to our budget and in our office a 15% reduction in staff and the remaining staff taking three weeks of furlough days, we have gone well past any cuts that are reasonable or manageable to our program. that is where we find ourselves today. i thought i would share two stories about our clients that maybe illustrate why this is so damaging. the first is a case we handled before sequestration took

in 2012. i will refer to our client as justin rodriguez. he was charged with the robbery of a grocery store in the bronx. he was arrested three days later based on eyewitness testimony. he asserted his innocence. his assertions of innocence do not carry them very far with the police and prosecutors. that are not stop our attorney on the case and our investigators who dug in and developed all kinds of flaws about when it happen. presented to them but they were unmoved. we engaged in pre-motion activity and they filed a large 30 page brief with dozens of exhibits asserting how sure they were of the reliability of the identifications, just how guilty our client was and the fact that he was facing north of 20 years in jail.

it was a compelling brief, with the exception that it was wrong. we know that because our investigator, after countless efforts of trying to piece together where our client might've been that day, came upon a furniture store where client and his wife returned a piece of furniture for their young daughter. because they got there in time, the surveillance video was still available and showed our client was there at the time of the robbery and nowhere near the grocery store. the government then dismissed the case. i do not know that outcome happens this year. i don't know our investigators get their in place to obtain a video. if we don't have that video, you

would never know about mr. rodriguez. i am fairly certain he would have been convicted. he probably would have pled guilty because he was facing so much time. my guess is he would've taken a a 10-year offer. let me talk about a case we currently have in the office. here i will use our clients real name. his name is wilfredo santiago. he is 28 years old. five years ago he was a corporal in the marine corps, serving in iraq. at that time, he had been a marine for five years since he was 18 years old. according to the government, in 2008, he accidentally shot a

fellow soldier. there is no allegation that the shooting was intentional. at the time, the military investigated the case. there was an iraqi witness and fellow soldiers. they decided not to pursue court-martial proceedings. flash forward five years, he is now a civilian and was honorably discharged from the marines. he is married with a one year old daughter and he is in college in the bronx with a 3.9 gpa ready to become a teacher and he gets a knock on the door. esther santiago, you are under arrest for the reckless assault concerning a shooting in 2008, 5 years ago, in iraq along with some accounts relating to false statements back then. there are witnesses literally all over the world. former serviceman colleagues who are across the country.

there are iraqi witnesses. i do not have money in my office to send investigators around the world to talk to witnesses in this case. we are in the process -- we have filed over 50 pages worth of briefs relating to his due process challenges to the fact that the government waited five years to bring these charges. deeply damaging his ability to mount a defense. we will have hearings in the fall. i do not know how it will turn out, but we have three options. we can tell the judge we need to get off this case because we cannot afford to properly defend him. two, we can not do the investigation that needs to be done which we simply won't do. or three, we can ask a judge to appoint a private attorney who will seek reimbursement from the federal government for all of the investigation costs involved in the case. the options involve either spending more money than we would spend on the case or not doing our jobs.

they are equally absurd options. i will end there, but i want to say this. not all of our clients are saints. not all of our clients are worthy of praise, necessarily. but they are all, like every one of us in this room, complicated human beings. sometimes because of substance abuse. sometimes it is mental illness. other times because of more mundane reasons that all of our lives are complicated. simple regrets or failed expectations or difficult backgrounds. our lawyers get up every day and stand by the clients. they stand by complicated human beings caught up in a terrible moment in their lives and they fight for them. they thereby fight for all of us and we ought to be supporting them. thank you. [applause]

>> you can all see why david patten is the defender in new york. if you were charged, or your daughter or son were charged, would you say i got a public defender? you would say, thank god i got a public defender who can speak like this to the issues. the underfunding of the state systems described in terms of his critique of us not living up to our obligations all the time for the provision of the right to counsel has been playing out. i would like to turn to thomas about what happens when you

starve a defense function. >> thank you. it is sad and it is difficult. it is also a little funny to hear the federal system now having to talk about suffering under the lack of funding. there is a very mean part in me. i was a public defender in new york city for 10 years. there is a man on my shoulder who laughs and says, welcome to my house. we did furloughs. the third year we had a 30% cut. this is what we do everyday, all day. this is what we do to poor people.

we made mention a minute ago about attorneys not being present at the first appearance. someone said about federal offenders being present. being present all the way through. that is not the norm for our system. many people are processed and never see the defender at all. it is not right. the state system is the main system by which we put people in cages in this country. it is unfortunate to now be in the same boat. for too long we traveled separately. i run a network called the community-oriented defender network. we are state-level defense service providers. i have been really focused on changing the narrative.

one of the things that we see and we are seeing it's a little bit larger is the consequence of what happens when you hate entire groups of people. this criminal justice system has been aimed at the adult black male. it has now expanded to include all poor people, all immigrant people, all people with mental health -- we are the nation's largest mental health service provider. this system has gotten out of control. the more out-of-control it gets, the more friends i get. i am happy we have found a common cause and i hope we will continue these discussions. i appreciate jeff's reaching out because state defenders have a lot to tell federal defenders about how you do something with nothing. that being said, i promised myself i'm not going to curse, that is probably not going to happen if you ask me a question

about the system. the fact is, and i understand the praise that we give to the constitution. i understand this is a pretty decent system in writing. it is a horrid system in reality. it was never what it should be. we have never done right by poor people in this country and in this criminal justice system. we are not even close. the truth of it is, if i got arrested right now and charged with a federal crime, if i could not get the chief of the defender office, i would go ahead and mortgage my house and get myself a private guy who has five cases this year, only one of which went to trial. that is what would happen. i am not saying this as a hypothetical. if you want to see people run from their criminal justice system and not eat in their own restaurant, watch a judge, a prosecutor, watch a defender have a loved one get a case.

the first thing we do is get out of the system however we can. we want the highest level to take the case. i want what you want. when i was talking to the judges and other people in the legislature about the funding, that is another issue we talk about, i give the example. i would get out of the system, that is a shame. i say to them, is it all right for your children to get out of the system, why is it all right for mine to be stuck in it? the constitution does not say, unless you have money you get justice. unless we don't like your community, you get justice. it says, you get justice. we have never funded the system appropriately. what we need is more allies to

press this case. the prosecutor's face shortfalls. the reason they don't face the same as us is they hold up pictures of dead babies. they hold up pictures of terrorism. they say, this is what will happen if you don't keep our funding. what happens -- and this is why i am here -- what happens when you don't fund the defense process? one of the things that happens and we have touched on it already, but i don't think hard enough -- innocent people go to prison. that is a statement. everyone can agree with us. we know what happens in american prison. right? if you are taken down the robbery suspect, he will be considered a violent felon. he will be housed a violent felon. he is likely to become a victim of sexual assault. his family members are more likely to go to prison statistically, especially if he has a son. and remember, he did not do anything more than you did.

we are a check on the system. we are not a sporadic check on the system. every case when it comes in the door looks like his case. every one of them. if you do not have investigators and social workers when you talk about mental health, you do not know which one is which. he came in looking the same as every one of my clients. i did not do it, i don't know why they said i did it, i don't know what they are talking about. that is what he said when he started, right? and then we have to figure it out. if you do not have an investigator, what do you do? nothing. if you do not have the resources, what do you do? nothing. that is what will happen in this case if this person does not get better representation. some defenders would have sat down with him and spent the three hours that investigators should have spent doing work convincing him to take those 10 years and they would have gone

at him hard. they would talk to him the same way i do. i have are presented 10,000 clients over the course of my career and as a supervisor 15 ,000 directly. 20 is less than 10. did i say 20 is less than 10? 10 is less than 20. you can see a daughter graduate from college or you can see her when she is in her 30's. you can see your family by the time your child still remembers who you are if you have a one- year-old, or you can see them where they don't ever know you are in their lives. those are the conversations you have to have because the reality imposed upon us by a lack of resources is we must process cases. 97% of all convictions are

obtained by pleaing. i think it is actually 94%. you can get even higher. these are not pleas that are taken after hearings. these are pleas that are taken instead of testimony, instead of getting information. i am not trying to pick on prosecutors today. but it is a routine by practice. i will give you 10 if you don't make me work. if i don't have to do to discovery and to turn over information, i will give you this number. if i have to work, the number goes up. when i read the constitution, i understand that i am supposed to work. this case is supposed to be what happens after work, not what happens instead of it. this is interesting and that i

--then i will stop. gideon's 50th, as we know, this is the march on washington's 50th. it is interesting for this community who cares area that there is a letter from a birmingham jail's 50th. if you remember that letter, there are two groups of people he singles out as being problematic. i do this is a social justice issue, not as a legal issue. he singles out moderate whites and comfortable negroes. what he said about moderate whites, he compared them to the klan and compared them negatively. he said it is bewildering when your friends are doing things behind you that hurt you. what we have here is our friends are hurting us sometimes and the negotiations we have to go through to fight for the right to counsel. people who are supposedly on my

side and say, but he did it, didn't he? well, these people don't deserv. if i have to cut through that to get to the bad guy, than i am already in trouble. we have to be much more vigorous and willing to sacrifice. one of the things i will do is try to get put in jail in the next couple of years fighting for the right to counsel. we have to say no to some of this. there is a point where if you have to go forward, some attorney has to say, no. it is not our job to make the system smoother. it is our job to see justice and --stice is a difficult aim to thing to seek. some of us will have to step up and say no. the other thing, as a comfortable negro, i have to be

more vigorous. this is an issue of race. i have to say that to every room and at every point of time i can say it whether or not we like to hear it -- actually, because we don't to hear it. we have to acknowledge it. it is part of why we are here. when you think of the war on drugs, you see a black guy. i know you do. if you say you don't, i know you are lying. when we talk about super predators, you see a black man again. you say you don't, i know you do. we talk about urban poverty. while we are here, we have to talk about why certain communities of this way and certain do not. that being said, i am willing to take questions and i promise you i will curse if you ask me the [laughter] [applause]

>> we have heard david describe what a good defense could look like and what a defense that might be a solid defense will not look like if it is not funded. you have heard thomas described a system where that is totally broken down and also challenged us with some of the broader issues we have to face. in 50 years of the criminal justice act, we are having to --two discussions. one is describing and reeducating all of ourselves about what the right to counsel means and some of the lessons that maybe we have forgotten. and what an effective right to counsel means. i think those of us in the criminal defense community is turning it on our selves and are we doing the best we can and living up to our moral requirements.

i think the attorney general in his speech at the american bar association last week invites all of us to have some of these discussions. i think the representation function and the right to counsel is definitely part of that. with that being said, i would like to invite kate clark to speak to us as a person who is trying to support the great work that david is doing to challenge and hopefully mitigate some of the difficulties that thomas is describing to try to build a program that is meaningful and addresses some of these issues. >> the stories are powerful. the people are real. the impact on lives, it is not about the other. it is an impact on all of us.

the things we believe most define us often turn out to be the subject of challenge. as a people, and as a country. in a democracy as a vast as ours established practices that seem -- be zoned all too often to seemed to be etched in stone all too often to prove more tenuous than once might have appeared. societies passed down their institutions through a kind of social chromosome. the question before us along the way is whether the judiciary and the right to counsel in particular no longer occupies a prominent secure gene in our national dna. my closest adviser recently said to me as i was bemoaning the

right to counsel as i do everyday in my my job, i managed the federal defenders and the panel attorneys and our office of defender services within the judiciary. we are under siege, all of us. i said to him, one morning, early, maybe the country doesn't find the right to counsel for those who cannot afford to hire counsel a necessary expenditure anymore. he said, simply, it may no longer be part of our democratic dna. have you ever thought about that? i responded all fired up him up but it is the sixth amendment. it is a fundamental strand of our constitution. it is not negotiable. he calmly responded, you have

seen considerable indifference at the state level. and now, perhaps, it is hitting the federal public defense. nobody is going to be against it, but to what extent are they willing to sacrifice to provide for it? maybe in this current era, the country simply cannot afford first class counsel as a right anymore. maybe the country doesn't believe it is a high priority and that important anymore. maybe, they have to be re- convinced. it is clear from the stories you've heard that's of the right to counsel and the judiciary are being threatened. it is not being threatened by people of ill will. it is being threatened by events have to be

addressed lest we damage the thing that makes us different and singular as a country. in this situation of sequester, in this era where states are marking, not celebrating gideon's 50th, bemoaning gideon's 50th, if this is the case, if the trumpets clarion didion once sounded, what does it say about the rule of law and all the foundations of our country and our justice system. this is the big question we need to be asking ourselves. does every generation have to reclaim and reassert legacy of social justice and constitutional protection? is the dna of our six amendment subject to mutations over time?

alas, the answer is yes. so, what do we have to do? you have heard the stories. you have heard the impact. we must reclaim it. we must reignite a commitment. a commitment to the judiciary and a commitment to the rule of law through the sixth amendment. there are three things i would note that we need to do to reignite. we need you, committed people. committed people who see the judiciary and the sixth amendment as the dna of our constitutional democracy. a vocal commitment, like the powerful words you have heard here today. we hope we will have a dialogue, question and answer because we must not only use our voices, but we must use the written word and action. two, we need an education campaign.

i am not talking about a public relations campaign. we all know how to do that. we have worked the state system and federal systems. we need more. we need an education campaign in all corners from our likely and within thellies. faith-based communities, within the halls of power. the role of the courts is under siege and how important the right to counsel is is in question. specifically, we must ask for certain things. we are calling for a hybrid system in every state and every federal judicial system. what i mean by hybrid system is that we have a strong federal defender organization in every state and strong panel attorneys with the time, the tools, and of the training to do the job well.

pointder services provide a of counsel in over 200,000 representations per year. there are 81 federal defender organizations under siege at this moment.both federal defender and community defender organizations now serve 91 of the 94 districts. we have 10,000+ who are accepting private assignments. we are cutting away. we are now facing $60.9 million budget shortfalls for next year. we have already had a severe cuts under sequestration and we are -- we are heading towards the fiscal cliff. the complexity, this is all happening when the complexity of our federal practices have increased substantially since 1964.

the commitment and the time to represent veterans as david gave an example of, to the people who are being stopped and frisked in countless urban areas across the country, we know that we have dedicated people in place. what are we doing to their work, their structures, their training, their support? we know what it takes to serve to produce and deliver effective representation. we have it in place. we need you to do the third thing. help us fund the judiciary and a stronger public defense system that is a hybrid system. i say strongly because i am an internal optimist. it is time not to let the erosion happen that i worked in for over 28 years. i just entered five years -- it feels like five years. five months ago.

[laughter] five months ago, it was my dream job to work for the gold standard, the federal defenders. and it was like walking into a buzz saw. here we are. at the very least, what we can do all together in unison and one voice is to ask congress to provide a baseline of steady funding, to protect our adversarial justice that is in our constitutional dna. we should not just compare the defenders to nothing. comparing ourselves to the u.s. attorneys that determine which cases are brought and presented. we must look at a balanced scales of justice. that is our dna. within those clashes, when you have the training on both sides, the accuracy of.

the system is better. justice is served. yes, we can reclaim it. our dna helix is are there. fairness. insurance against overreaching of the government.representing complicated human beings and bringing them dignity and individual representation. holding the government accountable at every step. every libertarian should be behind that. voice for the voiceless. all men and women are created equal as we walk over from the thurgood marshall judicial building with lots of people in tow, there was a 10-year-old who ask, what does it say about the -- above the supreme court

pillars? i remember, it says justice for all. so does every generation have to reclaim and reassert the legacy of social justice? of constitutional protection? yes. absolutely. that is why we are here today. this is the start of of the criminal justice act, a year where each month the defender services and judiciary will reclaim our constitutional values. we will educate. we will call you to action and we will recommit the sixth amendment. i thank you for being here for committing and reigniting that valuable friends of full -- valuable principle. [applause] >> thank you for your five years of service. [laughter] >> i hope i last. >> as a colleague, friend, and

mentor of mine said, you come during interesting times. i said, i am not sure i like your definition of interesting. in the midst of all of this sort of chaos and everything, in some ways, breaking apart, we have the opportunity and the obligation to bring it back together again. that is our hope, i think, is to look at what came before. why did we have this occur in the first place. where are we now? where do we want to go for the next 50 years. what is the future we want to build for ourselves? i would like to pick it up from i am being a little bit facetious, but i know that morgan has worked throughout his career.

>> if i could print money, i would have the answer.let me thank all of my co-panelists. i am sure there are some historians among us at the library of congress. i don't know the last time there was a panel of four defense attorneys here. that also brings to mind something i want to say in response to the judges who issued an impassioned plea on behalf of the judiciary and the defense function. this isn't part of what i prepared to talk about but it did strike me as something to say. if bar associations can do good things, but there is a special obligation of every lawyer to stand up at a time when rights are under attack and particularly when the judiciary is in the crosshairs of a budget battle. they are limited in what they

can do. we need to be there for the judiciary and the defense function. i call upon all of those who are involved in the legal profession, including prosecutors. maybe most especially prosecutors. and corporate counsel. everybody who has a law degree to understand this a little bit of friendly has to stand up at this time. in this 50th anniversary year, we have had a solid year because the indigent defense system throughout the nation are a mess. they are broken. it is overly generous to call them systems. they aren't. experts, attorneys, ngos, have all decried the failure of this country to realize the promise to gideon. no one of lesser statue then the attorney general has repeatedly throughout his tenure spoken

out, most recently at the gideon celebration itself when he said it is time to reclaim gideon's petition and resolve and confront the obstacles that face our indigent defense providers in this country. i do want to note an events that i think was historic. in thepened last week. state of washington, it was basically a challenge to an inadequate, indigent defense system. united states department of justice filed a statement of interest in injunctive relief. this is a breakthrough moment. if you want to talk about something that could give us cause for optimism, this is the most significant development we we have now seen the department of justice say that

the vindication of sixth amendment rights is in the direct interest of the government. that is big. it is beyond ironic. it is tragic that the one system, the model, the cadillac that we all look to is now in danger of being degraded. i have been working on indigent defense reform for the better what hasthe decade. sustained those of us who do this work is the ability to sight of the model we can point to.the criminal justice act and the subsequent amendments have made that possible. i would like to recall, if i may, what attorney general robert kennedy said when theact was enacted. he said, now it is up to the bar in every community to see that to this act becomes more than a pay bill for attorneys. it is up to the bar to establish

standards ensuring that appointed attorneys will not merely be compensated, but they will provide competent defense. and that is precisely what we have had in the federal system. is the hybrid system that kate spoke about. it is a system that has fully resourced defenders supplemented by robust, capable, supervised private attorneys who are providing the necessary complement to the necessary defenders. this collaboration is essential to the system. it is embodied in what we use as the aba's 10k. rinciples, it is principle number two. until now, the federal system has complied with eight of the 10 principles. i will talk about those two in just a moment. those principles include adequate training, eligibility

screening, controlled workloads, continuous representation of each client. if the system is degraded, there is little hope we can use this model system to spur reform throughout the states. that is the reality of what will happen if these sweeping cuts are allowed to stand. we cannot afford to let the federal defense system sink to the level that you heard thomas described so vividly, which is the reality of most highe defender systems. caseloads, meet and please practices, that is where a lawyer spends maybe two or three minutes with a client and enters a guilty plea. mass produce guilty pleas. wrongful conviction. we have not seen those things on the federal side but we could. this is not an issue about staffing levels or attorney compensation. it is a fundamental constitutional right and access

whenustice for poor people. we talk about the defense function, we are not just talking about having an attorney, a warm body with a law degree. we are talking about an attorney with specialized skill in criminal defense and with the time and resources to properly investigate, analyze, and prepare a case. it means having access to investigators. it is so critical to get out of there quickly and get the evidence which can exonerate someone. it is access to mental health professionals, social workers, and paralegals. the lawyers who depend upon these panels do not get free research. they have to pay for all of that. studies have been done that show these rates were necessary. they were fought for, long and hard by judges because it is necessary to support a healthy system.

it means having regular training so attorneys are fully informed of developments of the law and mass produceannot a quality at defense -- a quality defense. you cannot have effective representation if you are going to bid out to the lowest bidder. you cannot subjugate a fundamental constitutional right to budgetary bean counters and leave it exposed or unprotected to the political winds through this town. if you treat the defense function as a mere line item in a budget, you are short changing justice and you will probably spend more money in the long run. advocacy frequently produces the results for the individual and diversion,y. rehabilitation, treatment, reentry. these things all save money and

are advanced when you have competent, the zealous, effective advocates for the accused. as i said, the federal defenders and panels have met the challenge up until now. that level of quality cannot be preserved if you don't have the funding. it is not possible. what we have to do is take advantage of this 50th anniversary. i would like to say to move beyond where we are, but first we have to protect what we have. this is a responsibility of congress. as long as it is under the judiciary, it is a fundamental responsibility of the judiciary. i mentioned that the federal system complies with eight out of the 10 principles. let me talk about the two that it does not comply with. first of all, principle number there is to be parity between prosecution and

defense counsel with respect to resources. it is included as an equal partner. that is simply not true today. you heard david say it. there is not anything even close to parity.i am not just talking about pay scales. i am talking about the resources that are put into it. i am talking about in this current structure that we have, the ability of the justice department through its budgetary oversight to avoid significant cuts in prosecution services. we don't have that on the defense side. disparity is self-evident throughout the system, but let's also think about whether this is a time to take a look at principle number one. principle number one is that the public defense, including the payment of the defense counsel is independent. for years, because the system has worked well, we have not had a conversation about that first principle as it applies to the federal system. we have ignored the fact that

that principle is not enforced in the federal system. i am not saying that we have easy answers to this. we do know the judiciary has been a wonderful advocate over the years for this function, but is it time now to think about whether this country is ready to have some sort of indigent defense oversight that will protect both our state systems by setting standards that can be complied with and protect the system as well? it seems to me a constitutional right, without which most of the other rights cannot be protected, is something that warns that conversation. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, norman.

i think norman has perfectly ended our conversation for today, but not for this year because he has discussed some of the things that are good, some of the things that are broken, some of the challenges that we face in order to survive and some of the things we all need to challenge ourselves to make this a better half a century of justice for the american people. i want to echo something that i think kate said most directly, but i think all of the panelists will agree with. we truly believe in the american experiment. he may find many flaws in the way it is applied, but i didn't think it would show up in the courtrooms if we did not think that some level we have the possibility to do better and should do better. i think -- i don't know. my view is that america is not the smoothest sailing state, but

i think we can do the right thing. that is where america has been and can be a beacon for hope and opportunity and should be a beacon of justice for the world. i would challenge all of you and all of us to work towards that for the next year and of the next 50 years. we will be available to answer any questions you will have during the reception. thank you for coming. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] writing for years now, the pc has peaked, the proof has finally arrived in the past year or so where you have seen pc sales falling dramatically in the double digits five quarters in a row.

that, it had been quite flat. some of this had to do with the economic meltdown around the developed world and to the whole world. years, butst 4-5 even as economies have recovered , the pc has peaked. , i doot mean it is done not mean people are going to throw their pc's away, i do not mean that tablets as smartphones can't replace everything a laptop can do. what is happening is, there are scenarios for which people used to grab their laptop that are more conveniently done now on a tablet. >> "the wall street journal" looks at the future of personal

technology tonight on "the communicators." 8:00 eastern at c-span 2. >> in a few moments, q&a. discusses her role as the politics editor of "the huffington post." journal"t, "washington is live with the newest -- with the latest news and headlines. later, a discussion about race relations in the u.s.. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--] >> this week on "q&a," "huffington post" politics managing editor amanda terkel discusses her career, and her

interests in politics. amanda terkel, when you were in college, you said that you antedo get involved in a comprehensive progressive agenda. what does that mean? >> well, i think when i was in college, i intended to go to politics. journalism, we didn't really have a journalism program. i did the school newspaper for a semester but i didn't really get a lot of guidance. so i thought i wanted to go straight into politics and i had spent a semester in my school, colgate university and i thought a think tank might be an exciting place to be. so, the center for american progress was starting up, one of my professors gave me a "new york times" magazine article about it and i tho