lockett. i am the president a ceo of the renaissance school in chicago. i thank you for the opportunity to speak about one of the most important issues attacking our country, chronically failing schools. we are fortunate in chicago to have the vision of mayor richard and our u.s. education secretary secretary, arne duncan, and the business community who came together to change the status quo for thousas of children in effort to launch 100 new schools in high need communities. when we started the renaissance 2010 initiative, the renaiance school conducted an annuls is that identified 27 communities or 75% of the schools perform below state standards. that met a child living in one these neighborhoods was most likely relegated to a poor perfming option unless thex re lucky enough to get into a selective enrollment school. at the same time, however, there were som schools serving t same population by getting diffent results. they broke the traditional paradigm with a stronger performance, better

again it is such a great story and i wanted to go in fact, lockett up. i wanted exclusive rights to eir story and access to all the stuff being fahmy moves to duke-- family photograph albums. i have inslee got erything. so iowan of the exclusive right to get all i could out of these people and they said fine, so we struck a deal and we all felt comfortable with that. i took offo loc, and-- oklahoman end matsen great friends, the attorney for ron williamson, still a great friend of mine, still working on some of the okloma cases sort of took me around and introduce me to the judges and a lot of thelayers involved in the story. there tons of documents, trialed transcripts, have got ron's prison records, fou boxes of ron's ily notes that they took on him in @rison. disciplinary reports, all the documents philip a whole room. and that is how the book came. once i had all of this that i dn't knowhat to do with it. and i met theamily of debbie carter, the victim, her mom, her niece. they became friends, and we reached the level where we could trt each other. i

exploitation, not only for public use and for conservation, but as a repository, a preserve, a safe-kept lockette of what our country is, and the fact that is belongs to all of us together. what a good idea. the national parks, america's best idea, starts sunday at 8:00 eastern on pbs. and ken burns is here with us now to talk about it. ken burns, congratulations, and thank you so much for being here. i'm geeking out that you're here. >> other way around. >> well, congratulations. you have to be very proud of this. >> we're very, very excited. we have spent ten years working on it, six shooting. we have been to places where you think someone is going to tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, buddy, are you getting paid for this, come this way. but building human happiness, governments now are essentially bad. there was a time when the government stepped in and made things better in every single way, that we could bring jobs, and money and a sense of cohesion. and that's what the parks -- they thrived during the depression, not just because the they got the first stimulus dollars, but because they

similarly for miss lockett, do you select them, the have control?i found steve barr's observation that 40% of the teachers at that high school returned. i think about it one way, that is a lot, thinking about it another way, 60% don't want to be there, they read their before. if you could talk a little bit about that self selection that you seem to be tapping into, if we could start with dr. peiffer, then mr. harries, then mr. barr. >> highly qualified teachers are highly effective. i have seen some highly qualified people not doing a good job. when we look at all the statistics, our kong and -- concentration of teachers without adequate training are showing up in large numbers for urban districts, in schools that are very low performing, we have made a lot of headway over the last 7 years it is a start. the secondary issue in terms of being able to help teachers be affective, we are trying to help local school systems understand, we are not in a position to measure. we don't have all the tools to measure that. we hope longitudinal data systems will

phyllis lockett from chicago. natalie elder, principal in chattanooga, tennessee. steve barr, a founder and chairman of green dot's public- school. pelletier from o witnesses. -- let's now hear from our witnesses. >> good morning. i am with the maryland state department of education. but i think it is important dialogue that we need to have as we look forward to the present -- to the future. maryland's turnaround began a long time ago at the governor's commission in 1989 that established a school intervention program. by 1996, we had identified low performing schools. we had 73 schools statewide and we transitn them into the no accountability program. w're now up to 200 19 schools -- we're now up to 9 schools. of all those schools, about half have been in some stage of the school improvement process for five years or more. and number of them have been languishing for more than a decade. close to two decades of our work, we've done some things that represent all the tools on the table, from replacement of staff and the replacement of curriculum and bringing staff de

phyllis lockett from chicago. natalie elder, principal in chattanooga, tennessee. and steve barr, a founder and chairman of green dot's public- school. pelletier from our witnesses. -- let's now hear from our witnesses. >> good morning. i am with the maryland state department of education. but i think it is important dialogue that we need to have as we look forward to the present -- to the future. maryland's turnaround began a long time ago at the governor's commission in 1989 that established a school intervention program. by 1996, we had identified low performing schools. we had 73 schools statewide and we transition them into the no accountability program. we're now up to 200 19 schools -- we're now up to 219 schools. of all those schools, about half have been in some stage of the school improvement process for five years or more. and number of them have been languishing for more than a decade. close to two decades of our work, we've done some things that represent all the tools on the table, from replacement of staff and the replacement of curriculum and bringi