dr. mcintyre. dr. watson, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you for the opportunity to testify today. my name is rodney watson. i'm the chief human resources oefrs for the houston independent school district. under the leadership of superintendent terry greer and our board of trustees we have been working to improve teacher evaluation and professional development for the past three years. this work, or the impetus for this week, stems from a major disconnect between our old teacher and evaluation system and student achievement. in houston our old system gave teachers acceptable performance ratings so we had about 97% of our teachers who received acceptable ratings when, in fact, we have over 70,000 students that could not read at grade level. as a result, two thirds of houston isd teachers are aware of at least one specific area in which they need to improve. i would like to spend my time sharing with you a few of the most important lessons we've learned over the past few years which i think